Social, Political and Ideological Context Behind Radicalization in Pakistan

Defining RadicalizationThe negative connotations associated with radicalization are fairly recent. The lexical root of the   term radicalization, as clarified by the Comprehensive Oxford English dictionary (COED) did not exist till this century; COED does not provide a definition of radicalization, radicalism, or even radicalize. It does, however, list these terms as derivatives of radical. The relevant adjectival definitions of that latter include “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; ...  advocating thorough or complete political or social reform; politically extreme.” The relevant noun based definition is “an advocate of radical political or social reform”[1] . To be a radical is to be the extreme relative to something that is defined or accepted as normative, traditional, or valued as the status quo; it is a total departure from the mainstream political thought of that particular society or group. However, radicalization gets…