Violence Politics and Religion

<p>This book offers a general theory of violent radicalization and uses case studies from a variety of different countries and groups to illustrate this.</p><p>The first and fundamental objective of the book is to provide an explanatory framework to understand phenomena related to violent radicalization deradicalization the prevention of radicalization and to political violence; in particular that inspired by religion. The second objective follows from the first. Understanding violent radicalization of religious inspiration implies delving into two key concepts: violent radicalization and religion. This second objective is indeed elusive since on the one hand many liberal democracies have undergone processes of secularization or at least have lost interest in examining religion in public debates. Therefore rigorously exploring social problems where religion seems to be involved in one way or another is complicated. Moreover the notion of violent radicalization in turn is highly contested and confused with other ideas such as polarization extremism terrorism or nonviolent radicalization. Finally the book aims to bring theory into dialogue with empirical phenomena and to test it against concrete cases related to violent radicalization and its prevention on the one hand and religion on the other. The book’s originality comes from both its innovative methodological approach and its breadth with cases from several countries (Spain the United States Ireland India Israel Russia and Colombia) and different ideological groups (revolutionary communists nationalist movements Jihadist groups white and black supremacists).</p><p>This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence radicalization sociology and international relations in general.</p>