ABSTRACT
Following the 9/11 attacks, research on terrorism benefited from an influx of new researchers and funding. However, almost fifteen years and an untold number of publications later, many aspects of terrorism are still poorly understood. That also applies to the focus of this book; namely, how and why people become involved in European homegrown jihadism. Chief among the various reasons for this state of affairs has been the long-standing scarcity of primary-sources-based research. The difficulties involved in accessing (former) terrorists for interviews or using data gathered by government agencies, has made researchers overly reliant on media reporting. A secondary source of information that is frequently very succinct, potentially biased, and too often inaccurate; in other words, incapable of serving as the main, let alone the only, foundation for academic research.
