In and Out of Place: Islamic Domestic Extremism and the Case of the "Toronto 18"

In the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001 a veritable cornucopia of formal, practical, and popular materials have emerged that offer analyses of various dimensions of the phenomenon of Islamitic extremism. Unfortunately, despite the voluminous amount of analytical capital and resources expended, significant advances in our collective understanding of this phenomenon continue to be elusive. This situation is certainly evident when one surveys the current literature available that focuses on the processes of Islamitic extremization. To date, the predominant focus of this important research has been on the micro social relations and structures that make the development of particular subjectivities probable. Although this mode of inquiry is valuable, there is a danger in overly subjectivizing the process of extremization. As demonstrated through an analysis of the so-called Toronto 18—a group of Islamitic social actors apprehended in June, 2006, for activities that contravened the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)—macro social relations and structures served a significant function in creating the conditions through which the process of extremization becomes probable. In the context of this analysis, the macro social relations and structures that made the ideological conditioning and political transformation of these Islamitic social actors probable include, what is referred to as, the following spheres of influence: Transnational, State, and Group. In effect, these spheres of influence formed a network of scales that converged and condensed in the place-specific context of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and facilitated the transgression of some of the actors involved from a Dominant to a Subversive discursive formation and concomitant field of action and practice. However, to develop a greater appreciation for the context within which these processes took place required not only a re-evaluation of the conceptual and terminological tools used to apprehend this phenomenon, but an analysis of the historical processes and forces that made the emergence of particular discursive formations possible. If a comprehensive understanding of the processes of extremization are to be reached and effective counter- terrorism policies developed, the macro social relations and structures that make the emergence of particular extremist subjectivities probable need to be given greater consideration. Ignoring these relations and structures will potentially result in the continuation of counter-productive anti-terrorism policies and counter-terrorism practices which contribute to the oxygen of violence rather than facilitating the de-escalation of extremist activities.