How do people radicalize?

Very little is known about how violent extremist practices are learned, and the role of educational channels through which they are spread. This empirical study extrapolates insights specific to the Bosnian and Herzegovinian context to demonstrate how one ultraconservative ideology, Salafism, can radically alter the dominant thinking and behavior of ordinary individuals once they feel displaced from the mainstream institutions and particularly from the formal education. At the core of the displacement and replacement model of radicalization is an informal and tactful teacher, influencer, or a mentor that individuals connect with either online or in person. Using the primary data collected in Bosnia and Herzegovina through 20 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with radicalized persons, the study sequences a ten-step radicalization model through which the interviewees have transformed from ordinary citizens into radicalized actors with a potential to engage in violent extremism.     

Epistemological shifts in knowledge and education in Islam: A new perspective on the emergence of radicalization amongst Muslims

I theorize that the idea of knowledge and education has shifted in Islam from an inclusive and rational search for all knowledge to a narrowed focus on religious knowledge, void of rationality. By synthesizing literature on education and knowledge in Islam, this study identifies three shifts in the cultural history of Islamic education. I argue that those shifts in what was deemed valuable knowledge have played a significant role in the emergence of radicalization today. The study shows that once the social world of Islam destabilized, the sense of belonging and sense making became inward and less reflexive as compared to that of early Muslims. Belief became privileged over the rationality mechanisms that had previously formed Islamic endeavors. I demonstrate that a decline in intellectual and scientific production followed, allowing extremists to skew Islam’s narrative by putting forward an idealized version of the Islamic caliphate divorced from rationality.     

Globalization and radicalization: A cross-national study of local embeddedness and reactions to cultural globalization in regard to violent extremism

Local contexts have been increasingly influenced by the transformative power of cultural globalization. These dynamic processes have proliferated intercultural connectivity, catalyzing both exclusionary reactions of ethnic protection and integrative reactions of multicultural acquisition. To be able to negotiate a globalized cultural diversity, the individual needs to be securely and reliably embedded within the local sociocultural context conceptualized as secure life attachment. The present study investigates the interplay among life attachment, psychological reactions to cultural globalization, and various aspects of radicalization in student samples from Denmark (n = 223) and India (n = 254). Results reveal that insecure life attachment was directly associated with an extremist attitude and with endorsement of both violent and illegal means in relation to extremism. Furthermore, multicultural acquisition and ethnic protection appear to mediate the relationship between insecure life attachment and various aspects of radicalization. Insecure life attachment relates to an extremist attitude and acceptance of illegal means in relation to extremism through ethnic protection. Additionally, insecure life attachment is associated with acceptance of violent means in relation to extremism through both ethnic protection and multicultural acquisition. The results illustrate the key role of contextual safety and reliability as platforms for approaching cultural globalization and avoiding radicalized essentialist pitfalls.     

Interface of Political Opportunism and Islamic Extremism in Bangladesh: Rhetorical Identification in Government Response

Critical approaches to study Bangladesh's political development have been widespread, especially in the fields of political science and international relations. What is missing from the existing critical account is an examination of the language that Bangladesh's political leaders use as symbolic means. This paper will critically analyze a rhetorical event, Address to the Nation by Begum Khaleda Zia, former Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, at the Fourth Anniversary of the former Alliance Government at Dhaka, Bangladesh on October 10, 2005 Zia , B. K. ( 2005, October, 10 ). [Address to the Nation]. Speech presented at the Fourth Anniversary of the Alliance Government. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. Retrieved January 6, 2006, from http://www.mofa.gov.bd/st_prime_minister.htm  [Google Scholar]. The purpose is to investigate the responses of the then Bangladesh government to growing Islamic militancy in the country. Kenneth Burke's concept of identification will be used to this end.     

Segmenting the Electorate: The Effects of Exposure to Political Extremism Online

The Internet provides people with an opportunity to preselect the ideological perspective of the political content they encounter, allowing them to fragment themselves into narrow interest groups and ultimately polarize along ideological lines. This study seeks to test the extremism portion of the fragmentation thesis: that if individuals sort into cocoons of homogeneous perspectives their attitudes will polarize and greater political extremism will result. A random sample of students was exposed to one of four experimental conditions: ideologically homogeneous and highly conservative media, ideologically homogenous and highly liberal content, moderate content, and a condition that included media from each of the three prior conditions. The results demonstrated that exposure to ideological homogeneity did drive attitude extremism in the conservative condition but not in the liberal condition. The moderate condition reduced extremism and the mixed condition demonstrated no significant attitude change. This article concludes that, given media fragmentation, greater extremism is possible. However, this result was only evident in the conservative condition.