The project Reimagining Religion, Security and Social Transformationis part of the broader knowledge agenda of the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA) programme.

As part of the JISRA Knowledge Agenda, this project will provide crucial input to the study of religion and security and to policy and practitioner efforts to address the role of religion in conflict, violence and social transformation processes. Within this project Utrecht University and the University of Groningen focus on the countries Nigeria, Kenya and Indonesia. Principal Investigators (PI's) of the project are Prof. dr. Beatrice de Graaf (UU) and Prof. dr. Erin Wilson (RuG).

The research conducted at Utrecht University aims at bringing religion back into the domain of conflict and political violence research, and does so by introducing a narrative approach. It focuses on the (religious) narratives employed by diverse religious actors related to the phenomenon of violent extremism. This concerns the perpetrators, governmental factions, victim communities and the broader society.Furthermore, The project will concentrate on CVE-processes (Countering Violent Extremism). Itwill identify,  and analyse the strategies utilised by religious leaders for intra and interreligious engagement to navigate the consequences of violent extremism and exclusion in their communities.

The research conducted at the University of Groningen will examine how religious actors approach discussion of the right to FoRB within their own communities (intra-religious), with other religious communities (inter-religious) and with other non-religious actors (extra-religious), including governmental (national and international) and civil society (national and international). In particular, the project focuses on how religious actors navigate the socio-political sensitivities associated with concepts, practices, and discourses such as “religion”, "belief", "freedom", and “human rights” in cross-cultural contexts. The researchers from both universities are working together, synthesizing the results into a report.

The Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA) is a partnership of 50 civil society organisations based in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria and Uganda (with supporting lobby and advocacy in Europe and the USA). Under the policy framework Power of Voices of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, JISRA will implement a 5-year programme (2021-2025) to further peaceful and just societies where all enjoy Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB).

The JISRA consortium consists of Mensen met een Missie (lead organisation of the consortium), Search for Common Ground, Tearfund NL/UK and Faith to Action Network. For more information on the JISRA project, see the websites of the consortium partners. Tearfund, Mensen met een Missie, Search for Common Ground, Faith to Action Network.

• Myrthe van Groningen MA
• dr. Simon Polinder

• Prof. dr. Erin Wilson
• dr. Eva Krah

One day in 2012, ten young men disappeared from the streets in Delft, where they usually hung out; they had left for Syria. In the course of 2013, five of them lost their lives, in the ‘blessed land’ where, as martyrs, they hoped to reach the real paradise.

In Radical Redemption, Beatrice de Graaf looks beyond acts of terrorism and their consequences and explores what drove these young men and others like them to become jihadists and put their lives and those of others in jeopardy. To discover what terrorists believe and how that belief brings them to commit their deeds, she recorded the life stories of almost thirty convicted terrorists. Most were Dutch detainees convicted for jihadist terrorism, but she also includes accounts by non-Western terrorists (Indonesian, Syrian and Pakistani jihadists and Boko Haram members in Cameroon) and Western right-wing extremists. Their stories are all unique, but there is one common denominator: a desire for greater sense and meaning in lives that are often lacking in prospects and fulfilment.

Jihadist terrorism is often dismissed as a problem of ‘Islam’ or as a direct consequence of discrimination or exclusion. Others conclude even more simplistically that ‘all terrorists are mentally disturbed’. De Graaf argues, however, that terrorism cannot only be explained by sociological or psychological processes. It is a broad narrative of individuals looking for an extreme, radical meaning in their lives. For jihadists and other religious fundamentalists, that search for meaning takes the form of divine revelation, prophecy, judgment or a final battle. But it should not be seen only from the perspective of the texts describing these events. None of the individuals interviewed for Radical Redemption became terrorists because they had first read the Koran (or the writings of Chairman Mao or Malcolm X). They did, however, all speak of a sense of injustice suffered by themselves and those around them, and of falling short in some way. It was their own responsibility to do something about that injustice, and their own fault if they stayed at home and did nothing. They had all experienced a turning point when they chose violence as a way to give meaning to their lives. This led De Graaf to conclude that the key to understanding the faith and the violence of the terrorist is not their ideology or theology, but their lived and believed praxis. Terrorists develop their own radical and dynamic view of history: they see life as a struggle between good and evil, with themselves at the centre.

While De Graaf encountered many motives for embarking on a radical career (addiction, domestic violence, unemployment, crime, emotional solidarity with minority groups), what concerns her is that these convicted terrorists chose to cast their lives in the mould of a narrative of ‘radical redemption’. Within that narrative, all the entanglements and emotions in their lives and in the world found a place and a meaning and became a real part of their identity.

That these compelling and often harrowing life stories usually end in disillusionment does not seem to have lessened their appeal, particularly to disaffected young people. De Graaf ends by calling for more research to explore ways of reducing that appeal and different and better alternatives for those susceptible to it to find meaning and fulfilment in their lives. One crucial requirement is that religious or ideological communities distance themselves clearly from individuals who feel that violence is the way to achieve redemption. But there is also a task for wider society. Terrorism is a parasitical narrative that feeds on the fears of its potential victims. That is particularly effective in a Western culture that glorifies eternal youth and a long life. De Graaf ends the book with a number of unanswered questions for us, as society, to answer: Within a culture that collectively denies death, how can we put that fear of the terrorist’s search for radical redemption in proportion? And what can we offer as an alternative narrative to young people in search of meaning in their lives?

• Annelotte Janse MA
• Myrthe van Groningen MA

In this ERC-funded project, Prof. Beatrice de Graaf (Principal Investigator) and an international team of historians examine the formation of a European security culture as the sum of mutually shared visions on ‘enemies of the states’, ‘vital interests’, and corresponding practices between 1815 and 1914. The project compares seven different security regimes in which Europe engaged globally, stretching across the political and commercial domain, affecting urban and maritime environments, and reaching around the world to the Ottoman Empire and China. These highly dynamic regimes were dictated both by threats (anarchists, pirates, smugglers, colonial rebels) and interests (political, moral, economic, maritime, colonial). Mobilising increasing numbers of professional 'agents' from various quarters – including police, judicial authorities and armed forces – they evolved from military interventions into police and judicial regimes and ultimately contributed to the creation of a veritable European security culture. Uncovering and introducing new historical sources, the project thus pioneers a new multidisciplinary approach to the combined history of international relations and internal policy, aiming to ‘historicise security’. 

Project website: www.uu.nl/securing-europe 

• dr. Ozan Ozavci
• dr. Joep Schenk
• dr. Erik de Lange
• Myrthe van Groningen MA

Ter Info is a mobile website that aims to increase the social resilience to terrorism in primary and secondary education. The platform helps teachers to discuss terrorism with various age groups in a clear, factual, responsible and connecting way. Ter Info offers concise and balanced information and the required pedagogical handles to talk about terrorism on a group level. The offered material, developed by experts in dialogue with education professionals, is aimed at students of various backgrounds and age groups. The following becomes clear by means of current articles: what happened, how do we explain that, and what does it mean for the students themselves?

This platform involves students and lecturers from, among other fields, Pedagogy, History and Information Sciences, with assistance from the UU Science Education Hub and in collaboration with schools, education boards and other social actors in Utrecht.

• Myrthe van Groningen MA
• Maxine Herinx MA
• Mila Bammens MSc

Since its inception, the European integration project has been contested. This interdisciplinary research project analyzes the different blueprints for Europe that were present in the period 1930-1963, thereby aiming to show why some blueprints set their stamps on the institutional start-up of European integration, while other blueprints were rejected.  Going beyond a state-centric analysis in order to achieve this, the research project focuses on transnational political, clerical and economic networks. By including a wider range of actors, the project expands the existing historiography of the EU’s “early” integration. Moreover, such a new understanding of the diversity of ideas of “what is Europe” in these early years of European integration may help to elucidate the driving forces and institutional dynamics in today’s EU.

• prof. dr. Peter Ben Smit
• Clemens van den Berg MSc
• dr. Trineke Palm
• dr. Jorrit Steehouder
• Myrthe van Groningen MA

• Mathieu Segers