Gender, Religion, Extremism: Finding Women in Anti-Radicalization [Hardcover]

Anti-radicalization efforts are a significant part of the War on Terror and influence many parts of our lives. This book examines five countries to demonstrate how the design, implementation, and evaluation of preventing and countering violent extremism programs rely on limited ideas of religion, security, and gender. The programs implicitly and explicitly depend on stereotypes about men and women, and in turn, these biases negatively influence the success of these programs and the rights of citizens. Ultimately, the book proposes an alternative way of implementing anti-radicalization efforts that are rooted in a feminist peace--one that is transformative, inclusive, and sustainable.Radicalization, and the terrorism that is frequently linked to it, have been subject to much study and governmental intervention. Nevertheless, the processes that lead to radicalization remain thinly conceptualized although governments and their agencies worldwide have invested heavily in counter and de-radicalization programs. There are at least 34 anti-radicalization programs worldwide, most of which were initiated post-2001, with a focus on Muslims and Muslim communities. These policies and programs have led to interventions in the daily lives of thousands, often in ways that push the boundaries of human rights law and norms. However, the effectiveness of these programs is unclear.This book compares anti-radicalization programs that target Islamic extremism in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Pakistan. It looks particularly at the ways in which the program tactics differ depending on the gender of the target, arguing that the gendered way in which anti-radicalization is pursued helps to reveal its limitations. These programs fail to take into account how masculinity and femininity inform the radicalization process. Moreover, the programs tend to link men's radicalization to excessive, but flawed, masculinity, and women's radicalization to passivity, which consequenl3-