Is strong religiosity a gateway to terrorism? Interview with Prof Greg Barton
Tackling Hate (www.tacklinghate.org) is a project that aims at raising awareness about hate and extremism, including hate crime, hate speech, hate incidents, hateful extremism, and violent extremism. Tackling Hate aims to promote a shared culture about hate and extremism prevention, aligned with research evidence and international best practice in data collection methods, approaches and tools. The "Difficult Conversations" series is a key feature of Tackling Hate. It wants to address the difficult conversations that often underpin hateful and extremist worldviews, and that exacerbate conflict and inter-group hostility. We aim to provide an alternative to the polarizing and extreme voices that monopolise the discussion about contentious social issues. In this video, we discuss whether strong religiosity should be seen as a barrier or as a gateway to terrorism. Does strong religious belief serve as barrier or a gateway to terrorism? Most scholars in terrorism studies would suggest that religious knowledge tends to form a barrier to terrorist recruitment. However, scholars in social-psychology studies have long identified a significant positive association between certain forms of religiosity and negative views, prejudice and hate to out-groups, which are among the predictors of support for violence against out-groups. We discuss these questions with Greg Barton, Professor of Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University. Greg has been active for the past thirty years in inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong general interest in comparative international politics. He has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam.
Tackling Hate (www.tacklinghate.org) is a project that aims at raising awareness about hate and extremism, including hate crime, hate speech, hate incidents, hateful extremism, and violent extremism. Tackling Hate aims to promote a shared culture about hate and extremism prevention, aligned with research evidence and international best practice in data collection methods, approaches and tools. The "Difficult Conversations" series is a key feature of Tackling Hate. It wants to address the difficult conversations that often underpin hateful and extremist worldviews, and that exacerbate conflict and inter-group hostility. We aim to provide an alternative to the polarizing and extreme voices that monopolise the discussion about contentious social issues. In this video, we discuss whether strong religiosity should be seen as a barrier or as a gateway to terrorism. Does strong religious belief serve as barrier or a gateway to terrorism? Most scholars in terrorism studies would suggest that religious knowledge tends to form a barrier to terrorist recruitment. However, scholars in social-psychology studies have long identified a significant positive association between certain forms of religiosity and negative views, prejudice and hate to out-groups, which are among the predictors of support for violence against out-groups. We discuss these questions with Greg Barton, Professor of Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University. Greg has been active for the past thirty years in inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong general interest in comparative international politics. He has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam.