The Suspect

What impact has two decades’ worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam and the Security State (2022) draws on the author’s lived experiences of being suspected of terrorism to take the reader on a journey through British counterterrorism practices and the policing of Muslims.

Rizwaan Sabir describes what led to his arrest for suspected terrorism, his time in detention, and the surveillance he was subjected to on release from custody, including stop and search at the roadside, detentions at the border, and monitoring by police and government departments throughout his research.

Writing publicly for the first time about the traumatising mental health effects of these experiences, he argues that these harmful outcomes are not the result of errors in government planning, but the consequences of using a counterinsurgency warfare approach to surveillance. If we are to break this injustice, we need to resist counterterrorism policy and practice.