Analyzing the Bio-cognitive Substrates of Social-Identity Formation in Islamic Extremists

Abstract

A new generation of counter-terrorism scholars have begun to correct the theory-induced blindness of their predecessors. These scholars seek to arm CT experts with predictive social-identity models that are serviceable to enclave-level efforts to counter Islamic radicalisation in Europe. Dina Al Raffie, for example, builds upon Fathali Moghaddam’s “staircase to terrorism” model to reveal the social-identity dynamics in non-violent forms of Islamic discourse that specifically foster extremist conditions within European Muslim enclaves. Raffie has demonstrated that “it is the perceptions of individuals, and what shapes them, that provide the foundations for violent radicalisation.” Raffie insists that “radicalisation can be understood as a process of first fostering an increase in religious awareness and then manipulating this awareness for political ends.” Religious awareness within Muslim enclaves begins at the “ground floor” of the local Islamic community. Raffie has challenged CT scholars to augment her investigations of the ground-floor cultural mechanisms that prime their Muslim populations for recruitment by likes of Dr. Baghdad. Mindful of Raffie’s focus on perceptual influencers and cognitive framers that function as extremist primers, I will lay out an analytical model for investigating how European Islamic master-narratives activate, structure, and motivate a distinctly Muslim social identity and condition communal members for extremist recruitment. Where Raffie has been examining the cultural “ground floor” in which extremist priming takes place, I will be examining its basement, the bio-cognitive substrates of identity-formation in Islamic masternarratives.