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Al Qai'da-Influenced Radicalisation: A Rapid Evidence Assessment Guided by Situational Action Theory

This report presents a rapid evidence assessment of research on the causes of Al-Qaeda influenced radicalisation (AQIR). It not only evaluates and synthesised empirical evidence on AQIR, but sets out a fully articulated model of radicalisation, which describes the concrete mechanisms linking all levels of analysis (individual, social ecological, systematic) implicated in the radicalisation process, which must be considered a major theoretical contribution to the field, and proposes a clear research agenda on that basis. This work was commissioned by the Home Office, Office of Security and Counter Terrorism, and is cited as a source of evidence in the Government’s Revised Prevent Strategy (Cm 8092, June 2011), which is part of the Government’s Counter-terrorism Strategy (CONTEST). Bouhana was asked to brief Home Office policy-makers, as well as the Home Office Prevent Team, and was commissioned to produce a policy user-guide for internal circulation (Bouhana 2011, unpublished). On the basis of this work, Bouhana and three Metropolitan Police officers were, at the time of writing, the only academic researchers granted access by the National Offender Management Service to UK terrorist convicts and the staff responsible for them in high security prisons, for the purpose of study.