Herald Sun and Courier Mail, 6 October 2015
Path of least resistance produces least results in fighting radicalisation
THE gnashing of teeth over another radicalised teenager and another innocent fatality has triggered questions on how this could have been averted. While Strike Force Fellow rewinds the video footage in this critical incident investigation, authority figures rewind the recent years to see how this angry kid escaped their radars.
These authorities include police, politicians, imams and professionals who work with youth. Too often, the incubation takes place out of their gaze in the darkness of a bedroom and the glow of a laptop, where one beckoning voice to take up arms is amplified, while voices of reason are drowned out.
The counter-radicalisation authorities have knocked on many doors but they are the doors of least resistance and have produced the least results.
Ministers visiting respected imams have produced many meetings, consultations and photographs. But breaking bread together has not broken the radicalisation pathway.
These imams are often locked up in offices, late at night, holding committee meetings, planning religious events and fielding media questions. Like clergy in other faiths, they are more likely to be sitting at a boardroom table than sitting opposite an angry teenager who refuses to pray at the mosque.
ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use Western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation: “For all my brothers living in the West, I know how you feel … you feel depressed … the cure for the depression is jihad.”
ISIS recruitment videos have been “successful” because they use western youth as their beckoning mouthpieces, appealing in English to their peers that they understand their isolation.
The young recruiters also tell their vulnerable targets not to listen to their imams or their parents. Hence, the youth are less likely to pray in the traditional mosques.
Community engagement with Muslim elders renders a similar result. Having been involved in these honorary roles for more than 25 years, we could point bureaucrats in the right direction and we could organise forums but we are unlikely to be personally acquainted with the youth in question.
Consulting with social workers and youth workers is a step closer to the grassroots but the teenagers in these environments have at least broken their social isolation and hear a diversity of voices. The youth on dangerous pathways are less likely to attend the PCYC or sports clubs but they may be in their social neighbourhood.
The suggestion by Attorney-General George Brandis that school teachers could be trained to “spot a jihadi” oversimplifies a complex pathway that is too often clandestine. Memos could be issued about this “de-radicalisation in schools strategy” but it risks creating false alarms and Islamophobia in school grounds, while missing other forms of radicalisation such as white supremacy. Engaging with all these adult groups who understand their responsibility to collaborate with police and politicians is the well-worn path but the path to radicalised youth may require detouring off these smooth surfaces.
When authorities intercept a teenager on this radicalisation path, there is often moral panic about homegrown jihadis and the threat that this dangerous disease may be contagious. But that situation presents a perfect opportunity to learn about the pathway from an “expert”. Which websites did they visit? What were they promised? Who are their recruiters? Such a person could be galvanised and later deployed as the frontline of defence in the grassroots and cyberspace resistance against radicalisation.
The defecting and disillusioned jihadis who have renounced ISIS are the true “experts” whose first-hand testimony from behind bars could be recorded as a counter-narrative. When isolated youth key in trigger words in the search engine of their computers, this pop-up video could automatically appear, from youth to youth, warning their peers about the three-dimensional reality, compared with the two-dimensional rhetoric.
These credible counter-narrative videos could refer to the imprisonment resulting from breaking the foreign fighters legislation.
They can inoculate other vulnerable youth against this dead-end street that was sold as a path to paradise. Youth peers are more likely to derail the radicalisation pathway by planting seeds of doubt and creating opportunities to offer non-violent alternatives to redressing isolation and anger.
This may include sports groups, political parties, prayer groups, social justice groups and even expert work in de-radicalisation.
In my first job as a street worker with runaway youth, my most effective outreach was done by former street kids whose understanding of the plight and emotions was lifesaving.
In my book What My Daughters Taught Me, I explain how teenagers have so much to teach – if we open our ears and listen. By helping me to become a better widowed parent with mutual honesty and respect, I did not need to discover any dark secrets second-hand.
Youth are a fountain of wisdom, waiting to be heard.