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The familialization of terrorism and the securitization of the family

Gendered narratives of infantilization and demonization

Bibliographic Data

ID11448452
AuthorsFatima Ahdash (0000-0001-6284-3159, Hamad bin Khalifa University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume51
Issue2
Pages212-238
Publication date2024-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Law and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-323X • E-ISSN: 1467-6478
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jols.12478
OpenAlexW4396871460
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

This article examines the recent proliferation of gendered narratives underpinning and shaping counter‐terrorism laws, policies, and practices. Looking specifically at the United Kingdom, there has been shift in the place of women and gender within international and national security discourses and practices, from historic absence to contemporary presence and influence. The article identifies and critiques some of the gendered and racialized tropes through which Muslim women involved in or associated with Islamist terrorism have been represented since the advent of the ‘War on Terror’. Gendered narratives that oscillate between infantilizing and demonizing Muslim women underline, and are manifested in, two particularly important shifts in the global counter‐terrorism landscape: the familialization of (Islamist) terrorism and the securitization of the (Muslim) family. These changes – which foreground the importance of the private realm in understanding and countering terrorism, and have turned the attention of the security state to the relationship between private intimacies and public threats – rest on gendered assumptions and have gendered implications. Their power is most clearly seen in the rhetoric of the family judiciary in cases that have recently emerged in the English family courts dealing with the radicalization of children and their construction of three discursive figures: the radicalized girl, the radicalized woman/wife, and the radicalized mother

Art · Criminology · Demonization · Economics · Financial system · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Securitization · Sociology · Terrorism · Gender Studies · Law · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

  • Childhood radicalisation and the Law in the UK

    Open Access•Fatima Ahdash•Critical Studies on Terrorism•2026

  • Constructing Women Perpetrators of International Crimes

    Open Access•Lyn Ellison, Natalia Szablewska•International Journal for the…•2022

  • Problematizing the context and construction of vulnerability and risk in relation to British Muslim ME groups

    A Crabtree•Journal of Religion & Spirituality…•2017

  • Just-ish? An analysis of routes to justice in family law disputes in England and Wales

    Ana Speed•The Journal of Legal Pluralism…•2020

  • A modern moral panic

    Open Access•Rayen Salgado-Pottier•Anthropology Matters•1970

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    Alice Martini•Critical Studies on Terrorism•2018

  • Vampira

    Jayne Steel•Irish Studies Review•1998

  • Islamic Headscarves' and the European Convention On Human Rights

    Open Access•Anastasia Vakulenko•Social & Legal Studies•2007

  • The Politics of Child Protection

    Nicky Stanley•The British Journal of Social Work•2015

  • Mapping the Margins

    Kimberlé Crenshaw, Kimberlé W Crenshaw•Stanford Law Review•1991

  • Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

    Open Access•Mahmood Mamdani•American Anthropologist•2002

  • Radicalisation

    Open Access•A Kundnani•Race & Class•2012

Citations per year1
Citation span2026 - 2026 (1)
Highly citedNo

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