The 'War on Terror' has been the longest ongoing conflict that the US has been involved in and shows no sign of ending in the near future. The threat of terrorism is something that the US government has continually warned the populace about prior to the start of the 'war on terror.' The the fear that the US places on terrorism focuses on Islamic extremism in particular and can be considered to be unjust. This leads to the understanding that the US takes part in Islamophobia because of its continuation of an unjust fear towards Islam. Islamophobia is an idea that has primarily been associated with individuals instead of the state or media. This thesis utilizes the work of Khaled Beydoun to show how the US has kept the idea of Islamophobia away from the state's sphere of responsibility while also creating policy that takes part in Islamophobia. Beydoun provides this thesis with new definitions for Islamophobia that allow for new conclusions to be made when the state is considered. This is combined with an understanding of how the media covers events and protects the state from the ideas of Islamophobia. The understanding of violence, as shown by Asad, created within the state influences this thesis greatly because of its connection to how the state reacts to attacks. The state has historically targeted minority groups as an "other" that can be targeted with policy and seen as a threat to the populace. This has allowed far-right groups who target minority groups to grow without being targeted by the state, these groups are allowed to continue their violence because it aligns with the states goals. This thesis looks to combine these ideas with case studies of different attacks in order to show how the US utilizes Islamophobia in counterterrorism policy. / Master of Arts / The United States has been involved in the 'war on terror' since the attacks of September 11, 2001. This has led the US to creating policy that has been meant to protect the populace from another attack of this caliber from happening. The policies that have been created have focused on targeting the threat of Islamic extremist violence. This thesis looks to show how the US has unfairly targeted Muslim populations with the policy that it has created, while other threats have grown without being addressed. First, it will be shown how Islamophobia is not something that can only be committed by an individual, as commonly believed. This thesis will utilize new definitions of islamophobia to highlight how the state can take part in islamophobia and how Islamophobia is kept from being associated with the state. This will be combined with a discussion of three different cases, as well as a discussion of how the US creates policies. The US historically created policy based upon the enemy that it had identified at the time, the current case being Islamic extremism. This targeting has generally been focused on minority groups while larger far-right groups have gone about without being targeted. Far-right groups grew in this time period because the state did not label them as a threat and they carried out violence against the targets identified by the state. This thesis will show how the state has allowed far-right violence to grow within the state and allowed it to become a part of the violence within the state while targeting minority groups that have smaller followings and pose less of a direct threat. It will look to show how the state has enabled this growth while continually focusing policy in another direction. Combining these ideas with the cases that are studied allow this thesis to answer, "how does the US utilize Islamophobia in counterterrorism policy?"

Area of interest regarding this master thesis is the fight against terrorism at European Union level. The work then aims to analyze how effective the EU institutions in the fight against terrorism, Europol, Eurojust and the CTC, are. The first part focuses on the issue of terrorism itself, by the help of comparative analysis and data analysis the possible root causes of terrorism and issues regarding radicalization are discussed. The second part is devoted to the actual effectiveness of the main EU institutions in the fight against terrorism and consequently to the security threat associated with the issue of foreign fighters that became a priority agenda within the EU counterterrorism. These sections has also been prepared on the basis of empirical research since semi-standardized interviews with experts in this field were conducted. It was investigated, that the EU institutions in the fight against terrorism have several weaknesses, and there are several limits in their fight against terrorism. Conversely, in the context of foreign fighters the EU has managed to adopt several concrete and directed measures.

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No description available.

The United States needs a long-term counterterrorism strategy in Yemen. Nearly three years in, the faltering Yemeni transition threatens to fall apart in the face of an economic crisis, ongoing internal conflict, and al Qaeda attacks. Unchecked, a failed Yemeni state will provide al Qaeda with a larger recruiting base and an expanded area for operations. To prevent this nightmare scenario, the United States should integrate military restructuring, political reform, and economic development policies into its greater strategy to counter al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This report describes the dynamics of the 2011 Yemeni uprising, the subsequent political transition, and the simultaneous evolution of AQAP. The report then analyzes these phenomena in the context of U.S. national security policy to determine a long-term counterterrorism strategy in Yemen. To succeed in defeating AQAP and stabilizing Yemen, the U.S. government must engage with its Yemeni partners and regional actors; invest in Yemen's military restructuring, political transition, and economic reforms; and continue to attack AQAP through direct action operations and in tandem with Yemeni armed forces. / text

Employing critical race theory as a theoretical and analytical framework, this thesis explores the nature, structure and purpose of Islamophobic discourse, and offers two central contributions to the scholarly debate on Islamophobia. First, it contributes to the literature on the nature of Islamophobia by analysing the form and structure of discourse that seeks to represent Muslims and Islam in a number of social and political sites. Second, the thesis addresses a significant gap identified in the scholarly literature, which has largely overlooked the purpose that Islamophobic discourse serves for those employing it. In order to address the nature and structure of Islamophobic discourse, the thesis analyses representations of Muslims and Islam in dominant national community cohesion and counterterrorism discourses; rearticulation of these discourses at the local level in the West Midlands town of Dudley; the use of Islamophobic discourse by the English Defence League; and the ways in which Islamophobic narratives were used to mark national boundaries in Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and France. I explain the convergence of narratives across these levels by extending Ghassan Hage's theoretical formulation of racism as nationalist practices to Islamophobic discourse and argue that, as a cultural racism, Islamophobia can be conceptualised as upholding a system of Eurocentric supremacy, where Western subjects receive a better social, economic and political 'racial contract' and seek to defend these privileges against real and imagined Muslim demands. Whether employed for local, national or civilisational purposes, Islamophobia relies on the notion that space has been culturally compromised by Muslims and must be restored to authenticity by legitimate non-Muslim cultural managers. Islamophobia operates through a three-stage ideological process, and restores fantasised power to those who perceive Muslim cultural difference to be unacceptably changing the spaces in which they reside by representing Muslims as making incongruous demands of a territory, singling out a particular timeless value that is under threat, and reifying this value to an absolute. Through this process Muslims are put back in their place, while those employing this discourse experience a restoration of their cultural power to decide the values of a space.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o desenvolvimento de instituições criadas para o combate ao terrorismo por meio do desempenho de atividades de inteligência nacional nos Estados Unidos e na França, buscando elucidar as principais diferenças e similaridades entre os dois processos distintos. O artigo expõe as contribuições da teoria do neoinstitucionalismo histórico da ciência política, permitindo a compreensão do fenômeno da institucionalização. Uma abordagem comparativa dos casos, estudados de maneira detalhada, é apresentada, destacando as principais ocorrências que guiaram os atuais desenhos institucionais e estratégias de combate ao terrorismo estadunidense e francesa. Ao seu fim, conclusões são feitas a respeito de aparentes lógicas de centralização e normalização que permearam a reforma da Comunidade de Inteligência dos Estados Unidos (USIC) e da Comunidade Francesa de Inteligência (CFR) no contexto da Guerra Global ao Terror. / This paper has the objective of analyzing the development of institutions designed to combat terrorism by means of national intelligence activities in the United States and France, aiming at elucidating the main differences and similarities between these two distinctive processes. The article exposes the contributions of the historical neo-institutionalist theory of political science, allowing the comprehension of the institutionalization phenomenon. A comparative approach of the cases, studied in a detailed manner, is presented, highlighting the main occurrences that led to the formulation of the North-American and French current institutional designs and strategies for countering terrorism. By its end, conclusions are drawn in regards to the perceived rationales of centralization and normalization that permeated the reform of the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and the creation of the Communauté Française du Renseignement (CFR) in the context of the Global War on Terror.

European integration has been a widely discussed topic within political science since the creation of the EU. In recent years, signs of disintegration have been observed due to widespread euroscepticism, major crises and public discontent. Simultaneously, cross-border terrorism has become an acute issue for the EU with terror attacks being executed in several member states. This study examines the development of European integration in counterterrorism from 2014 to 2017 to determine if integration in this field has continued or halted. Two traditional integration theories, neofunctionalism and liberal intergovern­mentalism, are applied to understand the driving factors for the European integration process in this field. The results show that European integration in counterterrorism has persisted, and even accelerated in the aftermath of recent terror attacks. The driving factors for this development can be explained by a combination of the applied theories, but the framework of neofunctionalism is unexpectedly strong.

Previous research has demonstrated that self-affirmation via values affirmations seem to buffer the self against perceived threats (Steele, 1988). An example of such a threat is opposing worldviews regarding civil liberties in counterterrorism policies. The present study uses the threat of worldview opposition in regards to counterterrorism policies in conjunction with an experimental induction of mortality salience to explore whether self-affirmation can attenuate increases in worldview defense following mortality salience. It was hypothesized that mortality salience would increase worldview defense, but that self-affirmation would decrease worldview defense following exposure to a worldview threat. When extremity of attitudes toward civil liberties in counterterrorism policies were considered in analyses, results indicated an interaction of self-affirmation and mortality salience, such that self-affirmation decreased worldview defense in participants in the mortality salience condition if they expressed extreme civil liberty attitudes. Results suggest that self-affirmation and mortality salience interact to predict worldview defense in those who care about civil liberties in counterterrorism policies. This study provides qualified theoretical support for self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988). More research on the topic of self-affirmation and civil liberty attitudes is needed.

Leadership within local police organizations should be able to, but do not, process information and create actionable strategies aimed toward proactive counterterrorism practices. This problem could lead to future terrorist attacks within the United States if police agencies do not adjust their tactics in response to growing terrorist threats. A possible cause of this problem is that leadership within local law enforcement agencies is reactive in nature and as a consequence, do not encourage officers to engage in proactive strategies. Using Easton's conceptualization of systems theory as the foundation, the purpose of this case study of a single law enforcement agency in the southwest was to explore how police leadership influences counterterrorism strategies. Research questions focused on how police leadership processed information within their organization to develop counterterrorism tactics. Data were collected from interviews with police leadership and officers, observations of policing activities, and document review of policies, directives, and unclassified reports. These data were coded and analyzed following Yin's procedure for schematic analysis. The results indicated that this agency has a successful counterterrorism strategy based on 6 organizational pillars of leading, proactive, learning, processing, policy, and communication. This study may promote positive social change by helping police leaders identify which system inputs provide the best detail for developing counterterrorism policy, and what community partnerships help police identify terrorism threats.