After concerns that
Islamic State-inspired sectarian violence had come to the streets of Sydney,
Tony Abbott said Australians must reject the "death cult" with its
"apocalyptic millennial ideology". Similarly, Justice Minister
Michael Keenan this week addressed an international forum about the importance
of "meeting the challenge of violent extremism and the radicalisation of
Australian citizens".
We must stop young
Muslims in the West from becoming "radicalised" - how many times have
we heard this mission statement? How many times have we heard the word
"radicalised"? Does this almost obsessive focus on radicalisation run
the risk of radicalising would-be radicals? I'm not being flippant. Some
commentators say indeed it does. Some of the Muslim community representatives
on Monday's Q&A implied public discussion about radicalisation in
Muslim communities fuels the very problem it seeks to combat.
I'm dying to
understand what leads young Australians or Canadians or Swedes to embrace
violent Islamism. Yet a layperson trying to navigate the theories of
radicalisation espoused by security experts, politicians and community
interlocutors is destined for confusion. What causes radicalisation? How long
is a piece of rope?
The umbrella theory,
it seems, is that young men and women turn to ISIL or other extremist movements
because they are alienated and disaffected. That's the sweeping, dumbed-down,
Radicalism 101. But what causes alienation and disaffection? Poverty and
unemployment were popular theories after 9/11. Look at the immigrant ghettos on
the outskirts of Paris, people said. Look at Britain's depressed northern
communities. On Q&A, Neil Gaughan from the Australian Federal Police
referred in passing to the "socio-economic" causes of radicalisation.
But the theory is less fashionable now that many a trust-fund youngster has
succumbed to jihad.
We're more likely to
hear alienation discussed as a response to racism and discrimination against
Muslims. This includes the West going to war with Muslim countries. In the wake
of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, intelligence agencies in the US and Britain found
that the war had strengthened the forces of global jihad. Some Muslim leaders
also claim the government's support for Israel is a root cause of
radicalisation. In September, Greens leader Christine Milne said the decision
to join the campaign against ISIL in Iraq was "tearing apart the fabric of
Australian society".
Meanwhile, security
experts say ISIL propaganda videos, including the executions of Western
journalists, are recruitment tools. See evil, this line of thinking implies,
and you might turn evil.
After September's
anti-terror raids in Sydney and Brisbane, which mobilised 800 police officers,
Dr Ashutosh Misra from Griffith University praised the authorities' crackdown
on extremism, but warned the recent raids would be used as "a fodder"
for these groups' radicalisation programs. Some critics slammed the raids as
political theatre. This led Federal Liberal MP Alex Hawke to label such
accusations inflammatory, which suggests they might provoke a radical response.
So depending on which
way you swing, the anti-terror raids - and the way we talked about them -
either helped smother radicalisation or helped fuel it. Same thing with the
travel restrictions to Syria and Iraq. The government says banning travel to
these countries will help curb radicalisation. Critics say banning people from
going there will seed the resentment that leads to radicalism.
During the terror
raids Cory Bernardi mused that the burqa was a "flag of
fundamentalism". Yet a 2011 ASIO report warned banning the burqa
"would likely have negative implications, including providing further fuel
for extremist propaganda, recruitment, and radicalisation efforts". So
does the burqa signify a radical mindset? Or would banning the burqa harvest
radicals? What about talking about banning the burqa? Am I lighting the flame
as we speak?
After terror attacks,
Western leaders routinely call on Muslim clerics and community representatives
to condemn the acts as a message to would-be radicals in their flock. But for
Muslim radicals, wrote University of South Australia academic Yassir Morsi in The
Guardian in August, being condemned "is itself an affirmation".
According to this school of thought, supine community leaders provoke
contempt among young Muslims, further entrenching their rad... I know, it's
getting tedious.
On the shopping list
of factors that are/might/could encourage radicalisation are proposals to cut
welfare payments to people engaged in extremist conduct and not having Islamic
chaplains in schools. Add to all this the bewildering and varied individual
vulnerabilities to radicalisation, the needles in the haystack: single parent
households, drug use, criminal activity, religious conversion, mental
illness.
The point of this
exercise is not to weigh the merits of these theories. Suffice to say, some
seem sensible enough, others less so. (The one that made me laugh out loud came
from American commentator Lee Smith who asserted teenage girls in Europe are
joining ISIL because the West can't offer them "meaning and purpose",
all but laying the blame at the feet of One Direction.)
The problem with this
loose talk about radicalisation is probably twofold. In the racism of low
expectations it verges on casting Muslims as tinderbox volatile, at risk of
exploding if the wrong thing is broadcast or said or done. On the flip side,
there's a subtle intimidation at work. Everything we do is fatally wrong. We're
damned if we move against extremism, we're damned if we don't - and should a
catastrophic attack occur then sure as night follows day it'll be our
fault.
Julie Szego is a Fairfax columnist,
author and freelance journalist.
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