Watched on January 24 2019
"Radicalized Youth episode | Rethinking Radicalisation"
- To watch click here: Radicalized Youth episode | Rethinking Radicalisation
- by al-Jazeera
“While the British government claims to celebrate diversity many feel their main policy against violent extremism reinforces these attitudes.” - Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou
PREVENT (UK government strategy against terrorism initiative) So-called signs of radicalisation that somebody might be vulnerable to radicalisation /extremism: change in behaviour. change in social groups, change in moods (e.g. aggressive), change in dress - but these are also acts of adolescents” - Robert Hindle - Education lecturer, University of Manchester
“Children and students with the so-called signs of radicalisation are then questioned by counter-terrorism police.”
“Between 2015 and 2016, 65% of all referrals to PREVENT were Muslims. 95% of those cases required no further action.“
“We’ve documented nearly 500 cases of individuals by PREVENT, these cases demonstrated islamophobic framework that operate within the policy.” - Anna Sekular (PREVENT watch)
PREVENT requires millions of Britain’s public servants to look for signs of radicalisation.”
“This creates fear, mistrust in others, vulnerability, paranoia, and uncertainty” -Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou
To find out how this might affect young people psychologically, Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou meets a psychologist, Laverne Antrobus, who deals with marginalized young people.
As we know children are perceptive and receptive, so thinking that mental health professionals, teachers are screening them this could fragment the way in which you can have a relationship with a child. For a child who is developing and trying to find a way in this world, this has an impact on one’s sense of self. This creates an impact of “You don’t belong here”.
The narrative grows of everybody feeling that’s difficult with this child. Suddenly children find themselves excluded, not in mainstream schools, in referral units, struggling internally. -> this creates a gathering momentum for many of them to join gangs or violent groups because that is the trajectory and it’s very difficult to resist.
“Many reports show that injustice and alienation are factors in making people susceptible to the appeal for groups like the Islamic State who have found ways to turn the west glamorization of violence against itself.” - Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou
“One of the key innovations of the Islamic State was its platform, the videos that they have upgraded to a much more of a different level of sophistication, of quality.
In effect, a certain entertainment driven Hollywood eyesed video games kind of approach which we hadn’t seen.” - Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou
“Specifically, when it comes to the youth from the Western world, I think it was the perfect storm… They spoke directly to them; there is many many videos by ISIS saying to these communities, you know, what kind of lives are you living? are you happy there? why don’t you come here?”… They speak to vulnerabilities, they speak to a sense of identities and development. They speak to them in connecting to the realities of the discrimination they are going through.” - Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou
Dr. Mahmoud Mohamedou tries to persuade government officials to change their approach to tackling political violence.
“The main question, that which I study is not: “who is the global ISIL generation? For these youths, Islam is much more a story than a religion. The theology does not interest them.
We either pathologist the violence or turn it into a question of delinquency or we attribute it to religious fanaticism. But we are unable to think clearly about the violent phenomena of today’s youth which ultimately comes from a profound feeling of alienation.” - Olivier Roy