RadicalizationU.S. Muslim communities step-up efforts to fight radicalization of Muslim youths

Before President Barack Obama last week hosted the White House’s three day summit on countering violent extremism, American Muslim leaders had already begun discussing how to stop young Muslims from being radicalized and recruited by Islamist extremists, specifically the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda-backed al-Shabaab.

Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Virginia, has persuaded several young men to abandon their plans to join militants in Syria and Iraq. Recalling his interactions with one young Muslim, Magid said extremists are becoming more aggressive in their recruitment efforts. “The recruiters wouldn’t leave him alone,” Magid said of the young man. “They were on social media with him at all hours, they tweet him at night, first thing in the morning. If I talk to him for an hour, they undo him in two hours.”

The New York Times reports that the federal government and local law enforcement, have in many cases, offered to help Muslim communities fight extremism, but some Muslim leaders resist cooperating with the government, fearing that they would be contributing to religious profiling and anti-Muslim bigotry. Muslim communities themselves offer prevention programs and counseling for vulnerable youths who may have been contacted by recruiters.

“The number is small, but one person who gets radicalized is one too many,” said Rizwan Jaka, a father of six and the board chairman of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society. “It’s a balancing act: We have to make sure our youth are not stereotyped in any way, but we’re still dealing with the real issue of insulating them from any potential threat of radicalization.”

Roughly 150 Americans have been recruited to join militant groups in Syria and Iraq; some have been stopped at airports or before they purchased their flights. A challenge many Muslim communities face is identifying who may be at risk of terrorist recruitment.

In October 2014, two brothers living in Chicago, ages nineteen and sixteen, along with their seventeen-year-old sister were detained at O’Hare International Airport while on their way to Turkey to join the Islamic State. The U.S.-born children of Indian immigrants each left letters for their parents explaining their motives. “An Islamic State has been established and it is thus obligatory upon every able-bodied male and female to migrate there,” the oldest son Mohammed Hamzah Khan wrote. “Muslims have been crushed under foot for too long. . . . This nation is openly against Islam and Muslims. . . . I do not want my progeny to be raised in a filthy environment like this.” His sister noted: “Death is inevitable, and all of the times we enjoyed will not matter as we lay on our death beds. Death is an appointment, and we cannot delay or postpone, and what we did to prepare for our death is what will matter.”

During the same month, three girls from Denver, the youngest fifteen years old, were stopped at an airport in Germany on their way to join militants in Syria.

There is no consistent profile of those who are targeted said, Humera Khan, the founder of Muflehun, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank which focuses on countering violent extremism. “There are no patterns, and that’s making it harder for everyone,” she said in an interview late last month. “They can come from every ethnic, socioeconomic group, any geographic area. But they are more often men than women, and they’re getting younger.”

The majority of youths who join militant groups are recruited on social media by extremists dedicated to recruiting Muslims around the world. “Their propaganda is unusually slick. They are broadcasting their poison in something like twenty-three languages,” FBI director James B. Comey said in a 2014 speech, adding that ISIS is trying to attract “both fighters and people who would be the spouses . . . to their warped world.”

To help counter online recruitment efforts, Khan hosted an event last year gathering about thirty young Muslims at the Farmington Valley American Muslim Center in Avon, Connecticut for a “cybersafety workshop,” where she taught high school and middle school students how to detect online pedophiles and Islamist extremists. “They are telling you, ‘Let’s go fight.’ They are asking you to share gruesome images,” said Khan. “Be very careful. These people are not your friends.” She told the students.