God’s Soldiers Versus Devil’s Slaves: The Effect of Theological Dynamics on the Radicalization Process of New Religious Movements

30.01.2023 | Emine BATTAL

The New Religious Movements, which promised an alternative form of religiosity and mostly emerged mariginal forms, became a current issue with their extraordinary beliefs and practices since their early years. These movements, which have the feature of gathering around a religious charismatic leader and a certain ideology, managed to attract attention with radical actions targeting human life at times. As a matter of fact, since the last quarter of the twentieth century various groups made a name for themselves with their attempts such as mass suicide, murder, assassination, and terrorist attacks in different countries. Thereupon these movements became the focus of discussions. In this context, many issue related to radicalization process and violence tendency of the New Religious Movements have been a matter of curiosity. One of these is the theological factors that play a role in the radicalization of such groups. In this study, religious teachings that radicalized the New Religious Movements and lead them to violence are emphasized. In this regard, it is tries to be revealed the effect of apocalyptic beliefs, dualist mentality and the ideal of establishing the dominance with a new world order on the use of violence by these groups.

Battal, E. (2023). God’s Soldiers Versus Devil’s Slaves: The Effect of Theological Dynamics on the Radicalization Process of New Religious Movements. Journal of Terrorism and Radicalization Studies, 2(1), pp. 111-128, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/trad.21