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23 Feb
20:00
Studium Generale | Lecture

Radicalisation in the Middle East

Unfortunately, Shiraz Maher is ill. He cant' give the lecture. We found replacement in the person of Maurits Berger, Professor of Islam in the West at Leiden University and senior research associate at the Clingendael Institute for International Relations.


Much of the debate about the mindset of jihadists in the Middle East has been overshadowed by those who join the Islamic State, resulting in the characterization of all participants in the conflict as nihilistic barbarians. 
This is certainly true of some of them – but not all. 

Shiraz Maher will paint a more subtle and granular picture of just who is fighting in Syria and Iraq, and why they are fighting. Which Islamic political movements are playing a role? Why is there so much violence? Which groups are fighting? Who are these people? What are they doing out there? And, more importantly, what motivated them to go? 

Exploring these questions allows us to think more smartly about how we stem the flow of foreign fighters, undermine the narrative that attracts them in the first place, and ultimately reintegrate some of them back into society.
 

About the lecturer

Prof. Maurits Berger, lawyer and Arabist. He holds the chair of Islam in the West at the Institute for Religious Studies at Leiden University, and is a senior research associate with the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague. 

A portrait of Shiraz Mahrer

Post-Debate, organized in collaboration with Esa Concordantia.

The debate will discuss the lecture by Professor Maher and the implications of Radicalization in the Middle East in Europe, its causes and its effects.

Moderator: Nora J. Ragab. 
Panel: Assem Dandashly, Birsen Erdogan, Shiraz Maher.

Nora J. Ragab is PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT/MGSoG and has conducted studies on the Syrian and Tunisian diaspora in Germany, looking among other things on how the Arab Spring influenced the diaspora consciousness.

Assem Dandashly is a Lecturer in European Public Policy at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Maastricht University. Dr. Dandashly holds a PhD in Political Science (2012) from the University of Victoria, BC Canada. He has published several papers on Tunisia and EU-Tunisian relations after the Arab Spring.

Birsen Erdogan is a lecturer in Maastricht University. She teaches and coordinates courses of International Relations, International Security and Conflict Resolution at University College Maastricht (UCM). She studied International Relations at Bilkent University and the London School of Economics. 

Shiraz Maher, Senior Research Fellow, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

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