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approach to assisting families and former members is to provide training and consultation to
helpers. It is also important to articulate more clearly than has thus far occurred ways to
help families to improve communication and decrease conflict with loved ones involved in
cultic or extremist groups.
Recommendation 9
Cultic studies experts need to establish mechanisms to ensure that programs on
helping former and current group members and their parents are regularly presented
at conferences and meetings of the various professional associations and cult watch
organizations.
Recommendation 10
Cultic studies experts need to expand the number and geographical range of
workshops designed to provide concrete assistance to families and former group
members.
Recommendation 11
Cultic studies experts need to develop mechanisms for providing consultation to
helping professionals who provide services to families and former or current group
members.
Recommendation 12
Cultic studies experts need to more clearly articulate strategies for decreasing
conflict in families, most of whom, for various reasons, cannot realistically pursue a
strategy of exit counseling.
Recommendations 9 through 12 call for an expansion of what the International Cultic
Studies Association and other cult watch organizations have done over the years. However,
with regard to Jihadism, it will be necessary to develop relationships with various Muslim
community and religious organizations so that Muslim communities can develop educational
and assistance mechanisms designed to help Muslim families and former group members,
and Muslim community, religious, and educational institutions.
Recommendation 13
Cultic studies experts should reach out to Muslim religious and community
organizations to identify the ways in which the former can work with the latter to
devise strategies to protect and help Muslim youth who are or might become
attracted to cultic and extremist groups.
Law Enforcement
Law enforcement traditionally has had a narrow focus on prosecuting criminals. However,
the terrorism of recent years has injected elements of prevention and preemption into law
enforcement, which have been a challenge to organizational cultures, such as the United
States‘ FBI. Cultic studies experts may be helpful to law enforcement (including homeland
security) in one or more of the following ways:
 Provide a monitoring function regarding extremist and cultic groups by
strengthening, expanding, and training the large international network of—mostly
volunteer—cult watch organizations (see Kropveld, 2003). To work properly and
ethically, monitoring should be part of a broader research agenda. Just as mental
health professionals and researchers might be legally and/or ethically obligated to
notify law enforcement when they learn of child abuse, so cult watch organizations
could be helped to develop appropriate protocols for determining when law
enforcement should be notified concerning the actions of extremist or cultic groups.

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2006, Page 80
The monitoring function could be especially useful if the equivalent of cult watch
organizations developed within Muslim communities.
 Develop more effective methodologies for communicating with and obtaining
cooperation and information from captured terrorists, members of extremist
organizations, or, most importantly, defectors from extremist/terrorist organizations.
I recognize that experienced interrogators of terrorists in law enforcement
organizations have much more experience with this particular population than do cult
experts, and that it would be presumptuous for the latter to tell the former how to
interrogate. However, dialogue between the two groups of experts could enhance the
effectiveness of each.
Until such dialogue begins to take place and cult experts and law enforcement professionals
better understand how their specialties relate to each other, I believe it is appropriate only
to call for further communication at this time.
Recommendation 14
Cult experts and law enforcement personnel concerned about terrorism and other
extremist groups should meet in special seminars and workshops to determine how
each may benefit from the other‘s expertise.
Research
This field is so under-researched, given its importance, that research is needed in all areas.
In addition to the need for more survey research, which was noted earlier, I believe that
research in the following areas is particularly important:
Recommendation 15
More psychological research, which is sensitive to individual differences, on the
pathway to violence must be conducted so that we can better understand what
factors govern whether or not an individual continues moving along that pathway.
Recommendation 16
Intensive research of defectors from and ―almost joiners‖ of extremist and terrorist
groups should be conducted with the collaboration of Muslim researchers, helping
professionals, and community organizations. Families of involved persons should also
be studied in depth.
Recommendation 17
Researchers should collaborate with cultic studies helping professionals, volunteer
leaders of cult watch organizations, and Muslim researchers, helping professionals,
and community leaders to develop information-collection protocols that will have
research and practical applications.
Conclusion
In this paper I have tried to identify areas in which experts in terrorism, cultic studies, and
Islam might find common ground on which to build action plans to counter Jihadism at the
individual, family, and community level. My suggestions are merely a starting place, not a
roadmap.
Others have looked at social-psychological aspects of Jihadist terrorism. A National Science
and Technology Council (NSTC) report (2005, April), for example, organizes its findings
around four questions: prediction, prevention, preparation, and recovery from attacks.
Prevention is the area in which cultic studies can most effectively contribute. Surprisingly,
however, this important report‘s prevention section addresses none of the issues discussed