ABSTRACT
After 11 September 2001 (9/11) a largely ignorant British public was thrown into the complex world of Islamic extremism and its animosity towards Western values and societies. Through many subsequent attacks on Western societies, culminating in the bombing of London’s transport system on 7 July 2005 (7/7), the Islamic threat was, in the eyes of the British public and the government, growing and coming closer to home. In the process, many myths and confusions were raised to the status of accepted wisdom. One of the most powerful of those is the question of the role of Islam as a religion and a value system in the actual and potential support of Muslims for political extremism. The growing fear of Islamic religious radicalization feeds fears of Muslim religiosity per se, and its perception as a first stepping stone towards hostile anti-Western attitudes. In Britain, but also in most of the Western world today, the public debate is hindered by such confusion about the link between the religious and the political and the assumed connection between religiosity with potential for political extremism.
