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Tuesday, 17 November 2015

With Paris’s night of terror dominating news headlines, UWA radicalisation expert Professor Samina Yasmeen has called for a renewed focus on local research into the process of radicalisation that leads young men and women to choose jihad and death.

Professor Yasmeen, Director of UWA’s Centre for Muslim States and Societies, will address an international conference on Radicalisation & Islamophobia in Sydney at the end of this month. She will tell that encouraging women to tackle home-grown extremism is one of many strategies UWA researchers are exploring.

“We know that Gen Y female jihadists have travelled to the Middle East, leaving behind good homes,” said the Director of UWA’s Centre for Muslim States and Studies. “While recruitment through the internet plays a role in radicalisation, there is no single reason for radicalisation. At UWA we are researching the range of very complex issues that play into producing a female jihadist like Amira Karroum, who became the first Australian female jihadist to die on a Middle East battlefield,” said Professor Yasmeen.

“But while women may be drawn to groups such as ISIS either as jihad brides or soldiers, women can also play a key role in helping to de-radicalise young Australians tempted to join such groups,” she said.

“Islamophobia  – and the sometimes negative reactions that Muslim women in traditional dress can encounter on our streets – certainly plays a role in some cases of radicalisation, and also how Muslims react to Islamaphobia, and these are elements of our research that I will be taking to this important international conference.”

UWA is one of several leading Australian universities helping to organize the Australasian Conference on Islam entitled : Radicalisation & Islamophobia that will be held on 30 November and 1 December. The keynote speaker is Professor John Esposito from Georgetown University. Professor Yasmeen will speak on Radicalised Muslim Women: Assessing the Link to Islamophobia and speakers include experts from the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Yasmeen said that the UWA Centre, one of a node of six Australian Muslim study centres at Australian universities, had become a hub of expertise on a range of issues and their research is proving to be of interest both to local police and to security agencies.

Topics covered at the conference include the problem of reactive co-radicalization, the unintended consequences of counterterrorism policies, Muslim community responses to extremism and Islamophobia, and public discourse that fuels Islamophobia.

For further information, visit https://www.ausconfislam.net

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