‘I got cheated. All of us got cheated’: Captured German Isis member says he regrets joining terror group

By Richard Hall

The Independent, Feb 08, 2019

Lucas Glass had not long finished school when he decided to join Isis. In the summer of 2014, shortly after the terror group declared its global caliphate, he left his home city of Dortmund and set off with his wife to start a new life in Syria. He was just 19 years old.

“All I knew about Isis was that they were establishing Islamic law and fighting Bashar al-Assad,” he says, cutting a solemn figure under the watchful eye of his captors at a military installation in northern Syria.

“I came to practise my religion. I thought I would find what I wanted here, but actually it was very different.”

Glass, a German citizen, now 23, is one of thousands of foreigners who came to this country in the throes of a brutal civil war to live under the strict interpretation of Islam that Isis promised its followers. That is not all they did, however. Many played a key role in the group’s reign of terror, acting as soldiers, executioners and recruiters.

Over the past few months, as the caliphate nears its end, hundreds of foreign nationals have been detained by the Syrian Democratic Forces as they leave the ever-shrinking territory of Isis. But their capture is just the start of a complex process which has no clear end in sight. 

Most countries do not want to take back those citizens who left to join the caliphate, fearing they would be a security threat if they returned. Prosecuting them is extremely difficult due to a lack of evidence of what individuals did during their time living with Isis.

Foreigners leaving the caliphate know this, and the majority claim they had nothing to do with the group or were not fighters. They say they were cooks, doctors or humanitarians who simply found themselves in the caliphate by accident.

Glass is not one of those people. He admits to being a member of Isis, and to working for its police force for two years. But he claims he was duped by its propaganda, and did not discover the group’s true nature until it was too late.

Glass’ story gives an insight into the inner workings of one the most feared groups in the modern world, and the disillusionment of many of its followers as its fortunes started to decline.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, he recounts the tale of how he came to join Isis, and how it all fell apart.

“You can compare it with a US soldier who wants to join the army,” he says of his motivation for joining the group, speaking in accented English. “Why is he ready to join the US army, and go to Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria to sacrifice his life for the sake of democracy? We heard that they announced an Islamic State, this is what we came for,” he says.  

Glass converted to Islam in 2010, some 10 years after his mother had done the same. He had been familiar with the religion for most of this life, but it wasn’t until he got older that he discovered his faith. But he says he felt Germany did not afford him the space to live the religious life he wanted to.  

In July 2014, Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi issued a call to Muslims around the world to come to Syria and Iraq to build an Islamic state. “Rush O Muslims to your state. Yes, it is your state. Rush, because Syria is not for the Syrians, and Iraq is not for the Iraqis,” he said in an audio message.

Those words hit home with Glass. He felt it was his duty to go. He married his German wife, and a month later they traveled to Turkey, where he paid a smuggler to take him across the border into Syria. Shortly after, he found himself enrolled at an Isis religious school.  

“There were 400 of us in one camp. People from Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, north African countries,” he says.

Glass wanted to fight for the group, against the Syrian government, but an injury meant he was unfit for the frontline. Instead, he was assigned to the police force in Aleppo province.

“The main work was manning checkpoints in the streets. I would stop cars and look out for cigarettes and drugs,” he says. “I never pointed my gun at another human,” he insists.

He did this job for two years, he says. Life was as close to normal as it could be for a German living in an active warzone. But by 2016 Isis had gained enemies on all sides in Syria’s civil war, and began to lose ground in Aleppo to the Syrian opposition. Its fighters withdrew from Aleppo to Raqqa; Glass and his family, which now included children, went with them. 

Throughout the time Glass was a member of the Isis police force, the group carried out some of its most heinous atrocities. In August 2014, Isis fighters overran the Iraqi town of Sinjar, where it massacred Yazidi civilians and kidnapped thousands of women to keep as sex slaves. Shortly after, Isis members killed the American journalist James Foley. Then in September they released videos showing the beheading of American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, and then the execution of British aid worker David Haines. All of these were designed to maximise publicity, shared on Isis propaganda channels, and aimed at shocking the world and instilling fear in its enemies.

Glass continued to do his job, manning checkpoints for Isis while the group wrought havoc across the region. He insists he did not know these crimes were being committed, despite their widespread publication. It wasn’t until 2016, in Raqqa, that he says he had a change of heart.

“I had seen some stuff going on in Isis which I don’t accept, which I thought was un-Islamic,” he says.  

“Some of the propaganda videos of Isis, burning people, drowning them. I got shocked when I saw these things. This is not allowed in Islam. These were things I don’t accept,” he says. “After that, I decided to leave.”

By the time Glass says he realised the truth about the group, Isis was carrying out deadly attacks far beyond its borders. In France, the US and Tunisia, Isis-inspired attacks killed hundreds. But Isis was also on the back foot in Iraq and Syria, losing ground in both countries. The US had entered the conflict and was bombing intensively across Isis’s self-declared caliphate.

“I just asked to leave,” says Glass. “They give you a paper and you get stamps from the people who are responsible for you. From this day I lived as a civilian,” but still within the caliphate.

“I didn’t want to be a part of Isis anymore. I wanted to be innocent of these things,” he adds.  

Glass says he tried to escape once with his family but was caught by the Isis secret police.

Glass says there was a sense of abandonment among Isis supporters and fighters when the group’s leaders were suddenly nowhere to be found.

“Everybody was asking this question. Where are they? Why don’t they show themselves? They claim to be responsible for us, for the Muslims, why don’t they help us? The majority of people in Isis areas, even the majority of Isis fighters, hate them,” he says.

Glass was eventually captured as he crossed the front lines east of the town of Susah on 6 January. He was separated from his family and remains in detention to this day. His wife and children are currently being held with thousands of other families of suspected Isis members in a holding camp.

What comes next for him, and the thousands of other foreign prisoners held by the SDF, is unclear. The Syrian Democratic Forces is calling on foreign countries to take back their citizens who came here to join Isis. So far, France is the only European country to say it will bring them back. The US has also said it will try citizens suspected of Isis membership at home. The UK, meanwhile, has refused to allow its citizens to return. Defence secretary Gavin Williamson said last year: “I do not believe that any terrorist, whether they come from this country or any other, should ever be allowed back into this country.” Germany has so far taken the same position.

“I hope Germany is going to take me back, but I don’t expect they will,” he says. “I expect they will hand us over to the Syrian government.”

It is likely he will face prosecution for belonging to Isis no matter where he ends up, even if he was not directly involved in killing, as he claims. But there will be many who don’t believe his story.

“It is simply not plausible to suggest that there was any doubt over Isis’s true nature in 2014. Indeed, by the end of January in that year the group was drawing heavy criticism from even other rebel groups for its barbarity,” says Shiraz Maher, an expert on foreign fighters in the Syrian conflict, and director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College London.

“It is true that individuals within Isis sometimes performed specialised roles, serving as doctors, engineers and so on, but interviews I conducted suggest that they did this in addition to holding combat roles. A prominent Australian doctor, Tarek Kamaleh, was revealed to be doing just that in Isis propaganda, alternating between his work as a doctor and serving on the front line,” he adds.

It will not be long before Isis loses the last of its territory, bringing an end to the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Already, many here are preparing for what comes next. Isis has already begun to transform back into an insurgency, and has demonstrated its ability to carry out attacks.

But according to Glass, who once held the group in high esteem, it will never again be able to muster the same support it did four years ago.

“At the beginning, when they announced their caliphate, thousands of Muslims came to Syria to support it. But now we know the reality of Isis. They will not find any supporters anymore in the Muslim world. All these things Isis did, and all these crimes, made Muslims all over the world hate Isis. So it will never be able to find any supporters anymore,” he says.

“I got cheated. All of us got cheated. All of these foreigners, thousands of Muslims who came to join Isis got cheated.”

“They imprisoned me for one and a half months. They released me under the condition that if I tried to leave a second time they would kill me,” he says.  

From that moment on, as he tells it, he was a prisoner of Isis, and was forced to retreat as they retreated, from Raqqa to Deir ez-Zor. The Isis caliphate got smaller and smaller, its fighters faced defeat after defeat. Eventually, a string of villages along the Euphrates became the last holdout of the group.

The SDF, with US backing, launched its offensive on this last stronghold in December. The caliphate was surrounded, and battered by daily airstrikes, as Isis made its last stand.

“I remember a few times, me and my family and my children we went to the market, and there was bombing next to us, and I saw in front of my eyes women and children, gone, arms gone, head gone,” he says. “You didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. Every moment you expected to die.”

In the past months, an exodus of people have fled the Isis-held areas. The group’s usually tight control over who comes and goes has seemingly collapsed. Thousands of women and children were among those fleeing, many of them believed to be the relatives of Isis fighters.

Reference:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-syria-fighter-germany-lucas-glass-islamic-state-assad-islam-a8769911.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Caught between two extremisms

By Mohammed Ayoob, The Hindu

Dated: February 10, 2019

News reports about occasional acts of terrorism outside of Jammu and Kashmir, which for historical reasons forms a special case, attributed to young Indian Muslims have appeared intermittently in the press. In addition, several recent reports suggest that global jihadi organisations such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have recruited a few Indian Muslim youth primarily by exploiting the latter’s local grievances to serve their own global goals.

Many analysts, Indian and foreign, had assumed until recently that Indian Muslims were immune to extremist propaganda because of both the syncretic and moderate nature of Indian Islam and the democratic and secular character of the country which made them feel they were equal participants in the political process. Both these assumptions are now problematic, as several factors have been at work in the past three decades that challenge this conventional wisdom.

Wahhabi influence

The first is the increasing influence of Saudi Wahhabism and related forms of Salafism on Islam as practised in the Indian subcontinent. This is the result of several inter-related variables but the most important of these is the vast increase in employment opportunities in the energy-rich West Asian countries following the oil boom of the 1970s. This resulted in many Indians of all faiths temporarily locating to these countries in search of higher earnings. While a much larger number of Indians belonging to other religions moved to West Asia in search of lucrative jobs, both white and blue-collar, the religio-cultural impact of the encounter with the fundamentalist form of Islam followed in these countries, especially Saudi Arabia, on a section of Indian Muslim emigrants was qualitatively different.

Several of these temporary migrants returned to India enamoured with the obscurantist ethos of these oil-rich countries. This fascination was publicly exhibited above all in the adoption by a section of Muslim women, often under patriarchal pressure, of an ultraconservative dress code, including the niqab, or full face covering, popular in Saudi Arabia and some other West Asian countries. This dress code is very different from the traditional concept of purdah (covering up or modesty) practised by conservative Muslim families in the Indian subcontinent.

Protected by Sufism

But this display of presumed orthodoxy constituted merely the tip of the iceberg. The impact of Wahhabi/Salafi Islam on the mindset of a segment of returnees, who also passed on their preferences to a much larger group of relatives and acquaintances already impressed by the former’s newly acquired prosperity, was more profound. Islamic beliefs and practices among some Indian Muslims began to approximate the harsh Wahhabi dogma, which stands in stark contrast to the indigenous version of Islam in India. The vast majority of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent belong to the Hanafi sect based on the most liberal school of Islamic jurisprudence.

Moreover, traditionally Indian Islam has been greatly influenced by Sufi teachings and is, therefore, tolerant and accepting of religious diversity. Visitors to major Sufi shrines, such as those of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer and Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi, where people of all confessions come to pray and seek blessings, can testify to the syncretic spirit of Indian Islam. Consequently, it harbours natural defences against extremism in belief and practice. The ideological infiltration of Wahhabism/Salafism has eroded some of these defences and made a section of Muslims more insular and, therefore, open to extremist ideas.

Equally important, the spectacular rise of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism from the 1990s has had a major psychological impact on a section of Muslim youth, prompting their estrangement from the national mainstream. Inter-religious riots in which Muslims suffered disproportionately had been common in India since Independence. In some cases the police killed Muslim youth in fake encounters. The Hashimpura massacre in Uttar Pradesh by members of the Provincial Armed Constabulary in 1987 was the most macabre example of such incidents.

However, until the 1990s the vast majority of Indian Muslims treated such occurrences as aberrations and their belief in the secular and non-discriminatory character of the Indian state remained unshaken. The demolition in 1992 of the Babri mosque by a Hindu mob under the direction of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) luminaries and the riots that ensued, in which scores of Muslims lost their lives, shook the confidence of many Muslims in the secular character of the Indian state. What was most galling was the Central government’s apathy in the face of this brazen act of mob violence despite the fact that it had been forewarned. This event began the process of alienation among a section of Muslim youth from the Indian state.

This feeling grew exponentially a decade later in 2002 with the massacre of about 1,000 Muslims in Gujarat under BJP rule to avenge the death of 59 kar sevaks who were burnt to death in a train at Godhra after an altercation with local Muslims. What added insult to injury was the inaction, or, as the Human Rights Watch report on the bloodbath put it, the refusal of the state machinery to protect Muslim citizens.

More recently, the disenchantment caused by these earlier events has been reinforced by the lynching of several Muslims in northern and central India on the pretext that they were taking cows for slaughter or eating beef. The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, in western Uttar Pradesh, in 2015 on suspicion that he had stored beef in his house was the most chilling example of such incidents. It was followed by additional acts of mob violence carried out with relative impunity by the so-called gau rakshak (cow protector) vigilantes. Such incidents have led to a widespread feeling among Indian Muslims that the state, instead of providing security to them, now colludes with those determined to intimidate them into submission. This series of actions and reactions makes it evident that the growth of Hindu nationalism has acted as a major stimulus for the radicalisation of a section of Muslim society in India and that the two phenomena feed off each other.

Onus on governing elites

Opinion leaders and religious scholars from within the Muslim community have the primary duty to confront and defeat the malign Wahhabi-Salafi influence on Indian Muslims in order to preserve the liberal and syncretic nature of Indian Islam thus pre-empting the spread of extremist ideology among Muslim youth. However, the impact of the growth of Hindu nationalism on the Muslim psyche can be countered only by the policies and actions of the governing elites at the Centre and in the States. Only they can take concrete steps, such as quick and impartial action against those responsible for creating mayhem in the name of religion, to reassure Muslims that the state will not shirk its responsibility of providing them physical security and ensuring that they are treated with fairness and dignity. This will be the best antidote to the percolation of radical ideas among Muslim youth by removing their sense of alienation from the Indian state that in the long run can threaten the country’s security.

About the Author:

Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Center for Global Policy, Washington DC

Reference:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/caught-between-two-extremisms/article26231338.ece

Radicalised Jihadists Have Done Untold Damage to Islam’s Image

The Economist

Feb 14th 2019

No place in Europe has done more to nurture Europe’s jihadists than the quaint neighbourhood of Molenbeek in Brussels. Some of its youth planned the Paris attacks in November 2015 and the suicide-bombings in Brussels five months later. Molenbeek is now quiet, but Johan Leman, a veteran social worker who knew one of the bombers, finds the lull almost more unnerving than the attacks. Since the jihadists first appeared in the 1990s, he twice thought they had gone, but they struck again years later and more violently than before. “They are incubating again,” he says.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims is law-abiding and has no truck with Islamic State (is). Of the 30m of those who live in the West, just 7,000 joined the terrorist organisation’s battles abroad. Even fewer perpetrated violence in Europe. Yet militant groups like is have a disproportionate influence on how the West sees Muslims. An opinion poll by Pew in 2017 found that is caused more concern in the West than any other international issue, above climate change and the global economy. A tiny radicalised fringe group is tarring Islam in the West with an undeserved brush.

Jihadism has its origins in the liberation struggles against Western colonialism in the Middle East. Religious leaders in Algeria, Libya and Palestine waged jihads against their French, Italian and British overlords in the 19th and 20th centuries. Defence of Islam was just one of the reasons militants picked up arms to push out the West. Once the foreign armies had gone, those hostilities faded. From the 1950s onwards Western governments and Islamists had a common foe: the pro-Soviet nationalist regimes that took power in the Middle East. In the 1980s they joined forces to remove the Soviets from Afghanistan.

Back then Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda, an army of predominantly Arab Islamist volunteers in Afghanistan, got an American visa to tour America’s mosques to raise funds for jihad. After Osama bin Laden took the helm, many of his henchmen found asylum in Europe. But the relationship soured. Soon after the Soviets had left, American forces moved into Saudi Arabia to oust Iraq from Kuwait. Allies became enemies again, culminating in the attacks of September 11th 2001 when al-Qaeda used hijacked planes to fell the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre and part of the Pentagon in Washington, dc. America declared war on terror, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and attracted a fresh generation of recruits to confront them. Al-Qaeda spread underground.

In 2014 is swept the heartlands of the Middle East, mesmerising Muslims and non-Muslims alike with the speed and barbarity of its victories. Al-Qaeda had been focused on getting the West out of Muslim lands and ending its support for Arab dictators it deemed apostates and stooges. is tried to carve a “caliphate” out of the Middle East’s failed states as a base and prepared for global expansion. Its view of the world, rooted in classical texts, was beguilingly simple. Those it had conquered were dar al-Islam (the territory of Islam). Those yet to be conquered were dar al-harb (the territory of war). Through multiple channels, from pulpits to social media, it launched a worldwide call for support.

This ideological shift triggered a clear change in recruitment. Al-Qaeda had aspired to create an intellectual elite and its disciples were almost all Arabs. is appealed to all Muslims. Their first task was to cement the caliphate. Those who could should make the hijra, or flight to the new state, emulating the followers of the Prophet Muhammad who left pagan-ruled Mecca for a new Islamic state in Medina. Those who were unable to make the journey should fight behind enemy lines.

The Romance of Radicalism

For a small, radicalised segment of the Muslim population, ISIS had a magnetic appeal. A disproportionately large number of this group came from the West. Muslims in Western Europe account for only 1.5% of the world’s total Muslim population of 1.8bn, but made up more than a sixth of the 30,000 foreign fighters who joined is after its declaration of the caliphate in 2014. Terrorism experts estimate that one-third of the total have been killed, one-third are still at large and, worryingly, one-third have returned to their home countries. Still, the vast majority of is attacks in Europe and America were carried out by Muslims who had never been to Syria or Iraq but chose to fight from home. Of 455 jihadist terrorists, 70% were citizens of the countries where they perpetrated the attacks, and half were native-born.

Earlier jihads, in Algeria and Bosnia in the 1990s, had taken place on Europe’s doorstep. The number of supporters they attracted were smaller, but for some young Muslims they promised adventure and heroism, akin to the Spanish civil war which drew European romantics in the 1930s. “I don’t see myself as an extremist,” says Ismail Royer, an American who converted to Islam and went to fight in Bosnia and Kashmir. “I see myself as having been naive, romantic, a Don Quixote kind of guy.” He renounced violence while in jail in America and now works for a Washington-based NGO promoting religious freedom.

Mr Royer had been radicalised by jihadist preachers who were born in America but had grown up in the Middle East and later returned with a new ideology. Others were swayed by Arab veterans of the Afghan war who won asylum in the West in the 1990s. France also unwittingly played a part in disseminating the ideology. It feared that the Algerian civil war then in progress might spread to Muslims with Algerian roots in France. After two jihadist attacks, including one in Paris in 1994, it arrested many of its barbus, or beards, causing an exodus to Belgium, Germany and Britain.

Although al-Qaeda had little interest in Western Muslims, other Islamist groups courted them. Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Liberation Party, was born in Palestine in the 1950s, but acquired a mass following in Britain and Denmark with its call to restore a global caliphate. An offshoot, al-Muhajiroun, more openly espoused violence. Its charismatic preachers packed London’s 8,000-seat Wembley Arena, urging followers to boycott Western democracies and eschew secular lifestyles as a manifestation of Kufr (unbelief). Other conservative schools, such as the Salafists, were less political and mostly rejected violence, but advocated keeping away from non-Muslims. Some Salafist scholars spread hate of non-Muslims of all kinds.

In some parts of Europe such teaching dovetailed with an already divided society. But it had broader reach, too. Unlike the foreign-run mosques of the first generation, it packaged Islam in the vernacular. On the pretext of recovering the pristine faith of the Prophet, Salafists purged the first generation’s traditional customs that second-generation Muslims, and converts raised in the West, found so alienating.

“They offered Islam for those who had no tradition,” says Azhar Majothi, a British Muslim scholar of Salafism at Nottingham University. Kubra Gumusay, a German Muslim writer, concurs. “Religious identity was often used by native-born Muslims as a tool to dissociate themselves from the ethnic identities of their parents,” she notes. In particular, it liberated girls constrained by their parents’ traditions. Many teenage girls were driven to is’s caliphate abroad by dreams of female activism, as well as the desire to escape arranged marriages. Some 17% of Europe’s foreign fighters were women.

An assertive Islamic identity particularly appealed to second-generation Muslims who did not feel quite at home with Western ways. “They were rebelling against both their parents and society,” says M’hammed Henniche, a communal leader in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris.

Not many preachers openly advocated violence in the West, and many Salafists opposed breaking the law. But when is surfaced, it found a constituency whose ear could be tuned to their message. Second-generation migrants had already perpetrated several attacks. In 2004 Mohammad Bouyeri, a Dutch-born Berber Islamist, killed Theo van Gogh, a film-maker who produced documentaries criticising Islam. The note left on his body read, “Europe, you’re next.” In 2005 three second-generation British Muslims and a convert blew themselves up on London’s public-transport system, killing 52.

Half of the jihadists who carried out attacks in the West since 9/11 were radicalised online, according to New America, a think-tank based in Washington, dc. Some preachers streamed self-erasing lectures on Snapchat. Their messages were particularly lethal in America, given the ready availability of weapons. Since 2013, 87 people have been killed in terrorist attacks there. “We’re bigger than ever,” insists a Danish organiser of Hizb ut-Tahrir. “You just can’t see us.” Germany’s spy agency agrees. It estimates that the number of Salafists providing a pool of recruits for jihadists has increased from under 4,000 in 2013 to more than 10,000 today.

Preachers ousted from their pulpits whispered invitations to meet privately to worshippers at Friday prayers. And increasingly gyms and schools became recruitment centres. Friends plotted their Hijrahfrom gritty estates and stifling parental control in the schoolyard. A dozen left one summer holiday from Campus de Brug high school in a Brussels suburb. In Dinslaken, a working-class town in Germany’s Rhineland, Lamya Kaddor, a high-school teacher of Islamic studies, discovered one day that her pupils had gone. “They knew nothing about Islam,” she says. “They took drugs, went to parties, had girlfriends.”

Europe’s prisons provided another source of recruits. They contained large numbers of Muslim inmates convicted for criminal offences who were already well-versed in skills like smuggling and gun-running. Two-thirds of foreign fighters in Germany and the Netherlands had a criminal record. Jihadism and petty crime were so intertwined that some used the term “gangster Islam”. Muslim chaplains found themselves being turned away when they tried to visit prisoners of their faith.

The suspension of Saudi funding, under Western pressure, also encouraged some Salafist groups to find less legitimate sources of finance. is had a particular knack for penetrating the underworld and giving criminals a cause. Infidel assets, explained is’s leader in Germany, were Ghanima, or spoils of war. Khalid Zerkani, an is recruiter from Morocco, followed the hashish trail from farms deep in the country’s Rif mountains to the way stations in Europe where many of the Rif’s Berbers lived, and eventually settled in Belgium’s Molenbeek. “He was a father figure,” says a local social worker. “He would ask about your future and explain how you could find a better job, a better salary and a just society under the Sharia. And your sins would be forgiven.” Mr Zerkani was arrested in 2014.

One of his recruits, Ibrahim Abdeslam, owned Les Béguines, a gay bar in Molenbeek that was repeatedly raided for drugs. He sold it six weeks before donning a suicide-vest and blowing himself up in a bar during the Paris attacks in November 2015 that killed 130. When his brother, Salah, who planned the getaway, was eventually captured in March 2016, his friends retaliated four days later with attacks on the Brussels metro and airport, killing 32.

Les Béguines was shut down soon after the Brussels attack, but would-be jihadists can easily find other places to meet. For some, the gangsters still carry street-cred. At L’Epicerie, a Molenbeek warehouse turned into a theatre by locals of Moroccan origin, teenagers offer their rendition of a parents’ evening. “You’ve been playing truant. Why?” asks the teacher in the play. “I went to Afghanistan,” shrugs the boy. The audience laughs.

For most Western Muslims the appeal of Jihadism reassuringly tails off after two generations. Only 7% of attacks in the West were perpetrated by grandchildren of immigrants. But police fear a new wave of violence when the current crop of radicalised prisoners are released. If places like Molenbeek are to break the cycle of jihad, young Muslims will need to feel properly at home in the West.

Reference:

economist.com/special-report/2019/02/14/radicalised-jihadists-have-done-untold-damage-to-islams-image

http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/the-economist/radicalised-jihadists-have-done-untold-damage-to-islam%E2%80%99s-image-appeal/d/117765

How should we oppose extremism?

By Grason Slover, February 04, 2019

www. journal.quilliaminternational.com

The term “Extremism” has always been somewhat vacuous. Its use is so widespread, and its deployment by some so dubious, that it often seems it has no serious substance at all. But while there are far too many instances in which ignorant or politically motivated individuals degrade the term’s integrity, there also have always been and always will be ideologies that remind us of why there is a need for such a category.

The main difficulty is in deciding how to distinguish between views we vehemently disagree with and views that are truly extremist. And of course, finding the best avenue to express our disagreement with those views.

This is the question at play in the case of the recently unearthed FBI investigation into California-based activist group BAMN, or By Any Means Necessary. The Guardian obtained official documents that outline an FBI “domestic terrorism” investigation into the group which was opened after they helped to organize a counterprotest against a 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. At the rally, the neo-nazi demonstrators armed with knives were confronted by a mass of counter-protestors armed with sticks. A conflict quickly ensued between the two groups, leaving seven people hospitalized.

The reactions of many to the news that the FBI opened an investigation into the anti racists – not the hateful neo-nazis and white supremacist groups involved in the scuffle – were predictably bemused. But these reactions reflect a surface-level analysis of the real problem in this instance and its implications.

The intentions of the counter-protestors were abundantly clear from the start. BAMN spent weeks planning what they called a “shut down Nazi rally,” through social media and posting flyers around the city that had messages like “no free speech for Nazis.” When the mass of protestors had gathered in opposition to the neo-Nazis, they chanted “When Nazis come to town what do we do? Shut them down!” When taking these facts on board, it is fair to say that it was the counter-protestors – not the neo-nazis – who were the ones that initiated the confrontation.

This type of behavior aimed at shutting down speech through force has been increasingly common. Incidents in Portland, Berkeley, Washington DC, and others have shown that there are no shortage of people willing to get physical in order to disrupt peaceful demonstrations by those they disagree with. There are more than a few examples of these tactics being used against rallies based on mainstream conservative ideas that no fair-minded person could designate as “extremist”: but that is neither here nor there. Regardless of the topic of a peaceful demonstration, we as a country cannot condone those who would use force to stop it under any circumstances.

Indeed, there are views so abhorrent that many of us would be motivated to take drastic measures in order to ensure that they do not become influential. There are even ideologies, such as Nazism and white supremacy, that have been the central causes of two of the bloodiest wars in all of human history. But the alternatives to allowing those we despise to speak freely, no matter how reprehensible their views may be, will inevitably create worse problems in the long term. Anything short of explicit advocation of violence should be permitted in a truly free society.

The nineteenth century political philosopher John Stuart Mill made the best arguments for a radical adherence to freedom of speech in his paper “On Liberty,” and they remain among the most important ideas underpinning the liberties we enjoy in America.

The first defense he gives is that hearing views we disagree with helps us to master the reasons we have for believing differently, and therefore gives us a greater ability to rebut those beliefs in a coherent way. Our goal should be to convince as many people as possible that, in the case at hand, Nazism and white supremacy are not just immoral, but wrong. The only way we can successfully accomplish this is by developing the skills to confidently argue against those ideologies.

It is also unwise to censor speech we disagree with because it gives a reasonable precedent for those espousing those beliefs to do the same to us if they ever come to power. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists could deploy the same types of arguments in favor of censoring today’s mainstream views of tolerance and coexistence that many of us now advocate.

Furthermore, censoring opinions that we find disgusting only serves to strengthen their supporters’ belief in them, as well as those who may be on the edge of committing to them. If we allow these views to be spoken freely, and actively argue against them ourselves, people can decide on their own whether or not to believe in them. But if we make it illegal to articulate certain opinions, or threaten those who do with vigilante violence, it will reinforce the narrative that a sort of “forbidden truth” is being silenced, and that the only way to hold on to it is to join whatever extremist organization is defending it.

Although it is unwise to silence them, we can still vehemently oppose ideologies that we think run counter to our way of life in other ways. We can organize peaceful counter protests, write argumentative essays, or even go find a person to speak with who thinks differently and try to seek common ground. There are numerous ways in which we can actively push-back against what we see as hateful or extremist ideologies while also preserving the right of all those who subscribe to them to safely speak their minds. If we adhere to strategies of peaceful opposition to extremist views, we can expect that the most logical opinions will win out in the free marketplace of ideas. And if we are truly confident that the foundational American ideals of tolerance and pluralism are the most logical, we have nothing to fear from those who would try to argue otherwise.

Reference:

http://journal.quilliaminternational.com/2019/02/04/how-should-we-oppose-extremism/

Why ISIS Propaganda Works

By Charlie Winter

www.theatlantic.com

February 13, 2016

As it stands, the international coalition is far from winning the information war against the Islamic State. Its air strikes may be squeezing the group in Iraq and Syria and killing many of its leaders, but that has not halted the self-proclaimed caliphate’s ideological momentum. Indeed, at the end of 2015, it was estimated that the number of foreigners travelling to join militant groups in Iraq and Syria—predominantly the Islamic State—had more than doubled in the course of just 18 months. What’s more, while these figures may be striking, sheer numbers are less important than intent when it comes to the organization’s actual threat to the world. As we have already seen, it takes a very small number of people to unleash great terror, whether in Iraq, Syria, or elsewhere.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s organization does not enjoy mass appeal, but it is certainly having mass impact. After but 18 months of caliphate-hood, the group’s preeminence is already coming to shape what it is to be a millennial Muslim and inspiring attacks far outside the caliphate. Hence, the strategic communications war—where hearts and minds are won and lost—is just as important in the long-term as any military campaign, if not more so.

To be fair to the coalition, it has not missed the ideational menace that the Islamic State presents. As a direct result of coalition efforts, especially those of the United States government, counter-Islamic State information operations are more prolific now than ever before, the quantity of counterpropaganda is snowballing, and social-media giants like Twitter are being more aggressive in their efforts to hobble ISIS propagandists. Even Anonymous has thrown its hat in the ring.

In January, the State Department restructured its own counterpropaganda apparatus, creating a “Global Engagement Center” to “more effectively coordinate, integrate and synchronize messaging to foreign audiences that undermines the disinformation espoused by violent extremist groups, including ISIL and al-Qaeda.” However, even in this new guise—which, while it marks an important push in the right direction, risks being too centralized within national governments at the same time that it lacks the requisite level of coordination among different countries—the coalition’s information operations are facing an almost insurmountable challenge. Such a state of affairs is untenable. To ameliorate it, a new communications architecture is required, based on three pillars: global strategic direction, local delivery, and a broader, more accurate understanding of how and why the Islamic State appeals.

The Competition

It’s no secret that the caliphate has a compelling story, coupled with a sophisticated ability to deliver it. But what is often overlooked are the underlying strategic elements that enable the group to land its messages so effectively.

First, while the international media tends to obsess over the Islamic State’s ultraviolence, the group’s propaganda is incredibly varied. Unlike the coalition’s primary weapon in the information war—negative messaging—the caliphal narrative combines positive and negative themes that appeal to both ideological and political supporters. On a daily basis, the group parades images of civilian life, ruminates upon the concept of mercy, and highlights the visceral camaraderie allegedly felt among its members. Crucially, it doesn’t just do this online—propaganda is just as important in person in the Islamic State’s heartlands as it is on its members’ smartphones.

The Islamic State expends huge amounts of energy building this composite narrative because its propaganda is being created for, and directed to, a number of audiences: potential members, sympathizers, enemies, general publics—the list goes on. Whoever they are, the Islamic State propagandists tie them all together by communicating the same core narrative to each—that its caliphate is a triumphant, model society that offers community to all who desire it, and destruction to those who don’t.

To active supporters and potential sympathizers, in particular, the power of this narrative steamrolls the coalition’s counter-messaging, which is currently set up only to address a handful of discrete strands of the Islamic State idea, instead of the core narrative in its entirety. This has led, at times, to coalition counter-messaging being bogged down by well-intentioned but questionable reproductions of the Islamic State’s ultraviolence, and social-media posts intoning variations on “The Islamic State is brutal and isn’t Islamic—so don’t join it.”

Second, the Islamic State’s media team evidently recognizes that in the digital-communications age, everyone—from sympathizers to adversaries—can be a tactical instrument of propaganda. Reflecting this, they have made the strategic choice to not pigeonhole themselves by reaching out just to sworn believers in jihadism or those that they consider to be potential supporters, as coalition governments so often do in their counter-messaging efforts.

By catering to a wider set of audiences, ISIS propagandists reinforce their message gradually to build layered support, which is made all the more sustainable because they retain astonishingly tight command of the Islamic State brand. Indeed, despite its geographic spread, the caliphate’s dispersed network of 48 official media offices—one for each self-declared “province” (of which it claims 19 in Syria and Iraq, 7 in Yemen, 3 in Libya, and various others corresponding to its footholds in additional countries) and nine additional, centrally administered outlets—seemingly never goes off message, always transmitting the same carefully constructed ideas of the triumphant, defiant caliphate and the promise of community. As recent video sets regarding the Saudi Arabia-led Islamic alliance against terrorism, the Paris attacks, and the refugee crisis demonstrate, if the “Base Foundation”—which is how the Islamic State refers to its “corporate headquarters”—issues a communique saying “Jump,” all its provincial foundations are on standby to say “How high?” and respond a few days later with the on-message HD fruits of their labor.

Critically, the aggregate impact of the offices is greatly amplified because, instead of disseminating the material themselves, the ISIS outreach team actively cultivates unofficial spokespeople who share their media outside the caliphate’s formal communications structure, encouraging others around the world to autonomously spread the Islamic State message alongside them. Because those unofficial propagandists are best-suited to identifying the ideal channel for reaching their respective local audiences—and tailoring the core narrative accordingly—the influence of the Islamic State’s communications skyrockets.

The Current State of Play

For the coalition to have lasting communications impact against this formidable enemy, it requires a similarly nuanced—and expansive—understanding of message delivery and audience segmentation. Twitter suspensions are not nearly enough.

As it stands, the coalition’s counter-messaging is not structured to attack the Islamic State’s entire narrative, but instead looks at and attacks specific elements of its messages individually. This structural weakness is compounded by a lack of credible voices and a surplus of risk-averseness, in large part because these efforts have, so far at least, been both led and delivered by a handful of Western governments. The resulting, overly bureaucratic approach persistently gets in the way of flexibility and dynamism, both of which are required for success.

It’s an uncomfortable truth that, no matter how well-intentioned they are, governments’ ideational responses to jihadism have been marked by memorable slip-ups and controversies. The media is always quick to report on things done wrong, and tends to steer clear of assessing successes. As such, no matter how much rebranding and restructuring takes place, efforts like the U.S.’s “Shared Values” campaign (an early-2000s set of commercials aiming to show Muslims living happy lives in the U.S., which was mocked as the “Happy Muslim” campaign); the ultraviolent approach to counterpropaganda embodied in a State Department’s “Think Again Turn Away” campaign (which, in purporting to show “some truths about terrorism,” disseminated gory videos among other things); and government officials swapping insults with jihadists on Twitter tend to be the most memorable, defining points for U.S. forays into counter-jihadist public diplomacy.

And, while it’s true that for every mistake there is a success story, even those are but drops in the information ocean. Indeed, even when supplemented by the efforts of the newly formed £10 million UK-based Coalition Communications Cell—not to mention other strategic-communications centers proliferating globally, from Nigeria to Malaysia—overtly government-directed initiatives are fighting an unwinnable battle. They are too centralized, too rigorously managed, and too reactive. The amount of their activity is structurally bound to be insufficient, and its content bound to lack credibility among the most at-risk target audiences.

Marginalized communities that feel indifferent or hostile to their respective governments, let alone supporters and potential sympathizers of Mr. al-Baghdadi, will never, ever be swayed by a foreign state telling them on social media that the Islamic State’s caliphate is not Islamic or that it is killing more Muslims than anyone else. For that reason, even initiatives that are ostensibly tailored to be more “local,” like the UAE’s Sawab Center (“the first-ever multinational online messaging and engagement program,” which operates in overt partnership with the U.S. government), are bound to struggle, simply for the fact that their messaging is unable to truly resonate with the right people.

To be sure, the people that matter have not missed this problem. In June 2015, for example, Rashad Hussain, former coordinator of the U.S. Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, noted that Islamic State recruits and sympathizers are “almost always influenced by a figure in their community […] who uses grievance and ideology to reel them in.” Such recognition is all well and good, but there is a big difference between not missing a problem and being able to take effective action to mitigate it.

A New Approach

What needs to happen is, in conceptual terms, simple. Instead of governments, the burden for reaching potential Islamic State supporters must rest entirely on the shoulders of local, non-government actors. They can be Muslim or non-Muslim, individuals or institutions, community leaders or cultural organizations. What matters most is that they are trusted as enemies of the Islamic State and hold preexisting and offline relationships with—and are respected by—those at risk of radicalization, the communities around those at risk of radicalization, and the general audience being targeted by the Islamic State’s propagandists. It is crucial that they are not perceived as being under the thumb of the coalition’s Western leadership.

To achieve this separation, governments should provide funding, logistical support, and training in communications best practices, whether to groups already doing counter-radicalization work or to those wishing to start from scratch. Since all this must contribute toward the shared goal of undermining the Islamic State’s brand, it will only work if governments never publicly endorse these actors or include their communications on official channels, unless specifically requested otherwise. With governmental support and the coalition’s core messaging priorities in hand, local actors will be able to benefit from a globally coordinated campaign that will, in theory, amplify the anti-Islamic State message more widely, in turn creating a better condition for success in each local context.

There are two major benefits to empowering such communicators. First, doing so would dramatically increase the volume of audience engagements, which is a fast way to expand the number of people delivering anti-Islamic State communications. Second, and more importantly, using the right channel to broadcast to each audience increases a message’s impact.

For example, if a government wants to get support for a policy change, it could be better off targeting the network of influential people around a given individual (say, John Doe), than by advertising in his local paper. John is far more likely to be convinced by his friends, family, or others in his community that something is worth backing than by a government nakedly pushing its agenda. Likewise, if the government is buying advertisements in a newspaper’s print edition, but John only reads his local on a tablet, he’ll never see the message in the first place. In both of these cases, if the government chooses the right channel—something it can only do if it has a strong understanding of its audience (in this case, John and others similar to him)—it has a much greater chance of convincing people of its argument.

Governments still have an integral role to play in the communications battle with the Islamic State. But they must shift their primary information activities away from direct communications, to flexibly supporting and trusting local actors to deliver messages on their behalf—a model reminiscent of that currently employed by the Islamic State.

Local actors are incomparably better-placed to identify the best channel for communicating than distant governments, but they need to be given the freedom to do so. This requires a large dose of autonomy. If, for example, a local actor decides that a poem is the best way to reach his or her target audience, then so be it. If they want to deliver the same idea through an animation, a conversation over coffee, a tweet, or a pamphlet, that is okay, too. Likewise, if the message itself needs to be tailored to be effective, that is acceptable. If, to get around the “Islamic-State-is-a-Western-conspiracy” trope that is so widely accepted in the Middle East, the anti-Islamic State message is dressed up in a way that does not necessarily cater to Western fancies, then that must be accepted as a necessary evil. For example, a Friday sermon criticizing the Islamic State’s interpretation of Islam would need to be considered acceptable, even if it contained a condemnation of Israel’s settlements. A closely monitored “anything goes” approach is the coalition’s only chance of success.

The Architecture

If that’s the theory, what does the structure look like in practice? First off, it would need to operate on three tiers: coalition, national, and local.

The coalition level—which would operate behind the scenes, except for direct communication with select audiences like global media and policymakers—must have primary responsibility for developing the core narrative of the operation. Ideally, that narrative would be developed by about 20 people operating full-time, drawn from the governments of a diverse range of coalition members, as suggested by U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel. This range would provide the coalition with the global perspective required to combat the entirety of the Islamic State’s propaganda narrative. It is critical that this unit have the authority to disregard outside influences, such that no one member state can direct the coalition’s narrative to its own geopolitical advantage. With this structure in place, the coalition would have responsibility for setting the strategic narrative, updating its constituent messages to reflect recent events, and regularly communicating this messaging framework internally to each member. However, its responsibility must stop at core narrative development and coordination. Decisions about how that message is delivered need to be left to the lower levels of this structure.

The national tier would be the lynchpin that connects the centralized coalition narrators with their autonomous local messengers. While governments must also communicate on issues of policy, within the structure of this campaign, they would be more important as a means of identifying and empowering trustworthy actors to carry out the direct communications of the global counter-Islamic State campaign, helping those individuals coordinate activities with other local actors, and providing training in communications techniques, if required. To enable those direct engagements, coalition officials must be willing to free non-government actors to make decisions without fear of repercussions for doing something that could be perceived as the “wrong” kind of communication.

The local, front-line level, which covers any place where people are at risk of radicalization by the Islamic State (essentially making it global) is the largest tier of the structure. Internationally, there are already hundreds—if not thousands—of actors, whether individuals or institutions, directly engaging with appropriate audiences. They should be offered incentives—in the form of financial, logistical, and training support—to integrate into the anti-Islamic State campaign, while at the same time enjoying independence in how they choose to deliver the coalition’s anti-Islamic State narrative. The messengers must still be subject to oversight from their national government and the central coalition hub and, in order to continue enjoying its support, they would also be required to prove that they are delivering counter-Islamic State communications.

To facilitate the speedy flow of information across the entire campaign, the operations of each tier would be tied together by an internal communications structure that would allow the local levels to relay their activity, and successes and failures, up to the coalition level, and the coalition to push key information or messaging updates the other way. This chain, moderated at the national level, would ensure that each step is coordinated—from the coalition’s message planning right through to the local delivery—to amplify the campaign’s core messages globally.

Crucially, such a structure requires contributions from all 66 coalition members. For that to work, states should be obligated to engage in the ideological battle against the Islamic State in order to be part of (and benefit from) the military alliance. With this being the case, it must be accepted that, even if the make-up and immediate result of elements of the campaign look different from one another, as long as they contain a variation of the same core narrative, their long-term contributions against the Islamic State are valuable. Communications in different parts of the coalition cannot be judged by the same standards, because the international audience is fundamentally heterogeneous—while it might be difficult for some to accept the idea of a country like Saudi Arabia participating in this, the kingdom and others will need to be a central part of this ideological fight.

There are significant obstacles to achieving this level of cross-coalition coordination, collaboration, and ambition, but this is what’s required. If the states currently leading the coalition are able to relinquish absolute authority in the ideological battle, in favor of coordination, they stand a real chance of making a meaningful impact. Rebranding the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications as the Global Engagement Center, and directing it to engage with allies bilaterally, as the U.S. government announced it would do last month, is a start, but it is nowhere near enough, not even when it’s coupled with the U.K.’s building of a coalition communications cell. Without revising the communications campaign’s underlying principles and implementing a wider, more holistic approach, the coalition will never be able to meaningfully undermine with the Islamic State’s outreach in the long term.

About the Author:

Charlie Winter is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

Reference:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/isis-propaganda-war/462702/