Paths to Radicalization: About Someone Who Does Not Believe and Yet Almost Moved out to Join the “Islamic State”

Abstract

This article explores the question of which factors and dynamics lead also non-religious people to join the so-called “Islamic State”. The analysis starts with the biographical reconstruction of a radicalization process in Switzerland, the results of which are linked with sociological and socio-psychological explanations from the research on radicalization and extremism. The article shows that also in the field of “Islamic extremism” radicalization processes do not necessarily have to be ideologically or religiously underpinned, and that there are therefore doubts as to the comprehensive explanatory power of the religious paradigm.