Pupils’ perceptions of the religious links to terrorism

Abstract

With the increased requirement to incorporate counter-terrorism measures into the British education system, teachers are now expected to discuss terrorism within the classroom setting. However, this is a challenging endeavour due to the complex nature of the phenomenon, including definitional questions and links made to certain ideologies, in particular religious motivations. This paper explores my research findings from a project conducted over several years into pupils’ perceptions of terrorism and its links to religion in general, as well as the specific links made with Islam, Sikhism and Christianity. To contextualise the research, a brief overview of the methods and results has been provided, followed by an analysis of the issues raised. Overall, the pupils thought that religion in general, as well as Islam in particular, was something that motivated terrorism. However, many pupils also expressed concerns about associating entire religious communities with terrorism, perceiving it as a stereotype, and expressed interest in discovering more about how and why religion was used to justify such violent attacks.

Keywords:

• Education
• terrorism
• religion

Notes

1. The definition of ‘terrorism’ is a fluid construct: it can alter, cause controversy or be usurped by alternatives. Examples of current working definitions appropriate for this paper can be found in the Prevent Strategy (2011), which is the current framework for counter-terrorism legislation, and the Prevent Duty Guidelines (2015), which defines terrorism as an act performed for the purpose of advancing a political cause and acts performed for religious or ideological reasons (H.M. Government 2015b, 27).

2. The coding used for each case study was based on first interactions with pupils in schools: thus CS1 is Case Study 1. To ensure anonymity, pupils were assigned a gender and number specification, such as G2, B3 and so on.