Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft religiös begründeter Extremismus e. V. (BAG RelEx)
Europe@DJHT
The German Council on Preventing Extremism (BAG RelEx e. V.) promotes networking of civil society actors in the field of prevention, disengagement and deradicalisation of religiously motivated extremism.
The German Council on Preventing Extremism or BAG RelEx (abbreviation of the German term “Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft religiös begründeter Extremismus”) is a non-profit organisation established by 25 civil society organisations in November 2016. Their motivation was to provide those working in Germany and Europa to support democracy and prevent religiously motivated extremism with a platform for networking, knowledge sharing and facilitating ongoing development while also creating a body that would represent the interests of such organisations.
With almost 40 member organisations across Germany, BAG RelEx brings together a broad range of approaches and methods and reflects its members’ long-standing experience in the field. We provide our member organisations with a forum for exchanging expertise and also serve as a point of contact for other institutions and actors in Germany and Europe. The BAG RelEx thus stands for a good practice on facilitating civil society networking and professional exchange, both in Germany and on a European level.
We also deal with other forms of religiously motivated radicalisation and the associated educational and social challenges. However, due to the current socio-political relevance, the prevention of Islamism is the key focus of our work.
That is why, we are working together with IFAK e. V., modus|zad gGmbH and ufuq e. V. to establish a nationwide infrastructure in the field of Islamism prevention in Germany. Previously, we implemented the competence network ‘Islamist Extremism’ (KN:IX, 2020-2024) together with Violence Prevention Network gGmbH and ufuq e. V. Since autumn 2022, we have also been involved in the cross-agency project PrEval, which deals with questions of evaluation and quality control in the prevention of extremism, the promotion of democracy and political education. From May 2025, we expect to be involved in the SHIELDed project, funded by the European Commission's Internal Security Fund. The aim is to strengthen resilience to (online) hate speech and hate crime. A particular focus is on the development of interdisciplinary exchange formats in order to develop effective preventive measures to protect religious institutions and communities.
Further information
https://www.bag-relex.de/en/about-bag-relex-2/about-bag-relex/