Blog

VOX-Pol coordinator Dr. Maura Conway contributed to the EU Member States’ Annual Meeting on the UNSCR 1325 on Friday. The ‘Women, Peace and Security in the Context of Violent Extremism and Terrorism’ meeting was held in Brussels. Discussions were based around three broad themes: the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and global review of ...

by Samina Yasmeen The discussions around why young Australian Muslims are leaving home to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq on the side of or against Islamic State (IS) suffer from two kinds of reductionism. First, they assume that the phenomenon of young (or not so young) people leaving their homes to join these terrorist groups is largely ...

VOX-Pol contributed to this week’s [Y] Factor Conference, a Youth Conference organised by the trainees of the European Committee of the Regions in collaboration with CoR services at the end of their traineeship period. The main idea behind [Y] Factor is to tackle the topics and issues that concern young people by bringing together local ...

by Nico Prucha How the Arabic Ideology of Jihadist Movements Targets non-Arab(ic) Online Networks, Part 2 Jihadist narratives are fostered by the increasingly visual nature of online culture. Videos are the most important mouthpiece to show the manifestation and realisation of jihadist creed (‘aqida) and methodology (manhaj) for which they claim to live and die. ...

VOX-Pol participated in a two-day meeting hosted by the Insafe Network of Safer Internet Centres in Prague from 27-28 May. Insafe is a European network of 31 national awareness centres comprising the 27 EU member states and Iceland, Norway, Russia and Serbia. Each of the national centres implement awareness and educational campaigns, runs a helpline, ...

The Brookings Institution, in conjunction with the State of Qatar, convened the 12th annual US-Islamic World Forum in Doha from 1 – 3 June. The Forum’s theme was “Changing Assumptions,” which referred to historic shifts in geopolitical realities affecting the United States and Muslim-majority countries, as well as to societal and cultural norms. VOX-Pol’s Coordinator Dr ...

VOX-Pol participated in the Youth Against Violent Extremism conference in Oslo on 4 June. The conference, organised by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was attended by 150 civil society organisations from across Europe who were invited to share their concerns, sentiments and suggestions regarding violent extremism with each ...

by Clint Watts A month ago, the Washington Post published the most insightful article to date on the challenges the U.S. government has encountered battling al Qaeda, the Islamic State and jihadis writ large in social media.  The U.S. State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) has been charged with a mission impossible: countering jihadi ...

This blog is being published in two parts. Part two on 10 June by Nico Prucha With Arabic as the most important language for Islam, as the Qur’an is the speech of God (kalimat allah), revealed in Arabic, the lingua jihadica is likewise Arabic. Arabic key words of the jihadist segment, as a consequence, have ...

VOX-Pol coordinator Dr Maura Conway attended the 7th European Forum of the Family Online Safety Institute in Brussels on May 12 at the invitation of FOSI. The event, which focused on European perspectives on child online safety, was held in Brussels with the support of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Orange. Keynote speaker, UNICEF’s Child Protection ...