How Germany Deals with Islamism

The results of the KURI project were published in May 2025 as an edited volume by Campus Verlag. “How Germany Deals with Islamism: Review and Trends since 2001,” edited by Julian Junk and Martin Kahl, offers the first compre­hensive over­view of how Germany has approached Islamism and the legit­imizing foun­dations of these ap­proaches.

Islamist-motivated terrorism has been at the center of attention for media, politics, and society for many years. Govern­mental and civil society measures against Islam­ism range from pre­vention and legis­lative or institu­tional reforms to coercive state inter­ventions. However, despite the fact that dealing with Islam­ism always touches on funda­mental questions of liberal and pluralistic societies, there is a lack of studies analyzing when which measures were taken and how they were justified. This edited volume addresses that research gap.

In the first section, contri­butors including Isabelle Stephan­blome, Lea Scheu, Mona Klöckner and Manjana Sold examine the public nego­tiation of per­ceived threats posed by Islam­ism. The chapters focus on political, law enforce­ment, and media debates and explore how threat scenarios are perceived and discussed. On the one hand, the find­ings show that Islamism is publicly con­structed as a threat. On the other hand, there appears to be an effort to contex­tualize the Islamist threat in relation to other threats and to counter alarmist ten­dencies.

In the second section, authors such as Isabelle Stephan­blome, Stefan Kroll, Julian Junk, and Lea Scheu investigate specific measures taken in dealing with Islam­ism. The contri­butions examine federal legislation related to counter­terrorism, as well as govern­mental and civil society instruments for addressing Islamism, including Germany's anti-terrorism law. The analysis makes it clear that measures are increasingly shifting to the early stages of criminal behavior and radicali­zation processes, and that there is no indication of an over­emphasis on security policy measures.

The colla­borative research project “Configurations of Societal and Political Practices in Dealing with Radical Islam (KURI)” was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from September 2020 to March 2025. As part of the project, researchers from the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) investi­gated the tensions inherent in how Germany responds to Islamism.

Further information about the publication can be found on the Campus Verlag website.