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Religion should not be used to understand the motivations of terrorists, a leading researcher on radicalisation warned today.

New research by Dr Matthew Francis, a Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University's Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, shows that using religious explanations is a problematic way to search for answers following terrorist attacks.

He says the role that religion has played in recent acts of terror can often be overstated.

Dr Francis, who edits the online portal RadicalisationResearch.org, explained: "The policy of focusing on a religious explanation has led to the stigmatizing of the Muslim community.

"Islamic identity and practice have become seen as potential indicators of risk due to their association with the identity and practice of the terrorists.

"Inevitably, this has led to Muslims being seen as a 'suspect' community."

Dr Francis added: "While governments have been keen to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' Islam, this in itself is unhelpful and religion is still being used as the main headline in most explanations.

"So Islam and terrorism are often confused and it is assumed that people become terrorists because of their religious beliefs.

Dr Francis stressed: "The Qur'an is not only the Holy book of some terrorists, but also of 1.6 billion people worldwide, most of them peaceful."

He continued: "Rather than calling a group 'extremist' and therefore 'bad', or 'Salafist' and therefore 'evil', we need to look at the values of the groups themselves.

"When we start to examine the values of terrorist groups, we can get a better idea of what is unique about them and what actually motivates them.

"By examining the motivations of individual groups, we avoid making assumptions about them simply because they share a common religion with others."

Dr Francis explained: "Focusing on religion, or 'extremism', can actually be unhelpful, and hinder our ability to predict future attacks."

He also challenged the assumption that religious belief is the sole recruitment engine for extremist groups, such as Islamic State.

He said: "There is a long history of foreign fighters that predates the current Islamist-dominated agenda by decades.

"Some research comparing fighters and their causes from a number of different conflicts has shown how these recruiters create a sense of an existential threat to a wider community variously bound by ethnicity or ideology."

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Notes:

The full research is available on open access for free at:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2014.976625#.VND92i6l53M

Published at: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass-enterprise-centre/stories/2512