INTO THE FOLD: EVALUATING DIFFERENT COUNTRIES’ PROGRAMS TO DE-RADICALIZE ISLAMIST EXTREMISTS AND ISLAMIST TERRORISTS
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Date
2015-05-25
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Countries all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bangladesh, Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and others currently run or have run programs intended to de-radicalize Islamist extremists or Islamist terrorists. Many countries, including Yemen, Singapore, and Denmark, initiated these programs following the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Although all de-radicalization programs share the common goal of re-integrating former Islamist extremists or Islamist terrorists back into society, each country’s efforts have emphasized different approaches more than others, and have had varying degrees of success.
This paper first explores whether the presence or absence of certain factors that may be conducive to success, such as political stability, have contributed to less Islamist terrorist attacks in each country. The second chapter, using the same characteristics that may be conducive to success, examines how a state’s level of repression affects that country’s level of success in de-radicalizing Islamist extremists and Islamist terrorists. Thirdly, this paper evaluates how religious characteristics, including a state’s official religion, affect whether states focus their de-radicalization efforts more on religious re-education or on social re-integration.
The first chapter reveals that as the success ranking of each country’s de-radicalization program increases, so too does the number of Islamist terrorist attacks, revealing a strong relationship. For the second chapter, as a country’s level of state repression increases, the success ranking of de-radicalization programs increase, although there is not a strong relationship. Lastly, the third chapter reveals that the greater the percentage of Muslims per total population a country has, the more a country’s de-radicalization efforts focus on religious re-education; countries with official religions are less likely to focus their de-radicalization efforts on religious re-education; and countries with greater restrictions on adherents of the majority religion who do not align with the state’s religious interpretation are less likely to focus on religious re-education. However, all 3 relationships are not strong.
Although de-radicalization of Islamist extremists and Islamist terrorists—as a practice and concept—is still in its infancy, this paper can guide policymakers considering such programs to determine a mix of approaches appropriate to their own country context.
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Keywords
de-radicalization, deradicalization, radicalization, Islamist extremism, Islamist terrorism