Dangerous radicals or symbols of crisis and change: re-theorising the status of Muslim boys as a threat to the social order.

Muslim boys in England, especially those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, have come to occupy the status of a folk devil or what Cohen (Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the mods and rockers. London: Routledge, 2002) refers to as ‘visible reminders of what we should not be’. Once regarded as passive, hardworking and law abiding, they have been, in recent years, recast in the public imagination as volatile, aggressive, hotheads who are either ‘at risk’ of being brainwashed into terrorism or involvement in gangs, drugs or other such criminal activities. Shain’s chapter offers an analysis of why Muslim boys and young men have become the targets of punitive state measures over the last two decades.