Governments should turn to academics for advice on radicalization, religion and security
A single office of responsibility in the government could act as a conduit for informing and shaping policy and legislation relating to religion and religious issues, including those linked to security and violence. An immediate priority for the office should be to inform efforts to address radicalization, Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice. This wouldn’t carry any extra cost if one of the government’s chief scientific advisors was asked to undertake this work, tapping into the wealth of expertise addressing these issues inside the nation’s universities.
Opinion-formers, including those in the press, must also resist the simplistic temptation to describe religion as the motive for acts of violence. In the same way, “Third World” insurgents during the cold war, such as those in North Vietnam, were too easily defined by the communist ideology they embraced.
How to dispel alienation
But closer attention needs to be paid to the relationship between faith and alienation. There is a wealth of research — including historian Kate Cooper’s work into the radicalization of early Christian martyrs over 1,500 years ago — that can help us understand how alienation, especially of young people, leads to a sense of hopelessness that translates all too readily into violent resolve.
We must galvanize support for the public sector, faith groups and charities to promote engagement between polarized communities. But this is not a simple matter of issuing a commandment from on-high that: “thou shalt engage in mutually informative dialogue and develop trustful relationships.”
Evidence and experience, for instance from Northern Ireland, shows how different the certainties of macro-political strategies can be from micro-realities, leading to communities being filled with mistrust and disillusionment. Interventions tailored to dispel alienation and build trust must reflect local circumstances, with a strong emphasis on “bottom-up” rather than “top-down” solutions.
There are some powerful examples of how the arts can operate to communicate religious difference in our complex, multicultural society, but common artistic endeavor can also help heal divisions. For example, the U.K.-based Berakah Choir works to transcend barriers of faith and culture through collaborative activities, allowing the individual voice to be heard working in harmony with others to build a common humanity. There is much that could be achieved at a low cost to harness the arts to counter alienation.
Draw on academics as an asset
Western governments are deploying a range of strategies and tactics to deal with the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State. David Cameron is recruiting more spies, and parliament is discussing profound changes to the way in which digital intelligence is collected.
But we must not ignore the invaluable supply of knowledge and insight available from our men and women in academia. Research can provide evidence-based context to contemporary challenges, including an enlightened understanding of the place of religion and faith in a security context.
We can stop mistakes being made in terms of misguided policies and knee-jerk reactions. And researchers can help the design and deployment of interventions that make a real difference, focusing limited resources effectively.
It has been said that the scholars working in Bletchley Park saved countless lives and took one or more years off the duration of World War II. Let us hope that politicians, policy-makers and the press are enlightened enough to make full use of the contribution that university researchers can make to today’s security challenges.
Tristram Riley-Smith is Associate Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy; Director of Research, Department of Politics & International Studies, University of Cambridge. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivative).
