Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge in Europe

In early 2003 Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations organised a major international conference in Brussels on international terrorism, under the heading ‘Root Causes of International Terrorism’. At that moment the very notion that there existed underlying forces that shaped the context and causes that led to 9/11 looked self-evident to academics, but was still very much a taboo concept in policy circles. Research within the Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations has since revolved around two questions: first, how exactly the global environment boosts local and regional terrorism, and, second, how does this relate to the radicalisation process, which is occurring within Europe too.

Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge in Europe grew out of a series of public conferences, seminars and informal brainstormings with many stakeholders from diverse horizons involved. It is articulated around these two themes. First, it establishes the state of jihadi terrorism today, almost two decades after it started in the early 1990s. Second, zooming in on Europe, it addresses the issue of radicalisation as the main root cause of potential jihadi terrorism in this part of the world (Rik Coolsaert).

Often dubbed as a ’global threat’, most observers analyze the terrorist threat as a patchwork of self-radicalizing local groups with international contacts but without a central engine or any central organizational design. Jihadi terrorism is composed of one major root cause in an enabling global environment and a multitude of local root causes depending on the countries involved.

Focusing on the situation of jihadi terrorism and radicalization in Europe, this volume looks at the growing tendency of self-radicalization and self-recruitment of individuals. It provides both a precise state of the threat as well as a thorough analysis of the radicalization process. Aimed at an audience of policy makers, academia and think tanks, the volume combines a theoretical approach with novel thinking and ’out of the box’ policy recommendations (Ashgate).

Table of Contents

    Foreword by Gijs de Vries
    Introduction by Rik Coolsaet
    PART ONE: The State of the Threat   

  • Jihadi Terrorism: A Global Assessment of the Threat in the Post al-Qaeda Era by Paul R. Pillar
  • Jihadi Terrorism: Perception and Reality in Perspective by Rik Coolsaet and Teun Van de Voorde
  • ’New’ vs. ’Old’ Terrorism: A Critical Appraisal by Martha Crenshaw
    PART TWO: Jihadi Terrorism Around the World   

  • Logics of Jihadi Violence in North Africa by Hugh Roberts
  • Kinship and Radicalisation Process in Jamaah Islamiyah’s Transnational Terrorist Organisation by Noor Huda Ismail
  • Jihadi Terrorists in Europe and Global Salafi Jihadis by Edwin Bakker
  • The Islamist Networks in Belgium: Between Nationalism and Globalisation by Alain Grignard
    PART THREE: Radicalisation in Western Europe: The Root Causes   

  • Muslims in Europe and the Risk of Radicalism by Jocelyne Cesari
  • Al-Qaeda: A True Global Movement by Olivier Roy
  • Dutch Extremist Islamism: Van Gogh’s Murderer and His Ideas by Rudolph Peters
    PART FOUR: Radicalisation in Western Europe: The Answers   

  • (De-)Escalating Radicalisation: The Debate within Muslim and Immigrant Communities by Tarik Fraihi
  • De-radicalisation and the Role of Police Forces by Glenn Audenaert
  • The EU Response to Radicalisation and Recruitment to Terrorism by Gilles de Kerchove and Ran van Reedt Dortland
    Epilogue: Zeitgeist and (De-)Radicalisation by Rik Coolsaet and Tanguy Struye de Swielande
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