Policing Advance Access published online on November 7, 2007
Policing, doi:10.1093/police/pam054
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Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.
Routes into Islamic Terrorism: Dead Ends and Spaghetti Junctions1
* Reader, School of Applied Social Studies, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK E-mail: s.vertigans{at}rgu.ac.uk
Explanations for the development of groups associated with terrorism generally and Islamic terrorism in particular, tend to concentrate upon materialism and forms of brainwashing. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, the uneducated poor and unemployed graduates are most commonly profiled as Muslim terrorists. To address the over-reliance on economic factors and weak personalities, a broader approach is adopted that examines political opportunities, socialising processes and historical and contemporary experiences. It is argued that if Islamic terrorism is to be fully understood and ultimately defeated, then it has to be acknowledged as a multi-faceted phenomenon that is caused by varying combinations of economic, political, social, cultural and psychological factors.