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Report: Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization

A strong investment in counterradicalization — with special focus on helping mainstream Muslims provide hopeful and practical alternatives to jihadist ideology — should be a critical element of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism strategy.

Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization is the final report of the Task Force on Confronting the Ideology of Radical Extremism, a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission of diplomats, legislators, strategists, scholars, and experts. A joint project of two Institute programs — Project FIKRA and the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence — the task force has devised a comprehensive strategy to counter the growing radicalization of Muslim populations, particularly youth, worldwide.

Its report provides analysis and recommendations on a spectrum of discrete policy issues — democracy promotion, political reform, public diplomacy, strategic communications, and counterradicalization — offering an integrated approach to stanching the spread of Islamist extremism. The extensive recommendations suggest an array of policy instruments, from creating a counterradicalization forum that draws on “best practices” of friends and partners in Europe and the Middle East, to infusing with renewed mission, urgency, and creativity U.S. international broadcasting toward Arab and Muslim societies.