Examining the Role of Religion in Radicalization to Violent Islamist Extremism

In this article, the authors apply the four-phase radicalization model proposed by Silber and Bhatt ¹ 1. M. Silber and A. Bhatt, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat (New York: New York City Police Department, 2007). Available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf (accessed 19 December 2011). to a case study of Australia's first convicted terrorist, Jack Roche, based on communication with Roche after his incarceration and on a qualitative analysis of his trial. In doing so, they examine the validity of the four-phase model to a case of “home grown” terrorism and dissect the role of religion in the radicalization process. To conclude, the authors find that religion plays a far lesser role in radicalization toward violent extremism than the policy response contends and this has implications for counterterrorism programs that aim to address the drivers of violent extremism.     

Islamist questioning and [C]olonialism: towards an understanding of the Islamist oeuvre

This paper revisits the narratives of two South Asian ‘Islamists' to explore what their questions and critiques offer for a discussion on Colonialism and the Islamist oeuvre. Departing from resilient biases in scholarship that dismiss the need to engage Islamist expressions, I focus on a realm of Islamist self-understandings. This paper highlights key facets of Muhammad Iqbal's and Abul Ala Maududi's questions of Colonialism and their psychological implications, and uncovers their metaphors and reconstructions that operate as technologies of critique. I also emphasize the urgency to engage these Islamists in light of the inadequacies of present scholarship on this topic, and the diverse translation and appropriation of their questions. This study bears implications for the understanding of Islamist consciousness and the broader rubric of Muslim intellectualism.     

The roots of Islamist popularity

In this article I will answer the question why, in the Islamic world, Islamist activism finds the support that it apparently does among segments of the general public of the various countries. In particular, the initial elements and circumstances that induce a person to support or even join an Islamist group are the subject of this study. After defining the notion of Islamism in the first section, I shall give an assessment of the popularity of Islamism. Following upon this, the third section will show that the conditionalities which drive a person towards an Islamist inclination or conviction cannot in the main have anything to do with the Islamic religion per se. Lastly it will be argued that these conditionalities are rather to be found in a wide array of interacting political, social, historical and economic factors.     

Transformative Radicalization: Applying Learning Theory to Islamist Radicalization

While a consensus has emerged concerning the role radicalization plays in persuading Westerners to participate in terrorism, little research investigates the cognitive processes inherent to radicalization processes. Transformative learning theory, developed from the sciences in education and rehabilitation, offers an interdisciplinary lens with which to study the processes of personal change associated with radicalization. Transformative radicalization explains how triggering factors lead to critical reflection of meaning perspectives and personal belief systems that guide and alter behavior. Using an autobiographical account of the radicalization process, this study offers a plausibility probe of an inherently interdisciplinary and novel theoretical framework.     

Bringing the Civic Landscape into Being: How Varied Patterns of Civic Action Respond to and Create Dilemmas in Empowerment Projects

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society - This paper proposes a process for locating civic action, in its varied forms, wherever it may appear. First, develop a clear, a priori...     

The Potential of Islamist Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper is about the potential of terrorism in African Islamic movements. In order to lessen ambiguities related to the plethora of definitions given to the Islamist phenomenon, the various definitions related to the phenomenon of Islamism are examined as introductory information indispensable to the understanding of the topic. While it describes the encounter of sub-Saharan Africa with Islam, it also covers a number of movements in different countries in the African continent: Nigeria, Tanzania, Senegal, Kenya, South Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali, Chad, and Sudan. In all of these countries, the emergence of Islamic movements, their socio-political status, their present position in relation to the ongoing debate on their perceived radicalization or their supposed threat of violence or terrorism are comparatively analyzed.     

Hezbollah: Islamist Resistance Comes of Age

The Iranian revolution—the political realization of the "Great Refusal" of Western modernization—was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced by the Turkish nation state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western dominance.
Now, history is turning again. Iran has been seized by violent turmoil as it seeks to reconcile democracy and religious rule. Secular Turkey is governed by an Islamist-rooted party. As they struggle to regain their balance, the global economic meltdown threatens a convergence against globalization that joins the Islamist resistance with populist backlashes elsewhere.
Two legendary intelligence agents, a Hezbollah leader, an Iranian dissident philosopher and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, examine this historical turn.     

Selective Engagement with Islamist Terrorists: Exploring the Prospects

Despite claims to the contrary, governments have frequently talked to groups branded as terrorists in their efforts to find peaceful solutions to longstanding armed conflicts. The rhetoric of the so-called War on Terror has tended to portray an uncompromising and extreme, monolithic Islamist enemy with whom such accommodation is unthinkable. Therefore, it is not surprising that the potential for dialogue and negotiation with Islamist terrorist groups has been relatively neglected. This article examines the character of the contemporary Islamist threat and explores the prospects for selective engagement with terrorist groups that may not share Al Qaeda's global jihadist agenda.     

Comparative Islamist Perspectives on the Politics of Energy in the Middle East and Beyond

The article will describe the general Islamic approach on energy based on the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, as well as the writings of prominent Muslim thinkers. Then it will examine and compare the energy perspectives of four Islamist groups: Hizballah, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda. It will be argued that Islamist groups have attempted to achieve their external energy objectives by either using violence or exercising political blackmail against their opponents. Moreover, Islamists have developed globalized, glocalized, or localized “scale of engagement,” depending on the targeted audience. Finally, the article will examine the security implications stemming from Islamists’ interest in energy issues.     

The political and theological boundaries of Islamist moderation after the Arab Spring

This paper explores the repercussions of the apparent failure of Islamist experimentations with democracy during the Arab Spring in terms of the moderation hypotheses with a specific focus on the Egyptian case. I build on the existing arguments that repression may paradoxically moderate mainstream Islamist movements with certain caveats: when Islamists eventually come to power, their ideological vision also matters within the nexus of their strategic commitments and the on-going power struggles with other Islamist contenders. The prospects of democratisation, then, may also depend on the theoretical and political success of an Islamist political theology that accords better with rights and freedoms than a simplistic procedural democracy. Repression may indeed lead to moderation of the well-entrenched mainstream Islamist groups. However, such analyses focus only on those who remain within the fold of the mother organisation, rather than the splinter groups that break away with their more radicalised views. Under the post-Arab Spring conditions and given the Salafi factor, current views on the repression–moderation cycle must also account for the defection among certain Islamist constituencies towards jihadi or vigilante Salafism.     

Taking Hand-Outs or Going It Alone: Nationalization versus Privatization in the Funding of Islamist Terrorist Groups

This article explores the consequences for the funding of Islamist terrorist groups of nationalization, in the form of state sponsorship, versus privatization, in the form of autonomous financing. The article begins by examining the evolution in terrorist groups’ sources of funding from state sponsorship to autonomous activity, then turns to the benefits and costs to terrorist groups of relying on state sponsors. The article then analyzes the benefits and costs of procuring funding autonomously. Finally, the article weighs those benefits and costs in relation to a terrorist group's emphasis on enhancing its constituency versus pursuing its agenda. The article's central conclusion is that nationalization tends to boost a terrorist group's constituency while privatization tends to bolster a group's agenda. Determining which advantage takes priority depends on the relative importance to a given terrorist group at a particular time of enhancing its constituency versus advancing its agenda.     

如何认识当代资本主义的发展变化

二战后,发达资本主义国家在坚持基本制度不变的前提下,通过体制改革缓解了制度危机.资本主义的灭亡是不可避免的,但我们要看到这一过程的长期性、曲折性和复杂性.