ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that, rather than looking at what the term really means and how it 'causes' violence, the focus should be on how it functions in policy. It argues that one of the most important functions of radicalisation discourse has been to identify and in so doing to constitute the 'Muslim community' as the site of radicalisation in need of governmental reform. The chapter adopts a governmentality approach, which helps to explore how this identification has been made possible by mapping numbers of Muslims living in any area of the UK through official census information and other forms of data collection. It looks at current conceptualisations of the Muslim community in the academic literature and in policy and attempts to re-conceptualise the relationship between governing practices. The chapter gives a concrete example of the way in which government has 'mapped' Muslims through the use of census information and 'community' engagement.
