What Do We Know about the Islamic Radicalism: A Meta-analysis of Academic Publications

• In Event: 1166 - Cross-National Sociology

Abstract

The relationship between Islam and Terrorism is highly represented in the media and political debates. While the Islamic radicalism, is considered to be one of the most significant sources of terrorism in post-cold war era, sociologists and scholars of religion do not seem to be so interested in studying this phenomenon. In this article, we tried to bring together all the academic publications about Islamic radicalism to answer this question: what do we know so far about this social phenomenon. We did a meta-analysis and found interesting findings. It seems that scholars are more interested in studying terrorism, as an outcome, than they are in studying the Islamic radicalism itself. Most of the publications are coming out of the Western research institutions. While only one percent of the terrorist attacks have taken place in the West, scholars tend to study Muslims in diasporas, living in the North America and Europe, more than Muslims of the Islamic countries. It is maybe partly because of the lack of reliable data on people living in underdevelopment Muslim countries. More than four-fifths of these articles are qualitative, mostly case studies. We also found five general themes that most of the articles can be categorized into: homegrown Islamic radicalism in the western countries, post-Islamism, social media, economic deprivation, and education and social mobility. We think that although these academic works are providing valuable information for distinctive examples of the phenomenon, they are unable to be used for making a generalizable theory, except for post-Islamism theory which can serve as a revised version of secularization theory for the Islamic World.

Author

• Peyman Hekmatpour, University of Oklahoma