RISE: a new approach to radicalisation, beyond the logic of emergency

The launch of the Centre on Radicalisation, Inclusion and Social Equity — RISE, represents a pivotal moment in the study, understanding, and addressing of radicalization. It is not merely a creation of A new Academic Centre, but a call for a paradigm shift: moving beyond a predominantly securitarian, individualistic, and pathologizing perspective on radicalisation, and embedding it within a broader analysis of the social, political, and economic conditions that enable it.

For over twenty-five years, particularly after 9/11, radicalization has on many occasions been addressed through an individual-cantered perspective: the “vulnerable” subject, psychological profiling, family context, and sometimes religion. This approach has led to the development of extensive literature, institutional programs, preventive strategies, and intervention tools. Much of this work has been serious, committed, and driven by good intentions. However, according to the perspective proposed by RISE, these efforts risk to sleep at the margins of the problem, focusing almost exclusively on those who exhibit signs of radicalization, without sufficiently questioning the conditions that generate vulnerability, exclusion, and resentment.

The major focus of the new centre is anyway clear: radicalisation should not be understood as a mere individual pathology, but as a social phenomenon. This does not mean denying the personal responsibility of those who commit acts of violence, nor undermine the need for serious responses from institutions, security forces, or prevention programs. It rather means acknowledging that a society cannot simply “extinguish a fire” without questioning who and what continue to create the conditions for such fire to ignite.

One of the most interesting elements of RISE's approach is precisely the attempt to shift the focus from Margin to Centre. Instead of just asking why some individuals become radicalized, the Centre calls us to ask why certain societies recurrently produce feelings of humiliation, loss of status, exclusion, resentment, and a lack of belonging. In this perspective, radicalisation is not read as an isolated anomaly, but as a symptom of deeper fractures: racialized inequalities, deindustrialization, erosion of public services, social precariousness, politicization of belonging, and crisis of community ties.

The overcoming of the idea that religion is in itself a causal factor of radicalisation, is what is particularly relevant The research cited in the Centre’s Inaugural Speech suggests that, in the paths of both the far-right and Islamist-inspired extremism, one of the most recurring factors is not religious belief itself, nor family background or a specific psychological profile, but the perception of a loss of dignity, recognition, and status in society. In other words, the heart route cause of the problem is not just doctrinal or psychological: it is fundamentally political and social.

Here, hence arises a particular important reading of the relationship between Islamophobia and Islamist radicalisation. They are not considered as two separate and independent phenomena, but as dynamics that can feed each other. Islamophobia contributes to creating a climate of suspicion, exclusion, and stigmatization; radical narratives exploit this climate to present themselves as an identity-based, defensive, or vengeful response. In this, regard both become part of the same crisis: that of recognition, belonging, and coexistence in contemporary societies.

RISE was hence born with the ambition to produce a different kind of knowledge: not a top-down knowledge, but one built through dialogue between universities, institutions, communities, social workers, religious authorities, civil society, and individuals directly involved in security and inclusion policies. This approach is fundamental. Much more often, in fact, communities are used as objects of study, as illustrations, or as marginal testimonies. The centre proposes instead to consider their experiences as a true form of evidence, endowed with analytical weight.

RISE is chaired by Prof. Tahir Abbas, a scholar who for many years has dedicated himself to the analysis of radicalization, Islamophobia, social exclusion, and the dynamics of belonging in multicultural societies. His academic experience contributes to giving the centre a clear direction: to overcome reductive interpretations of radicalization and place it within a broader framework of inequalities, marginalization, public policies, and social recognition. In this context, the emerging of EuroIslam was also significant, as they contributed in the opening of the new project, confirming the importance of a direct dialogue between academic research, religious communities, institutions, and civil society.

The structure of the inaugural program also reflects this vision. The journey starts with a theoretical critique of the dominant paradigms, moves through the engagement with public policies and institutional partnerships, addresses the challenges of digital technology and artificial intelligence, and concludes with the voices of the communities. This sequence is not accidental: it indicates that academic analysis and community work are not two separate fields, but parts of the same process of understanding.

Another decisive aspect is the role attributed to Birmingham and, generally, to post-industrial cities that are young, plural, and undergoing profound social transformations. Reflection on security and coexistence in the United Kingdom has often been led by London,, but many the urgent questions among others — how is cohesion built in contexts marked by inequalities, reduction of public services, and new diversities? how can social distress be prevented from turning into polarization? — find more concrete answers precisely in cities like Birmingham. In this sense, RISE claims the need to decentralize the national debate on radicalization, bringing it to the places where social tensions, but also the possibilities for innovation, are most visible.

The centre, hence, presents itself as an interdisciplinary and collaborative space. It involves expertise from criminology, sociology, political science, forensic linguistics, digital studies, and public policy analysis. But its values do not lie only in its disciplinary plurality. They lie above all in the commitment to connecting research and practice, theory and community, security and social justice.

This connection is perhaps the strongest message of the initiative: inclusion and social justice are not “soft” or secondary elements compared to security; they are the heart of a serious reflection on security. A society capable of including, recognizing, and guaranteeing dignity is a society more resilient to violence, polarization, and authoritarianism. On the contrary, a society that separates security from social justice risks treating only the symptoms, leaving the root causes untouched.

The launch of RISE therefore represents an invitation to fundamentally reflect on the way we talk about radicalization. No more just as a problem of individual deviance, but as a matter of belonging, recognition, inequality, and power. No more just as a matter of risk prevention, but as a collective challenge to the construction of much more legitimate, inclusive societies capable of holding together differences, conflicts, and fragilities.

In this regard, RISE does not simply propose a new research centre. It poses a political and moral question:

Which type of society produces radicalization, and which type of society instead, is capable of preventing radicalisation, through inclusion, equity, and justice?

Abdellah Cozzolino