Politicians, the media, and some academics are getting it wrong about radicalization. Relying on simple narratives to explain how an individual departs from point a (‘a good Muslim boy’) to point b (‘a suicide bomber’), too many recent contributions to academia rely on assumptions and ‘conventional wisdom’ rather than testable and falsifiable empirical research and methods. Through specific cases, this article seeks to demonstrate how the over‐simplification of ‘conventional wisdom’ privileges convenient political narratives over the complex realities of such situations. In light of this failure to account for reality, this article seeks to challenge current thinking on radicalization by exposing its limitations, as currently being used, as a meaningful basis and departure point for rigorous social science research. The article concludes by showing how the current persistence of this ‘conventional wisdom’ approach to radicalization ultimately betrays the normative political assumptions of those who insist on using this term, and how this adherence to ‘conventional wisdom’ now deprives radicalization from being a relevant and useful academic or policy discourse. This is because radicalization as an area for study has been corrupted by its instrumental political application.

This article will illustrate how the term 'radicalization' has both contributed to and been the subject of the social construction of risk surrounding violence and radicalization. To this extent, contemporary discussions of radicalization are related to ideas of 'vulnerability' and susceptibility to 'extremism' -topics which facilitate problematic assertions of inherent relationships between challenging ideas and the propensity for violence. The article will close by providing some corrective suggestions to push forward less subjectively framed research, while still engaging in the complex examination of the relationships between identities, ideas, and violence.

The narrative of the historic struggle against colonialism is subject to a high degree of political manipulation in North Africa. Myths, memories and symbols based on the struggle against colonial oppression, whether ‘true’ or not, provide a latent and continually relevant context for understanding and interpreting contemporary events. For both recent North African immigrants, and second, third and fourth generation immigrants to Europe, contemporary injustices and violence, whether perpetrated in Europe or in the Maghreb, are being understood in this historical colonial context. For some, these myths, memories and symbols may be the reason why they join a peaceful, democratic group to lobby for democracy and political transparency. For a minority of North Africans, these symbols of the past are invoked to justify a jihadist challenge to North African regimes and the West. Based on extensive interviews with North African activists and community leaders, this article will show how the collective memory of the abuse of power by the state, both during and after the colonial era, has created a latent mistrust of the West, especially of France. Political repression in North Africa since independence has created a rupture between what was expected from independence and the realities of political life, and North Africans often ascribe this disappointment to the inherently French character of the regimes which were in power during the 1950s and 1960s. North Africans also believe that this is reflected in the continuing active intervention on the part of the West to support these illiberal regimes in the face of democratic and popular challenges. The subsequent senses of injustice and disappointment, relating to the use and abuse of state power, continues to shape North African political mobilization and, worryingly, has created a latent basis for radicalization among North Africans living and working in Europe.

This article examines how symbols of Islamic repression and massacre affect radicalisation among North Africans living in the UK. It suggests that these symbols are an insufficient but necessary cause in the larger process of 'radicalisation', because they provide a basis for perceptions of injustice. In this context, myths, memories and symbols of colonial repression, contemporary repression of free political expression in North African states and current perceptions of western 'oppression' of Islam may be perceived as rationales for 'oxygenation'. Oxygenation here denotes exchanges among different Muslim communities throughout Britain which potentially facilitate terrorist networks. Oxygenation in turn contributes to 'blowback', here in the guise of perceptions among British Muslims of global oppression of the Umma, especially understood in light of the Iraqi and Afghani insurgencies. This article also explores how these symbols may be cultivated and disseminated at popular and elite levels.

Some studies have emphasised the role of modernity and/or the emergence of the state in the occurrence of nationalism. These perspectives have underemphasised the motivations and rationales of individuals who claim to act on behalf of the nation. Over‐reliance on state‐based accounts of nationalism contributes to a broader failure to explain or predict specific and definable moments of popular nationalist mobilisation. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by suggesting that a combination of ethno‐symbolist approaches to nationalism with theoretical explanations of mobilisation and contentious politics refocuses attention back on to content rather than structural factors. It will be argued here that national ‘repertoires’ of myths, memories and symbols serve as collectively defined but individually understood factors for nationalist mobilisation. The article will conclude by suggesting potential mechanisms which explain how ‘popular resonance’ translates the ‘imagined community’ of the nation into tangible bases for political action.