Paper short abstract:

The making and unmaking of theocracies and secularisms make for some perplexing problems for policymakers in the constantly shifting field of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE).

Paper long abstract:

The declaration of the imagined theocracy of the Islamic State in 2014 - as a prophesied sign of the end of days - would provide a powerful motivation for Australians sympathetic to the ISIS cause to pack up and join the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, according to many national security commentators at the time. The subsequent diminution of ISIS and its theocratic hopes has now focussed the concern on young, frustrated but highly motivated ISIS-inspired extremists for whom Australia's imagined secularism is a direct affront to the will of God. The making and unmaking of these theocracies and secularisms make for some pretty perplexing problems for policymakers in the constantly shifting field of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). CVE practitioners generally accept that violent extremism is a social problem, long before it is a national security problem, but dealing with theocratic hopes and 'end of days' eschatologies is not something that social policy agencies, youth workers and case managers, corrective services staff or police typically have to contend with. Enter the anthropologist of religion.