Making Sense of Radicalization and Violent Extremism

Book excerpt: This volume brings together interviews with leading scholars to discuss some of the most important issues associated with radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism. The overall aim of these interviews is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ over radicalization and violent extremism best represented by many of its well-known slogans, metaphors, aphorisms alongside various other thought-terminating clichés. A vast range of topics are tackled in these conversations, including issues as diverse as the genealogy of radicalization and violent extremism, the rhetoric of emergency politics (’the language of fear’), the ethics of securitization, mutual radicalization, the challenges arising out of the relationship between cognitive and behavioural radicalization, Islamism bias in research on radicalization, the ethics of espionage (as an integral element of the ‘war on terror’), the epistemic dimension of radicalization, the application of the just war conceptual framework to terrorism, and the ethics of exceptional means when addressing security-related issues, to name a few. The unifying assumption of the interviews in the volume is the complex nature of radicalization, violent extremism and conflicting diversity, as well as their interwoven relationship. While radicalization has become one of the ‘great buzzwords’ of the intelligence and security ‘industry’, pleas for its very abandonment as a useful analytical category have also started to emerge. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, radicalisation, violent extremism, security studies and International Relations, in general.