Mehmet Kart: The project "Distance" deals with processes of approach towards and distancing from Islamist structures, groups, and attitudes. The focus is primarily on adolescents and young adults. The project wants to find out whether there is a tipping point in the distancing process - a point at which a turning away from Islamist structures can be identified.
Mehmet Kart: There is already a great deal of research and scientific debate on the causes and genesis of radicalization. Our focus, however, is on behavioral and cognitive distancing. For the most part, these distancing processes are still considered a black box. We would like to break this up. To this end, we first ask ourselves to what extent distancing can be identified at all, whether it follows certain processes or patterns, and what role societal structures, social institutions, or the family environment play in it.
Mehmet Kart: First and foremost, we want to interview young people who are in the process of distancing themselves in a structural context, i.e., who are currently receiving counseling. We want to find out which social structures and socialization instances play a role in their distancing in addition to the individual motives. We mainly focus on families, teachers and counselors. At the same time, we are also interested in the experiences and perceptions of experts from security authorities and social work counseling centers.
Mehmet Kart: A key objective of our research is to figure out ways of detecting as early as possible that children and young people are showing tendencies toward Islamist attitudes. With our project, we would like to develop an understanding of which instruments could prove helpful in prevention and intervention to encourage young people to distance themselves from Islamism. To this end, we will monitor two prevention projects over the course of the entire project. One of them, the certification program of an association in Cologne, focuses on primary prevention and aims to strengthen students' and young people's understanding of democracy in general, since Islamism is always associated with anti-democratic attitudes. The second project focuses on secondary prevention and deals with advanced training for teachers.
Mehmet Kart: From initial interviews with experts, we have gathered that teachers are sometimes very unconfident about their own observations. We have heard of examples in which the need for counseling has been reported because a girl in the class had suddenly started wearing a headscarf or a young man had grown a beard. This shows us that teachers need to be trained and empowered in their ability to recognize radicalization tendencies. This is exactly where we begin, and we ask ourselves how this training can be realized and perhaps also embedded in school structures in the long term.
More about the project Distance