Research on radical Islam in Germany and Europe

Within the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funding program "Societal Causes and Effects of Radical Islam in Germany and Europe", twelve projects are conducting research on the many facets of the phenomenon of radical Islam: What are the reasons for the increase in Islamist tendencies in the German-speaking and European areas? How do Islamist movements affect specific social groups or society as a whole? And what are the implications of these findings for the work of prevention practitioners, politicians and administrators, civil society, security authorities, and the media? Researchers from many different disciplines are investigating these and other questions from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the period from 2020 to 2025.

This website pools the activities and results of the individual research projects. In addition, it provides cross-project findings generated by networking and dialog-based collaboration within the RADIS knowledge transfer project.

Clusters across projects

Being the core of RADIS, the clusters enable researchers to engage in discussion beyond their own individual projects and teams, to learn from each other, and to establish new collaborations. At the same time, these working groups represent important research threads of the research program.

Learn more about the clusters

Current English publications

  • Özvatan, Özgür/Neuhauser, Bastian/Yurdakul, Gökçe (2023): The ‘Arab Clans’ Discourse: Narrating Racialization, Kinship, and Crime in the German Media. In: Social Sciences 12 (2), 104. [Download]
    Project: D:Islam
  • Pickel, Gert/Öztürk, Cemal/Schneider, Verena/Pickel, Susanne/Decker, Oliver (2022): Covid-19-Related Conspiracy Myths, Beliefs, and Democracy-Endangering Consequences. In: Politics and Governance 10 (4), 177-191. [Download]
    Project: RIRA

Call for Papers: In Search of the Radicalized Mainstream

The DeZim-Institute published a call for papers on the topic "In Search of the Radicalized Mainstream - Mobilizing, normalizing and normativizing far-right ideologies from the centre".

The papers will be discussed at an international symposium and workshop on November 9 and 10, 2023 at DeZim-Institute. The event aims to explore, discuss and redefine the relationship between the radicalized margins and the mainstream across different social, regional and historical contexts.

The call is open to researchers in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, history, sociology, cultural studies, and political and communication science, among others. 

Submission is open until 15 July 2023.

Further information on the DeZIM-Website

Overview of the Research Projects

  • The Impact of Radical Islam on Jewish Life in Germany (ArenDt)
  • Religious conflicts of interpretation and outbidding in the global field of Salafism (Power of Interpretation / Deutungsmacht)
  • “German Islam” as an Alternative to Islamism? (D:Islam)
  • Structural Causes of Approaching and Distancing from Islamist Radicalization (Distance / Distanz)
  • Configurations of social and political practices in dealing with radical Islam (KURI)
  • Optimized crisis communication after attacks with Islamist background in Germany (OKAI)
  • Radicalisation and Spaces (RadiRa)
  • From the Margins to the Centre (RaMi)
  • Ressentiment as the affective Basis of Radicalisation (Ressentiment)
  • Radical Islam versus radical Anti-Islam (RIRA)
  • Causes and Effects of radical Islam from the perspective of Islamic theologians (UWIT)
  • Interdependencies of Islamist radicalisation and the societal and political context (Interdependencies / Wechselwirkungen)