Waves of Islamic Radicalism

Abstract

Islamic radicalism has become a constant disturbing issue in world politics. Since the early 1980s, the dormant madness of Islamic radicalism has exploded in vicious waves of terrorist attacks around the world. Previous studies, though they contributed enormously to understanding this issue, fell short in analyzing the process that led to the dominance of Islamic radicalism and the damping of Islamic moderateness. This article (a) models the rise and fall of Islamic radical/ moderate waves utilizing Fourier series and the damping notion of waves (2) Identify and test empirically the factors that advance/hamper radicalism using time-series and panel data from 1980 to 2015 across six Islamic countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey.