The Prevalence of Extreme Middle-Eastern Ideologies among Some Nigerians

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.