The Prevalence of Extreme Middle-Eastern Ideologies among Some Nigerians

Abstract

Over the past decade, a small extremist Islamic sect agitating against Western civilization has grown to become the biggest challenge to Nigerian internal security, a serious threat to international security and peace, and has earned the country the unenviable international reputation of a terrorist state. The radicalization of members of the group is driven majorly by extreme Middle-Eastern Islamic religious ideologies. In this study, 99 Nigerian participants (51 Christians and 48 Muslims) completed the Assessment and Treatment of Radicalization Scale (ATRS; Loza, 2007; formally the Belief Diversity Scale, BDS; Loza, 2007). The ATRS is a 33-item, six subscale instrument that is designed to quantitatively measure Middle-Eastern extremist ideologies in areas of risk reported in the literature. Results demonstrated reliability and validity of the ATRS as well as indicated the prevalence of Middle-Eastern extremists’ ideologies among Nigerian Muslims. Current findings are consistent with those obtained from previous studies. These findings suggest that the ATRS could be used as an objective tool to measure Middle-Eastern religious extremism.