Beyond Religion

On December 20, 2024, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi-born man living in Germany, drove into crowds at a Magdeburg Christmas market, killing six people and injuring 323 others. Raised Muslim but now an outspoken critic of Islam (with sympathies for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party), al-Abdulmohsen’s case illustrates the broader and growing prevalence of extremism that defies traditional classification. 

Survey results among international experts underscore a rising concern about the prevalence of hybrid forms of extremism, ranging from conspiracy-fueled violence around COVID-19 to the incel movement and to actors who mix racist, misogynistic and anti-establishment views with personal grievances or trauma. These forms of extremism do not neatly fit the traditional ideological categorizations (“Islamist,” ​“right-wing,” ​“left-wing,” ​“ethnonationalist”) that most ​“preventing and countering violent extremism” (P/​CVE) models have previously relied on. P/​CVE models were dramatically expanded upon, predominantly framed around Islamist extremism. It eventually became clear that the use of rigid, religion-focused categorization not only misdiagnosed threats but also led to ineffective programming, the marginalization of individuals and communities, and hamstrung evaluation models that were unable to highlight faults in the approach.

Many governments eventually course-corrected, adopting wider understandings of the drivers of extremism and developing programming and evaluation systems that embraced the complexity of radicalization pathways.

Read more