One of the most contested issues in the literature on religion and extremist violence is exactly how the two relate. The topic has received renewed academic attention lately (eg Grossman and Hellner 2025). In fact, there are a large number of issues that fall under the heading of religion and extremist violence, three of which we would like to draw attention to here, because we will see that our exploration in this chapter sheds light on each of them.
First, does religion matter to radicalization or equally to deradicalization and perhaps even prevention (eg, by way of building resilience toward extremism)? Remarkably, the role religion potentially plays in processes of radicalization has received significantly more attention than the roles it might play in prevention practices and processes of deradicalization (Peels 2024). Here, we zoom in on processes of deradicalization.