Book Launch: Homegrown Radicals: A story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and Jihad in the Post 9/11 World

About the Book:

Homegrown Radicals (NYU Press, 2025) offers a poignant history of the War on Terror, told through the experiences of North American Muslim communities. It follows the story of three Muslim university students who left their small city on the Canadian Prairies in March 2007, seemingly without a trace. In the ensuing months, their disappearance raised fears among Canadian and US security agencies that the men had become “radicalized,” posing a grave threat to national security. From presidential briefings and drone strikes to a high-stakes trial in a Brooklyn courtroom, their story reveals fresh insights into the state's discursive construction of the “radical.” It also illuminates the profound impact on Muslim communities, who were left to grapple with grief, loss, and the weight of state surveillance.

Bio.

Youcef Soufi, PhD, is a Researcher in Islamophobia with the Institute for the Humanities and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Manitoba. His writings focus on the history of Islamic thought and on contemporary Islamophobia, and include the book, The Rise of Critical Islam, published by Oxford University Press. He is the former Chair of the Canadian Association for the Study of Islam and Muslims (CASIM).