I haven’t ventured into this side of RAWK, and onto this sort of subject for almost 14 months. It’s mostly connected with the fact that around that time, I started working full time at a job that is to a certain degree, related to the topic of countering violent extremism (in this case, violent religious extremism). And when you deal with those sorts of issues at work all day (including some of the questions from the OP), the last thing on my mind is coming on RAWK and spending my free time debating, reading, or writing on this topic. It's also far more tedious (and incredibly boring) when a lot of the debates concern the same posters, with the same views, using the same arguments, on different threads and at different times, over, and over again. I’ve already had my say (stored within RAWK archives) on the topic of Islam and extremism, so I won’t be touching upon that topic, but the OP was interesting. And the thread title happened to show up on the main RAWK page when I logged on. So I thought I’d add my thoughts, especially as it’s somehow relevant to what we’ve been working on over the past year or so. I thought I might share how we’ve tried to tackle the subject of violent religious extremism in our country. It might be interesting for people working in similar fields (but different countries), or for the general reader that wants to know what can be done closer to home. I’ll leave the issue of whether we should bomb ISIS or not (or some other tactic) for others to debate. This is what we’ve done over here, and in or order not to divulge too much information, I’d rather not say where “here” is.
Apologies in advance, for keeping some things in the dark. Additionally, this is a longish post (those that have read some of my earlier posts on subjects concerning Islam, are probably already used to it by now), so consider yourself warned.
To start off with, and to clarify for the OP, I don’t have any military background, my work is mostly working on the partnership between the city executive office, the state (including interior minister, prevention unit, or counter terrorist unit as I think it’s called in England), and the local communities. Specifically the minorities, and with reference to this topic, the Muslim minority youths (3rd culture kids, or 1st/2nd generation Europeans, depending on what terms you’re familiar with).
How we’ve approached the issue of violent extremism (as it’s labelled over here), and again, with reference to this topic, religious violent extremism (as opposed to neo Nazi or far right violent extremism, and far left extremism (as we’ve assessed it over here) is through
Prevention. Violent religious extremism, and its threat, has been a concern for us ever since we noted a number of our youths had travelled to Syria. We don’t have Imams preaching hate or violence against the West, violence between Sunni and Shia is unheard of, at least over here, and we’ve never had violent religious extremism rear it’s head on our soil (it’s mostly been violent far right or far left extremism, and even then, very little), this was a concern for us. Another point to clarify, over here, we consider violent religous extremism, and violent far right extremism, as two sides of the same coins. Both use similar strategies of recruitment, an "us vs them" mentality, both offer a philosophy that is founded on the principle that their "followers" or "supporters" are superior in moral might than those that they oppose, both use terms that consistently protray their "work" and "future vision" of the world as a matter of honour or duty, both consider themselves victims in their environment (and therefore as some sort of honourable vigilantes bringing the world back into the light), and both target troubled youths. Obviously, there are differences, but the main approach when we target a youth we consider is potentially "high risk" and liable to join extremist groups, is almost exactly the same.
Prevention.
We can’t control the conflicts that happen overseas, but the least we can do is make sure our citizens aren’t running off making things worse over there, and at the same time, potentially creating a recruiting campaign that puts our youths at risk. At risk both in the short run, and in the long run, gives ammunition to the Far Right extremists to spout their hate, which gives ammunition to the religious extremist to flex their muscles, which starts a vicious cycle of hate in our society where debate gets reduced to attacks and fights, as opposed to discussions and solutions, and we end up in a situation where we’ve moved from extremism, to violent extremism, and everything blows up in our face.
As a prequel, before we started anything, we worked very hard behind the scenes, trying to learn more about those youngsters that ran off to Syria. And we noticed several trends. Many were young (19-30), outside of school, considered as trouble makers, or troubled youths. Their ethnicity seem to vary, though most were born here, and interesting enough, with a few exceptions, many of their friends and families were surprised they had travelled as they hadn’t considered them “religious”. There was even a case of a convert that accepted Islam and travelled 3 months later; as one of the officers mentioned a while back “how much knowledge of Islam would you have after only three months? And how can that be enough to join a terrorist group?”. There were also a minority (less than 6) that went to join the “Utopia” of a Muslim land (they wrote to their parents after the fact), but even in those cases, we had a married couple running away from parents that disapproved of their marriage, we had another youngster that went from nightclub goer to “there are no scholars of Islam in this country, I know I’m on the right path because it feels right” in less than 8 months.
Additionally,and it might be interesting for some, research conducted a few years ago in our country (by the leading University), has shown that ethnic minority youths (or children of Immigrants, born and raised here) are more likely to find it difficult to adapt, and are more likely to face depression, stress, and other psychological issues (anger issues, lack of belonging etc.) than their native counterparts. That’s an alarming statistic, and in a way, society in general, the city and state, and the parents and minority communities have to look at ourselves and realise we’re not doing a good enough job. The more troubled and dissilusioned our youths are, the easier it is for extremism and radical groups (and gangs) to prey on them, and recruit them. At best, these youths will fail to become contributing members of our society, at worst, they join violent extremist groups (of all kinds) and pose a threat to their society.
So taking all the above into considering we (in this case; NGOs, Muslim religious leaders, city and state officials. I can't speak for the official strategic approach by the government as they probably have more layers and goals) approached the concept of countering violent extremism via prevention in 3 ways.
Firstly, we worked on enhancing the partnership between the city, state, and Islamic Mosques and representatives. We already had a partnership, but we’re more involved now. I won’t bore you with the details, but for example, we routinely have members of the Police visit certain Mosques (those that are comfortable with it!) where they can spend up to one hour completing Q&A sessions with the congregations after Friday sermons. NGOs, such as the one I work in, organise meetings between Imams, congregation members, and city officials, where we discuss issues that have sprung up (for instance the refugee crisis this year, or our solidarity Peace march just this past Sunday toward the French Embassy, in cooperation with other religious communities, and NGOs) and on their part, the city often run ideas past us, before they think of launching initiatives (concerning minorities). We also have NGOs offering courses, or lectures, on Islam, and especially, Islam in Europe (and our country) where the topic of what is culture vs what is Islam often discussed (it’s what we tend to be most asked about) to city officals, state officials, members of Immigration, Police etc.
Secondly, we work on our Muslim communities, and especially the Mosques. It’s not enough to be preaching “Islam is a religion of Peace” and assume people will accept that on face value, when every news outlet has religious extremists promoting hatred and atrocities in the name of Islam. As a result, we’ve opened up our Mosques. They’re more active with the neighbourhood community, and we’ve worked on many initiatives in partnership with local churches, where congregations from both the Church and the Mosque, visit one another and offer Q&A sessions. The concept, or message, of being both European
and Muslim, is one that has to start from the Mosques, from the Imams. This a message that has been unequivocally accepted by all the Mosques in our network. This sort of interaction, especially when heralded by their local community leaders, and Imams, spreads the concept of tolerance, and especially,
belonging, to our youths. We’re an accepted part of the community, we
are the community, we have responsibilities
towards the community, and we are all nationals of the same country.
We also push a more proactive approach with parents. It’s common among Immigrants that have children, to face the challenge of raising a European child, when the only experience the parents have of parenting is based on their home countries (massive culture clash!). It can take a toll on the parents (who might just give up and label their kid as lacking discipline), but also on the ethnic minority youths as they face challenges that neither their parents, nor other native youths, face. So we work closely with them, offering counselling sessions, with parents, and their children. And we also make sure that local representatives press the importance of parents knowing what their children expect, problems they face, and who they spend time with.
Gone are the days when the safest place for a child might be his bedroom (remember when getting grounded and stuck in your room was a legitimate punishment?), today with the click of a button, our youngsters can access any sort of information online. And if you’re angry, resentful, feel alienated, lack the sense of belonging, lack self-confidence, or lack some sort of goal in your life, radical extremism (in the form of “WE vs THEM, WE=good, honest, victims, and THEM= Evil, oppressive, nonbelievers “) might seem enticing enough to offer you that answer (on another note, there are eerie similarities between the motivation for youths joining religious extremism groups, and youths joining far right extremism groups).
Which brings me to the final point, the youths.
We’re far more active with minority youths than we ever were. We listen to them, discuss things with them, and try our best to understand the challenges that they face (as opposed to us assuming the challenge they face). We also work with Mosques and other religious communities (and youth groups) in pushing the value of education, of creating future goals, and providing support systems (mentors) for youths that might not have a clear idea of what they’d like to be. We're working with schools (at the moment, in the capitol city) to offer class visits to Mosques, Churches, Synagogues, whenever they're studying one of those religions. This gives them a chance to get first hand information, whilst giving them an opportunity to visit and "visualise" the other religions. The religious communities have been very supportive and have offered to host (and continue to offer) thes excursions free of charge (increasing the school budget is not as simple as it sounds). We believe that learning about other religions, and especially, understanding that each of them offers a "logic" as to why they should be followed, teaches the lesson to youths in school that making a "different" choice to another person doesn't immediately classify them as "wrong" or "irrational and illogical". One of the values that is important in our society is the right to think for ourselves, we
loathe being told what to think. And so, the message of tolerance is one that should go hand in hand with that value.
We also do not want to foster narratives that lead into “Us vs them”, or the concept of “victimhood” when it becomes far more comfortable to blame others for challenges or obstacles facing our lives (real or imagined) instead of trying to find a way to overcome it(what can I do about it, what do I control, and what is out of my hands etc) and moving on. Everyone doesn’t have to accept Islam is the right religion, everyone doesn’t have to like Islam (dislike is also a right of an individual), or follow the rules of Islam, and you know what, who cares, deal with it and move on. Would life be easier if the news was always accurate, if people (from all sides) were tolerant, if they guy down the road wasn’t racist? Yup, well life happens (that last paragraph always gets a positive response from the youths, and the latter line always gets a laugh).
In all three aspects (with City and State officials, Muslim communities, and minority youths), we offer lectures, and discussions on Islam. We have Mosques that follow different interpretation within Islam, but that is wholly different than violent religious extremism (as I've mentioned, cherry picking verses without any context is misinformation based on an agenda, not an interpretation), when it comes to violence, all the Religious community leaders and Imams preach the same message, and so we're not concerned about Mosque A offering a different stance than Mosque B (on the topic of violence). Our youths are getting the same messages concerning Islam, which we feel offers an additional element to prevention. We want to change their state of minds into a more positive outlook with all the activities and discussions we have, and at the same time, we want them to understand the core message of Islam.
Simply having that foundation of knowledge concerning Islam, without addressing other external problems the youths face, might not be a solution in of itself to counter radicalism and extremism, but together with all the other aspects mentioned above, should make a difference (we're counting on it!)
As for the youths already in Syria, it seems very tricky bringing them back. From our part, we'll over rehabilitation services, counselling, etc. though obviously, those that commited illegal acts over there will bear the punishments. However, whilst it's surprisingly easy to end up in Syria and among ISIS, it's exceedingly difficult to get allowed back out of their grasps. We have contact with many of our citizens over there (via family and friends), and it seems once you become part of ISIS, they don't let you back out. You don't get to change your mind (which many did within the first few months). All the families can do is keep sending them money for food and shelter, hope that they stay out of harms way, and hopefully they eventually find a way out of there. I think we need to remember that, when we're talking about people returning. There will be some that were naive and ignorant enough, to run away trying to make statements to their families, friends, or society, and though they are guilty of sympathising and joining a terrorist group like ISIS, they shouldn't be tarred with the same brush as those running,organising, and killing.
Now that’s a “brief” summary into what we’ve done. It’s obviously easier for us, than say, in France or England, because we have a smaller community of Muslims, we don’t have a colonial history or a prior foreign policy where we might have bombed anyone, and we have the benefit of hindsight. We can see what other countries with a far older history of Immigration have done, what policies worked, or didn’t, and learn from that.
But as they say, spending more time working on solutions, and less time complaining about the problems, might require more work, but it leads to less problems.
