Abstract

Recent events demonstrate the alarming rise of radicalised Central Asian individuals involved in global terrorism, including the 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, the 2017 New York truck attack and a series of lone-wolf incidents across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. While terrorism was once dominated by actors from the Middle East, it has become increasingly internationalised, with Central Asia emerging as a significant source of recruitment. While scholarship has examined the regional drivers of radicalisation, less attention has been given to how educational disruption and state-led religious control shape these trajectories. Drawing on securitisation theory, this paper examines how the collapse of formal education and the securitisation of religious education in Uzbekistan have fostered ‘underground religious learning’. Far from being ad hoc, these networks appear popular among ‘uneducated’ or ‘undereducated’ youth and cultivate loyalty to insurgent movements, contributing to global manifestations of violence. Using the case of Uzbekistan, the study explores the interaction between state and non-state education, analysing how restrictive policies inadvertently legitimise underground religious education. Using qualitative methods, including discourse analysis, review of underground education cases and interviews from the region, the paper sheds light on the role of education in radicalisation and the implications for counterterrorism.