Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism: the New Muslims Movement in Kabardino-Balkaria and its Path to Violence

The paper calls for more attention to be paid to the heterogeneous character of new Islamic groups, including the need to avoid assumptions about the origins of radicalism, extremism and recourse to violence adopted by some of them. By focusing on a new movement of young Muslims in the Northern Caucasian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the period from the 1990s to the early 2000s, we suggest that conceptualising some new Islamic groups as New Religious Movements (NRMs) can sharpen our understanding of the tensions, conflicts and violence often associated with them. This, in turn, can encourage us to take fuller account of factors including their social provenance, the appeal of their beliefs and practices, the demographic characteristics of their membership and the dynamics of their internal and external interactions with the wider society.