The influences of social identity and perceptions of injustice on support to violent extremism

ABSTRACT

Social identity has been identified as one key contributor to violent extremism. In a survey consisting of 198 Australian Muslims, we examined the associations between social identity and perceived injustice in the political and media field and whether these are associated with susceptibility to supporting violent extremism. The study canvassed belonging, religiosity, violent dispositions, experienced racism and reported strong senses of perceived injustice, alienation and anger. Overall, the study revealed that the greater the sense of belonging and religiosity, the greater the rejection of violent dispositions against the West and its allies. The inverse of this suggests that a sense of non-belonging is associated with increased support to radicalisation. We also found that the greater the religiosity, the greater the connection to Australia and the greater the rejection of violent dispositions. Our sample reported a strong sense of perceived injustice from the political media structures, even more so among those with a greater sense of belonging to Australia. The study demonstrates that there is high opposition to acts of violent extremism despite a widely held sense of injustice, indicating strong levels of resilience among the Muslim communities in Australia and pointing to the potential virtue of multiculturalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Violent extremism
• social identity
• belonging
• negative media portrayal
• adverse political rhetoric
• racism
• terrorism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A group of people sharing a common sense of politicised social identity where each member envisages that he/she has something in common with other members of this community, even though it may be an imagined community.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wesam Charkawi

Wesam Charkawi is a PhD student at Western Sydney University in the faculty of Social Sciences and Psychology. He is the author of two books: The Light of Clarification and The Beneficial Message and the Definitive Proof in the study of Theology and is the founder of The Abu Hanifa Institute in Sydney Australia. He currently works in NSW schools and is responsible for running a successful program to students across the state.

Kevin Dunn

Kevin Dunn is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Research at Western Sydney University. He is a leading researcher in the geographies of racism, immigration and settlement, Islam in Australia, local government and multiculturalism, and racism and anti-racism. He has championed local anti-racism, bystander activism and online action, as a means to address racism in direct, relevant and more contemporary ways. Kevin's research has highlighted the culturally and spatially uneven distribution of citizenship in Australia. As a leader on the Challenging Racism Project, Dunn has developed and lead Australian Research Council funded projects that have generated comprehensive databases on racism and anti-racism, and operationalised novel concepts, such as Anglo privilege, belief in ‘race’, and bystander responses.

Ana-Maria Bliuc

Ana-Maria Bliuc is a social and political psychologist at the University of Dundee in the UK and Western Sydney University in Australia. Her research focuses on understanding drivers of collective action, political participation, and intergroup conflict including political violence. More recently, she has focused on examining how online communities are shaped by collective identities and online interactions between their group members. This research has been conducted in online political communities (mostly far-right and white supremacist communities) and online health communities (communities of recovery from addiction). She is a member of the Challenging Racism Project at Western Sydney University.