This book seeks to investigate not only the causes of radicalization but also how radicalization has unfolded since 2009 based on an exhaustive review of the relevant literature and two stints of fieldwork in Bangladesh involving 71 in depth interviews of highly credentialed individuals. This book looks at both local and global factors that have served to provoke young Bangladeshis, many of whom are from relatively well-educated backgrounds, to become religiously belligerent and eventually to turn into terrorists. Ideology, it is argued, plays a pivotal role in the radicalization process, and justifies violence. Most importantly, ideology proffers solutions to the micro and macrocauses of commonly identifiable youth disaffection. This book mainly focuses on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda's exploitation of religious beliefs and their construction of a mobilizing, apocalyptic narrative that strikes a chord with the young, middle-class Muslims. Both organizations target them for recruitment. The book ends by proffering what is called a 'Pyramid Root Cause model,' which attempts to tie all the causative variables of radicalization into a connected explanation of what has been happening in Bangladesh over the last decade. This book is of interest to scholars of political Islam, international politics, and security studies, including terrorism and the politics of South Asia.

This book seeks to investigate not only the causes of radicalization but also how radicalization has unfolded since 2009 based on an exhaustive review of the relevant literature and two stints of fieldwork in Bangladesh involving 71 in depth interviews of highly credentialed individuals. This book looks at both local and global factors that have served to provoke young Bangladeshis, many of whom are from relatively well-educated backgrounds, to become religiously belligerent and eventually to turn into terrorists. Ideology, it is argued, plays a pivotal role in the radicalization process, and justifies violence. Most importantly, ideology proffers solutions to the micro and macrocauses of commonly identifiable youth disaffection. This book mainly focuses on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda's exploitation of religious beliefs and their construction of a mobilizing, apocalyptic narrative that strikes a chord with the young, middle-class Muslims. Both organizations target them for recruitment. The book ends by proffering what is called a 'Pyramid Root Cause model,' which attempts to tie all the causative variables of radicalization into a connected explanation of what has been happening in Bangladesh over the last decade. This book is of interest to scholars of political Islam, international politics, and security studies, including terrorism and the politics of South Asia.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the multifaceted dimensions of violent extremist groups in South Asia, attending especially to the relationships between the local and regional forces influencing their emergence and activities. In addition, research in the book shows how political, security-sensitive events and processes are framed, and the factors responsible for such framing. Similarly, it discusses prevalent discourses on anti-violent extremism policy and the on-the-ground militarized preventive/reactive interventions they guide, which are inspired by ideologies that increasingly reflect controversial understandings of the experiences of people within conditions of state fragility. In doing so, the book balances attention to local conditions that frame the rise and fall, or persistency, of incidences of violent extremism. The systems-based ecological framing of issues in the book is influenced by a concern for the broader questions of securitization, global governance, poverty, (under)development, and armed conflicts in South Asia.