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Purpose – The chapter explores the UK’s evolving counter-radicalization program – Prevent – and its increasing alignment with a broader Counter Extremism agenda, which it argues exemplifies not merely a concern with countering radicalization or terrorism, but a broader “civic turn” toward a narrow and restrictive conception of integration and citizenship.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on a range of studies of Prevent and the governance of British Muslims, to examine the traces and impact of Prevent and Counter Extremism agendas across a range of governance domains, including urban governance, schooling, and public sector institutions and integration.

Findings – Prevent has undergone substantial conceptual and operational expansion that has meant that its purpose and efficacy as a counter terrorism strategy has become ambivalent. Its evolution into an element of a broader integration policy places limits on the terms of particularly Muslims’ citizenship. It also brings it into tension with other public sector duties and legal norms.

Originality/Value – The chapter extends existing studies of the permeation of security concerns across governance and public life, and the securitization of citizenship, to examine how these have been expressed in particular domains of governance and their implications for the inclusion and accommodation of Muslims. It also offers a caveat to the tendency in much of the literature to see such securitization as exemplifying a highly cohesive governing project.

Purpose – This chapter examines how those who study issues related to radicalization and counter-radicalization have recently drawn from the experiences of former extremists to inform our understanding of complex issues in terrorism and extremism studies.

Approach – The authors synthesize the empirical research on radicalization and counter-radicalization that incorporates formers in the research designs. In doing so, the authors trace these research trends as they unfold throughout the life-course: (1) extremist precursors; (2) radicalization toward extremist violence; (3) leaving violent extremism; and (4) combating violent extremism.

Findings – While formers have informed our understanding of an array of issues related to radicalization and counter-radicalization, empirical research in this space is in its infancy and requires ongoing analyses.

Value – This chapter provides researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with an in-depth account of how formers have informed radicalization and counter-radicalization research in recent years as well as an overview of some of the key gaps in the empirical literature.

This paper aims to examine whether the money laundering/terrorist financing (ML/TF) model excludes important aspects of terrorist resourcing and whether the terrorist resourcing model (TRM) provides a more comprehensive framework for analysis.

Research consisted of case studies of resourcing activities of four listed terrorist organizations between 2001 and 2015: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Hamas, a grouping of Al Qaeda-inspired individuals and entities under the heading “Al Qaeda inspired” and Hezbollah.

The most prevalent resourcing actors observed were non-profit organizations/associations, and the most prevalent form of resourcing was fundraising that targeted individual cash donations of small amounts. Funds were pooled, often passed through layers of charitable organizations and transmitted through chartered banks. The TRM is indeed found to provide a more comprehensive framework for identifying sources of resourcing and points of intervention. However, it does not in itself recommend effective means of response but it has implications for counter-resourcing strategies because it identifies resourcing actors and nodes where counter-resourcing could occur.

This paper advances the state of knowledge of terrorist resourcing activities in Canada and about the value of doing so through the analytical lens of the TRM as opposed to the predominant ML/TF model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the case of the Aspiration, Communication and Transformation campaign conducted by journalism students to counter extremism as a form of experiential learning in Lebanese higher educational context. It documents the views and experiences of students in a service learning (SL) project for redressing a timely social issue.

This study employed a descriptive case study methodology involving a portraiture naturalistic approach for data gathering. It conducted semi-structured interviews with three participating students to learn from their experiences in countering extremism. This was complemented by two interviews with the instructor in charge of the project and an external stakeholder.

Results emphasized the combination of applying the broadcast technical skills of the course to countering extremism in a volatile political context.

The findings are only a mild reflection of countering extremism through SL since it focused on a single case study involving a limited number of participants. However, the study offered common sense conclusions having broader applicability.

This topic is of particular importance to higher educational institutions and communities working on countering extremism through education, particularly in contexts rife with violence and ideological indoctrination.

This paper has social implications on promoting awareness about extremism as a challenging social debacle. It presents workable recommendations for fostering a stronger relationship between higher education institutions and communities to defy extremism. It shows the importance of connecting curricula to community needs.

This paper fills a gap in the literature pertaining to the role of higher education institutions in countering extremism through SL in Lebanon and the MENA region.

The 2006 General Assembly adoption of the United Nations (UN) Global Counter-terrorism strategy marked the first time all member states ratified a collective counter-terrorism (CT) agenda. Building on the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, the strategy incorporated Amartya Sen's capability-based approach to development. This promised human-oriented and holistic methods for countering terrorism and violent extremism, in contrast to the post-2001 ‘hard security’ context of the United States–led Global War on Terror (GWOT). Although the first pillar of the strategy emphasised human rights and social progress over isolated economic growth, poverty, violence and retrogression in conflict zones since 2006 have led to the deaths of millions. Combined with resource scarcity and environmental devastation, insurgency-related conflicts have resulted in 70 million people displaced worldwide in 2019, while the politically violent phenomena of extreme right-wing nationalism and neo-jihadism remain prevalent. Reflecting on the social and economic outcomes of the GWOT, this chapter evaluates development-related discourses and activity in UN-led initiatives to counter and prevent violent extremism and terrorism. In doing so, it accounts for the impacts of UN CT measures on contemporary patterns ‘in phenomena described in policy arenas as ‘violent extremism’ and ‘terrorism’, including ‘neo-jihadism’ and right-wing extremism, in Global North and Global South contexts.

Purpose – To examine how John Stuart Mill’s harm principle can guide debates surrounding definitions of radicalization, extremism, and deradicalization.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter begins by surveying definitional debates in terrorism studies according to three identified binaries: (1) cognitive versus behavioral radicalization; (2) violent extremism versus non-violent extremism; and (3) deradicalization versus disengagement. The author then interprets Mill’s harm principle and assesses which interpretation researchers and policy-makers should favor.

Findings – Applying the harm principle suggests that researchers and policy-makers should prefer behavioral over cognitive radicalization, violent over non-violent extremism, and disengagement over deradicalization. This is because government intervention in people’s lives can be justified to prevent direct risks of harm, but not to change beliefs that diverge from mainstream society.

Originality/Value – This chapter extends previous work that applied the harm principle to coercive preventive measures in counter-terrorism. It makes an original contribution by applying the principle to definitional debates surrounding radicalization and counter-radicalization. The harm principle provides researchers and policy-makers with a compass to navigate these debates. It offers an analytical method for resolving conceptual confusion.