What Comes After ISIS: A Sociological Analysis of Radicalisation into Violent Extremism

Abstract

If we can determine what drives people to commit such heinous crimes, it is suggested, perhaps we can change their behaviour. While it has been nearly two decades since the beginning of the global war on terrorism, the experiences gained in successive processes have revealed the fact that destroying terrorists in the battlefield is not a sufficient measure to neutralize the global threat of violent extremism. Even if a terrorist organization is deactivated in the battlefield—as is the case with Al-Qaida and ISIS examples—similar extremist ideas can proliferate in a different domain with a different organization. In this respect, along with the physical efforts exhibited in the combat zone, a successful war on violent extremism should also strategically focus on why individuals adopt and internalize the extremist visions and, in turn, engage in terrorist acts. To put it another way, as Borum emphasized, we should “seek to understand not only what people think, but how they come to think what they think, and, ultimately, how they progress—or not—from thinking to action.” This perspective provides an important hint regarding how to prevent the emergence of a new terrorist organization and to avert individuals’ acceptance of radical views after the ISIS falls. If we can clearly lay bare how individuals come to adopt radical views and participate in ISIS—in particular, and terrorist organizations—in general, we can take effective precautions to overcome this crucial issue. In line with this viewpoint, this policy report seeks an answer to the question of how we can stem the tide of a reemergence of violent extremist views after the fall of ISIS. Extant academic research and policy reports have exerted a notable effort in explaining the triggers of participation in terrorist organizations. Some studies—especially studies from political science—have generally concentrated on the role of the ideology and religion. Yet, the ideological transformation almost always takes place after joining a radical group and the ideology functions merely as a vehicle to be a violent extremist. The main question should be why these individuals feel a need to belong to a radical group and to which processes they are exposed until deciding to join radical groups. The “ideology” approach is therefore not sufficient to explain involvement in violent extremism. Explanations of religion as a trigger of violent extremism are also problematic. Recently, several academic studies demonstrated that religion was seldom, if ever, the root cause of violent extremism. Along with these researches, some other studies examined the issue from a sociological perspective and prioritized illiteracy as the main cause of violent extremism. While this approach could be utilized for extremists who reside in Western countries, however, the unique case of ISIS clearly showed us that the average educational attainment of its members was higher than that of the public in source countries. Aforementioned studies have generally failed to present a comprehensive model that explains the social processes and accounts for the variability of individual and social-structural factors—facilitating the engagement in violent extremist actions—for different extremists residing in different countries. Thus, the current study intends to fill this gap through providing a comprehensive sociological model which would be suitable for explaining the process of radicalization both for individuals who reside in source countries (Middle East) and for those who reside in Western countries. To sum up, the purpose of this policy report is two-fold: (1) to elucidate the nature of the sociological process by which an individual adopts radical views, joins an extremist organization, and engage in violence; and (2) to extend policy recommendations towards the effective sociological measures that should be taken to undermine the process that might culminate in violent extremism.