The Young Sahaba – Challenges Posed by Radicalized Children and Adolescents from the Jihadist Milieu

Associate Professor Dr. Nina Käsehage is a religious scholar and historian. She is currently a fellow at the Goethe Academy for Early Career Researchers (GRADE) in the field of theology and religious studies (RuTh) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Her habilitation thesis at the Johann Wolfgang-Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, ‘The Young Sahaba – The Religious Socialization of Children and Adolescents in the Jihadist milieu’ (Kohlhammer 2023), is based on a qualitative study with German minors who left Germany with their radicalized mothers to the Islamic State (IS) at first and later returned to their home country.

In 2018, she was awarded her PhD with the first basic research on the Salafist movement in Germany, ‘The contemporary Salafist scene in Germany – preachers and followers’ at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany. Käsehage’s anthology ‘Religious Fundamentalism in the Age of Pandemic’ was listed at rank 2 in the ‘5 E-books you need on COVID-19’ by the Oxford Brokes Library in 2021.

Her research focuses on religious radicalization, Salafism, Jihadism, gender and violence, new religious movements such as anti-gender and conspiracy movements, right-wing extremists, qualitative religious research, the psychology of religion, and the prevention of violent extremism (PVE).