Community engagement ‘completes the puzzle’: the significance and meaning of community engagement to officers
Research on community engagement largely focuses on the potential benefits of such activities for police services, policing as an industry, and the larger community, such as reduced disorder and anti-social behavior as well as increased confidence and trust in police. Absent from this conversation, ...
Root of Religious Extremist Thought and SinoArab Cooperation on Deradicalization
Islam is a religion that advocates peace and abides by “the doctrine of balance”. However, religious extremism is a “tumor” for the development of Islam, and leads to an alienation of Islam. After the 9/11 attacks, Islamic extremism reappeared, mainly reflected in: 1) the teachings of Islam ...
Root of Religious Extremist Thought and SinoArab Cooperation on Deradicalization
Islam is a religion that advocates peace and abides by “the doctrine of balance”. However, religious extremism is a “tumor” for the development of Islam, and leads to an alienation of Islam. After the 9/11 attacks, Islamic extremism reappeared, mainly reflected in: 1) the teachings of Islam ...
Root of Religious Extremist Thought and SinoArab Cooperation on Deradicalization
Islam is a religion that advocates peace and abides by “the doctrine of balance”. However, religious extremism is a “tumor” for the development of Islam, and leads to an alienation of Islam. After the 9/11 attacks, Islamic extremism reappeared, mainly reflected in: 1) the teachings of Islam ...
Power, Perception, Group Relationships, and Conflict Dynamics: Loyalist Paramilitary Violence and Its Effects Within the Republic of Ireland During the Troubles, 1969–1998
How can we better understand the rationale and motives for loyalist paramilitary violence towards the Republic of Ireland and its effects? From 1969 to 1998, the Republic of Ireland was often targeted by loyalist paramilitary organisations. These armed groups sought to maintain Northern Ireland’s ...
Mechanisms of online radicalisation: how the internet affects the radicalisation of extremeright lone actor terrorists
How does the internet affect the radicalisation of extreme-right lone actor terrorists? In the absence of an established theoretical model, this article identifies six mechanisms seen as particularly relevant for explaining online radicalisation. Having first reviewed a larger set of relevant lone a...
Measuring the perceptions of senior officers of the South African National Defence Force towards terrorism in South Africa: Implications for security sector reform
Terrorism remains a global security threat. Despite its longevity, many of its aspects remain unstudied. This article assesses the SANDF senior officers’ perceptions on terrorism. This assessment is undertaken with the intention to determine whether there is a need for a security sector reform in ...
The Trojan Horse Affair and the coloniality of ‘British values’
British values were formally defined and institutionalised in the aftermath of the Trojan Horse Affair in 2014 and as part of the UK’s counterterrorism strategy. In this article, I analyse the idea of “British values” as an element of coloniality and ask why the UK’s counterterrorism rhetori...
Women, intelligence and countering terrorism (CT) in Indonesia: Where are the women?
This article explores women’s roles in Indonesian intelligence services in response to the rising trend of women’s involvement in terrorism in Indonesia. It seeks to understand the extent to which gender dynamics influence women’s roles in CT efforts, including detection, surveillance, analysi...
Terror as justice, justice as terror: counterterrorism and anti-Black racism in the United States
How do counterterrorism policies in the United States reproduce anti-Black racism? Research on U.S. domestic counterterrorism post- 9/11 has largely focused on the experiences of Muslim Americans while marginalising both overlapping and separate effects of counterterrorism policy on non-Muslim peopl...
Critical terrorism studies and numbers: engagements, openings, and future research
Recent years have witnessed a growing multi-disciplinary engagement with the importance of quantification across social, political, and economic life. In this article, I seek to build on this work by offering the first sustained exposition of the significance of numbers for critical scholarship on (...
A Counterterrorism Strategy for the Obama Administration
This article assesses the scope and nature of the current terrorist threat to the United States and suggests a strategy to counter it. Al-Qaeda continues to pose the most serious terrorist threat to the U.S. today. If the September 11, 2001 attacks have taught us anything, it is that al-Qaeda is mos...
Drones, witches and other flying objects: the force of fantasy in US counterterrorism
A key concern for critical terrorism studies is the extent to which counterterrorism contributes to the promotion and perpetuation of terrorism. When dealing with either the events leading to 9/11 or the current anti-Muslim movements in Europe, we owe serious attention to the self-generating process...
Accumulation by/for terrorism: the political economy of terrorism financing in Nigeria
The proliferation of terrorist groups in the northwest region has compounded the security crises in Nigeria as security personnel are deployed across the state in an attempt to halt the violent activities of the terrorists and to restore peace to local communities. Existing scholarly literature on t...
Contemporary terrorism challenges and responses in the Indo-Pacific
Since the seminal terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the emergence of the new terrorism has been epitomised by rise of radical Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Through the use of new terrorism techniques and strategies, such movements have been able to transform...
How can the literature inform counter-terrorism practice? Recent advances and remaining challenges
published. Sageman [2014. The stagnation in terrorism research. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(4), 565–580. doi:10.1080/ 09546553.2014.895649] claimed that the field had stagnated, mainly due to lack of data sharing between government departments that have access to valuable information that...
Intelligence and the ‘Heart’ of the terrorist: managing the system of systems to discover and respond to tactics of fear
This article is inspired by the need to fill the gap for context-specific knowledge on the functioning of intelligence systems in Africa. Terrorism threatens people’s well-being, and reliable intelligence is the main defence line of society in terms of decision-making on appropriate immediate resp...
Contemporary terrorism challenges and responses in the Indo-Pacific
Since the seminal terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the emergence of the new terrorism has been epitomised by rise of radical Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Through the use of new terrorism techniques and strategies, such movements have been able to transform...
The Class Conflict Rises When You Turn up the Heat: An Interdisciplinary Examination of the Relationship between Climate Change and LeftWing Terrorist Recruitment
The increasing impacts of climate change have created a global humanitarian crisis. Growing populations, unstable political structures, and competition over scarce resources are generating unprecedented levels of insecurity. Capitalising on these complex situations, terrorist organisations are using...
Assessing the role of the United Nations in countering terrorism in Africa: A case study of the Lake Chad Basin
This study examines the United Nations’ counterterrorism efforts in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), with a focus on the persistent challenges posed by the Boko Haram insurgency. Using a critical analysis approach, the research appraises the legal, policy, and empirical dimensions of the UN’s countert...
Public inquiries on counterterrorism: New Zealand’s experience
In the aftermath of major terrorist attacks, governments create public inquiries to establish the facts of the matter, expose those facts to public scrutiny, find fault, allocate blame, ensure accountability, and restore public confidence. Yet few studies pay close attention to these responses as a ...
From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilization and Counterterrorism
Since the end of the Cold War, international interventions have increasingly been deployed to deal with internal conflict. Liberal peacebuilding has been a guiding concept for many of these interventions, in particular those deployed by the UN. This article argues that liberal peacebuilding is wanin...
Deconstructing Fears of Terrorism: A Comparison between Fear from Domestic and International Terrorist Group
Although research on fears of terrorism has been growing, previous studies approached the topic of the fear of terrorism as a monolithic concept with out considering the various political aspects of terrorism as a crime. The current research employed a novel approach to studying the fear of terro...
Terrorism and Security at the Olympics: Empirical Trends and Evolving Research Agendas
This paper examines the intersections of terrorism, security and the Olympics. An empirical analysis of Olympic-related terrorism in the period 1968–2014 suggests the need to bring state terrorism into the analysis of terrorism at the Olympics. The empirical data presented in this study underline ...
The October 7, 2023 Attacks and the Maturation of Terrorism Studies
The Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 served as a vivid reminder of terrorism’s continued relevance as a form of political violence that can have far-reaching, strategic implications on regional and international security. This article discusses the significance of the most deadly and consequent...
Transcending counterterrorism discourse: metaphors, identity politics and ideological security in Xinjiang
Following the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has referred to Xinjiang as the key battlefield of coun terterrorism in China, and its countering measures as contributions to the international fight against terrorism and religious extremism. This paper transcends the l...
EU counterterrorism, collective securitization, and the internal-external security nexus
The first two decades of EU counterterrorism policy are emblematic of the emergence of an internal-external security nexus. This has occurred through the EU’s collective securitization of terrorism as a transboundary threat that blurs the traditional divide between internal and external security r...
Terrorism denial: 7/10 and the reasons to deny a pogrom
This article examines the phenomenon of terrorism denial, using the 7 October 2023 hamas massacres as a case study. It analyses the motivations and mechanisms behind denial among both terrorist affiliates and bystanders, drawing parallels with the phenomena of Holocaust and genocide denial. The arti...
“Don’t bring race into it”: white ignorance, UK counterterrorism and the impact agenda
Based on interviews with UK civil servants working on counterterrorism, this article examines how racialised and gendered organisational norms govern the production and circulation of knowledge in government departments. It further reflects on their implications for policymakers and academics seekin...
“Because They Are Women in a Man’s World”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Incel Violent Extremists and the Stories They Tell
This study is a critical discourse analysis of the misogynistic narratives shared by three incel violent extremists: Elliot Rodger, Alek Minassian, and Scott Beierle. Utilizing Kate Manne’s give/take model, which suggests a wider cultural pattern of misogyny serving to uphold patriarchy, this stud...
The Threat of (the Lack of) Social Cohesion: Preventing Violent Extremism in Lebanon
The article explores Lebanon’s adoption of the Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) agenda in the second half of the 2010s and the consequences of the agenda’s focus on weak social cohesion. Employing the concepts of problematization and the assemblage perspective on intervention, the article a...
Predicting Novel Terrorism: Media Coverage as Early-Warning System of Novelty in Terror Attacks
ABSTRACT In this article, we argue that the process of predicting terrorist attacks needs to integrate the evolving dynamic of terrorism and we make a case for novelty as crucial feature to encompass terrorism’s changing nature. To predict when and how terrorist organizations will conduct their ne...
Disrupting the “Tamil diaspora-terrorism” paradigm: the political mobilisation of younger generation Tamils in the London diaspora
Following three decades of armed conflict, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. The victory was framed as a successful counterterrorism operation, yet, the GoSL’s military campaign in the Tamil-populated Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lan...
Terrorism, Guerrilla, and the Labeling of Militant Groups
Terrorist organizations are presumed to specialize in the planning and execution of acts of terrorism, but to what extent do these groups actually employ terrorism? The answer can help inform the debate over whether such groups should be labeled terrorist organizations at all. We explore these quest...
Narrative in the Study of Victimological Processes in Terrorism and Political Violence: An Initial Exploration
Narrative is intimately connected to victimization and radicalization. Trouble, the notion that drives narrative, is often coupled with victimization: the experience of suffering intentional harm. This experience can play a turning point in the stories that radicals construct about their own lives a...
Refugees, Perceived Threat & Domestic Terrorism
Refugees’ effect on domestic terrorism is conditioned by host-country social perception (attitude about living next-door to foreigners) and economic competition. These hypotheses are tested cross-nationally from 1995-2014 leveraging data from the World Values Survey. The results show social percep...
Provocation and Attrition Strategies in Transnational Terrorism: The Case of Al-Shabaab
Scholars have identified a range of terrorist strategies that militant groups employ to influence intended audiences, but there is scant empirical validation. Following Kenya’s invasion of Somalia in late 2011, Al-Shabaab executed retaliatory terrorist attacks in Kenya with the strategic aim to co...
Strategic European counterterrorism? An empirical analysis
This paper investigates the extent to which the European Union is strategically engaging against terrorism. It builds on traditional scholarship on strategic thinking and elaborates an analytical framework to empirically assess strategic policy formulation at the supranational level in the case of t...
Counterterrorism, political anxiety and legitimacy in postcolonial India and Egypt
The post 9/11 global proliferation of counterterrorism legislation is increasingly being interpreted as part of a longer story of colonialism. Scholars have shown how expansive counterterrorism can be interpreted not merely as an exceptional state of violence in situations where the rule of law and ...
Tweeting terrorism: Vernacular conceptions of Muslims and terror in the wake of the Manchester Bombing on Twitter
Both vernacular security studies and critical terrorism studies (CTS) offer constructivist analyses of security couched in understandings of security speak. However, neither adequately take account of the ways in which social media presents important opportunities for greater insight into how terror...
From Punishment to Pre-emption: The Changing Nature of Regional Organizations’ Legal Responses to Terrorism, 1990–2010
This article examines regional organizations’ antiterrorism efforts across the globe from 1990 until 2010. Empirically, it provides a comprehensive overview of the legal responses developed. Analytically, it determines long-term patterns and regional differences in these treaties, examines bones o...
Profiling terrorist organizations capable of high impact attacks
Terrorist attacks aim to maximize human fatalities and related damages to instill fear within the community. Such attacks are considered High Impact Attacks (HIAs) and orchestrating them requires considerable organizational setup and resources. This study extends the implementation of the Iterative ...
Countering violent extremism in education: a human rights analysis
Governments around the world have developed a range of policy approaches for countering violent extremism (CVE) in education. In this article we review a United Kingdom (UK) government website offering a library of resources (Educate Against Hate), evaluating the extent to which it is consistent wi...
New Models for Deploying Counterspeech: Measuring Behavioral Change and Sentiment Analysis
The counterterrorism and CVE community has long questioned the effectiveness of counterspeech in countering extremism online. While most evaluation of counterspeech rely on limited reach and engagement metrics, this paper explores two models to better measure behavioral change and sentiment analysis...
Online and Social Media News Usage, Conspiratorial Attitudes and Fear of Terrorism
Are individuals who obtain their news from online news sources or from social media more likely to fear terrorism? If so, why is this the case? Based on the 2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears, this study draws two key conclusions. First, subjects who more frequently use online and social media ne...
Stochastic terrorism: critical reflections on an emerging concep
This paper critically discusses the recent concept, stochastic terror ism – broadly, the idea that influential individuals may demonise target groups or individuals, inspiring unknown actors to take up terroristic violence against them. I collect together different strains of thought on the em...
Political rage: terrorism and the politics of emotion
Recently there has been a renewed interest in the role of emotion as both a site of political knowledge and as a contributing dynamic in the stability or upheaval of political institutions. While it is widely recognised that emotion is directly implicated in terrorist behaviour, terrorism studies ha...
“Doing Peace”: The Role of Ex-Political Prisoners in Violence Prevention Initiatives in Northern Ireland
While a considerable amount of research has been conducted on community-based initiatives aimed at preventing violence, including the role of the ex-political prisoner community in preventative and counterterrorism work, little is known about how the ex-prisoners themselves manage their identity tra...
adicalization ecosystem as a confounder of violent extremism’s drivers
Violent extremism is a destabilizing force; its underlying confound ing influence should be accounted for to understand this phenom enon. Previous studies have identified its potential risk factors or drivers. This study of Sharia-invoking Salafi extremism addresses whether these factors or drive...
Campaigning on Campus: Student Islamic Societies and Counterterrorism
Cooperation in counterterrorism policing increases when communities can be confident that legislation and policy is not implemented in an arbitrary or discriminatory fashion: the ability to challenge executive overstretch, abuse, or misapplication of powers is vital for maintaining procedural justic...
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