Posted on 02/16/2009 12:09:42 PM PST by forkinsocket
The film Recycle delves into the conscience of a jihadist – and brilliantly troubles our ideas about Islamic radicalism, writes Thomas Hegghammer
In the mid-2000s, one of the most pervasive buzzwords in counter-terrorism circles was “radicalisation”, referring to the process by which more or less ordinary individuals become terrorists. Scholars and analysts around the world pored over biographies of militants, deployed statistical tools and conducted in-depth interviews, all in the hope of finding the drivers of radicalisation so that policymakers could address them. Some important discoveries were made, among them the fact that people are usually drawn socially into radical circles before they adopt a radical ideology, rather than vice versa. But no one really found a clear answer to the question: What produces terrorists?
In the past few years, the focus has shifted to deradicalisation – the idea that individual militants, if treated a certain way, can abandon violence and revert to a normal life. The deradicalisation idea has proved immensely popular with policymakers, who have seen prisons fill during the war on terror but realise detainees cannot be held indefinitely. Many countries have launched deradicalisation programmes for detained jihadists. One of the most famous of these was developed in Saudi Arabia, where foreign observers have been flocking to study “soft” Saudi counterterrorism. Described as “Betty Ford clinics for jihad”, the Saudi rehabilitation centres apply a combination of therapy, instruction, family pressure and financial incentives with seemingly encouraging results. More recently, however, the return of several Saudi former Guantanamo detainees to al Qa’eda’s ranks has raised fears of recidivism.
Scholars are only beginning to understand the complex dynamics of radicalisation and deradicalisation. They disagree widely, especially over the relative importance of religious ideology versus material grievances.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenational.ae ...
Coming soon to an Obama regime re-education camp near you...
I do not buy it at all. As the Koran is a book of hate, and the problem is getting worse and worse.
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