Preventing religiously inspired violent radicalisation among Moroccan youth : barriers and opportunities

Abstract

Starting with the Madrid train bombings in 2004, young men with roots in Morocco and other Maghreb countries have been implicated in numerous terrorist attacks across Europe. These include the attacks in Paris in January and November of 2015; in Brussels, Nice, and Berlin in 2016; and in Barcelona in 2017. Efforts to explain such attacks frequently point to external factors such as the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. According to this thinking, terrorist attacks in Europe are carried out by radicalised individuals seeking revenge against Western countries for military involvement in those conflicts. Islamist extremists portray these conflicts as cases of ‘infidels’ waging war against Islam.