A southern European exceptionalism? Exploring religiously inspired radicalisation in Greece, Italy and Spain

Following 9/11 and the terrorist attacks in Western Europe over the past two decades, research on religiously inspired or attributed violent radicalisation has grown into a field of study that has developed a broad and sophisticated range of explanations, theories and categorizations about violent attacks that are either claimed by groups linked to Islamist ideologies or individuals inspired by them. Within this field, measuring the impact of programs designed to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) has attracted increasing interest. While significant research in this field exists in countries —such as France and the United States— that have suffered the most symbolic and mediatized attacks, there is less research being conducted on countries which host significant Muslim communities of recent arrival such as Greece, Italy and Spain, in which either there have been very few religiously inspired violent attacks (such as Greece and Italy) or in which such attacks have not triggered the same securitized response (Spain) as they have elsewhere. Bringing together desk research and over 40 interviews with minority and majority stakeholders on religiously inspired violent radicalisation in Southern Europe, this paper looks at how Greece, Italy and Spain have each chosen a different type of policy towards securitisation and radicalisation and each state has developed a different national narrative for what concerns migration and Islam.