Western Jihadism Research Project

As part of the Research on Western Jihadism the Institute’s partners and researchers have compiled a database comprising approximately one thousand individuals involved with Jihadi terrorism in Western democracies between 1999 and 2009 and a second database describing all the successful, failed, and foiled conspiracies carried out by Jihadi groups in Western Europe, Australia, and North America in the period. The research study provides a comprehensive and comparative assessment of the relative importance of social alienation, kinship, political ideology, and extremist religion as the sources for “home-grown” volunteerism to terrorist acts and to Jihad outside Western countries.

The research will help policy-makers estimate with greater certainty the risk associated with the emergence of a domestic counter-culture linked by religious and ideational affinities to Al Qaeda and the global Jihadi movement. It will be disseminated through private briefings and discussion fora amongst senior policy and security chiefs across Europe and the US.