On February 11, 2022 Professor of the Department of religious studies Shapoval Yulia Vasilyevna took part in the International conference on "General and regional trends of terrorism and violent extremism", which was organized by the KISI under the President of Kazakhstan jointly with the Kazakhstan Council on Foreign Relations. Shapoval Y.V. made a presentation on "Kazakhstan's experience in combating religiously motivated extremism," where she highlighted and described two main strategies for combating religiously motivated extremism in Kazakhstan. The first strategy is preventive, which aims to prevent people from being drawn into the ideology of violent extremism under religious slogans, and the second strategy, which is aimed at overcoming the consequences, is programmes for the rehabilitation of followers of religiously motivated violent extremism. These are programmes for the rehabilitation of people who have served their sentences under relevant articles and a programme for the rehabilitation and reintegration of returnees returned to Kazakhstan under the 'Zhusan' humanitarian operation. The conference discussed security challenges to the Central Asian region at the present stage. Presentations were made by international experts such as Jacob Zenn, Ricardo Valle, Aymenne Javad, Nihad Jariri. It was stated that the propaganda activities of ISIS-Khorasan in the Central Asian region have intensified, which should be paid close attention to. The speech of famous Kazakh theologian Askar Sabdin, who works on deradicalization with prisoners, aroused great interest. Askar Sabdin noted in his speech the high scientific level of research by scientists of the L.N. Gumilev ENU Department of Religious Studies, dedicated to identifying the causes and factors of young people's involvement in violent extremist ideology as well as scientific articles dedicated to women who were returned as part of Operation Zhusan.
