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Summary. In the last 15 years, the threat of Muslim violent extremists emerging within Western countries has grown. Terrorist organizations based in the Middle East are recruiting Muslims in the United States and Europe via social media. Yet we know little about the factors that would drive Muslim immigrants in a Western country to heed this call and become radicalized, even at the cost of their own lives. Research into the psychology of terrorism suggests that a person's cultural identity plays a key role in radicalization, so we surveyed 198 Muslims in the United States about their cultural identities and attitudes toward extremism. We found that immigrants who identify with neither their heritage culture nor the culture they are living in feel marginalized and insignificant. Experiences of discrimination make the situation worse and lead to greater support for radicalism, which promises a sense of meaning and life purpose. Such insights could be of use to policymakers engaged in efforts against violent extremism, including terrorism.
There is a critical need for academics and policy-makers to better understand the puzzle of how and why some people turn to violent extremism. Violent extremism is not limited to actions within any single faith community. It is a broad term that applies to threats emanating from a range of organizations and movements that use violence to pursue ideological, social or political goals. White supremacist movements, anarchist militias, eco-terrorists, and Muslim militants associated with terrorist organizations such as Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) and al-Qaeda all fall in this category.
In response to violent transnational groups' increased recruitment of Muslim immigrants in Western countries, we researched factors that could contribute to the risk of radicalization among such immigrants, a potentially vulnerable demographic. Recent events make clear that this issue is becoming increasingly important both within and outside of the United States. It is estimated that more than 5,000 recruits from Europe and the United States have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for groups such as ISIS, and some return to their countries radicalized and equipped to carry out attacks on or near their own soil.1-3 Among these, apparently, was Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who led the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded...