Radicalization

This valuable sociological study unpicks commonly accepted conceptualisations of radicalisation and questions the premises of models, theories and ideas currently in vogue which focus on vulnerability, isolation, brainwashing, grooming, religious zealotry, political and religious fundamentalisms, clashes of civilisations, and responses to foreign policies, offered by a range of disparate commentators, including Chomsky, Giddens, Waltzer, Huntingdon, and Roy. The author argues against radicalisation replicating linear pathways, noting complex experiences centred around competing tensions rather than stages of progression. Here, radicalisation becomes an umbrella term encompassing a divergent but not unique range of trajectories where a commonality is frequently religious illiteracy. McDonald views radicalisation as encompassing ‘a social process, full of exchanges, communications and shared emotions’ (p. 11).