Dr. Nader Hashemi:

We can always do more but we have to realise there are limits. In a free democratic society, governments cannot monitor every single behaviour. A lot of this has to come from local communities and families. This speaks to the question about youth radicalisation in Muslim communities. The key trigger that can predict if one particular young person, living in the West, born and raised in, for instance, England or the United States, is going to become radicalised is not religion - although religion is part of it and I will address that in a moment. It is an inner personal crisis, sense of alienation, or a search for a particular identity. This is the trigger that will explain why one particular person as opposed to another ends up leaving a comfortable home in the West and joining ISIL. There is a certain ideological and psychological crisis of confidence, identity and of social alienation which explains why some individuals become radicalised and not others.
Often those individuals who are searching for a meaning or a cause have in many ways, in one iteration of their lives, before they go to the ISIS, group, no interest in religion. The books that were purchased online by some of these British Muslim youths who had gone over to join ISIS were identified. These books included The Koran for Dummiesand Islam for Dummies. These are young kids who were partying, drinking and doing all things un-Islamic in one particular phase of their lives who then become, all of a sudden, hyper religious in another phase of their lives. They then think they can join some sort of cause, redeem themselves and fill a particular void in their lives by joining up with ISIS. Religion is part of it. There are also other things going on within the personal lives and in the family homes of many of these radicalised kids.
Generally speaking, governments can do more but there is nothing that can be done to absolutely solve this problem. A figure of 33 people from Ireland is a lot. The same numbers are seen in the United States and it is a much bigger country. Ireland is doing a pretty good job compared to other countries in the world facing similar problems. However, there is nothing absolute that can be done. A lot of this has to be done within families and communities. It needs to be self-regulating.
In Canada, where I come from, there was a problem with youth radicalisation. There also was an attack on the Canadian Parliament a couple of months ago. The local mosque in the city where the person responsible for that particular attack lived kicked him out when he started to talk about his radical views. That is something we want to see happening in more communities; radicals being kicked out of the community. That is one way of addressing this broader problem.
The question of youth radicalisation is also a by-product of a point I mentioned earlier. There is a mainstream interpretation of Sunni Islam that has been deeply informed and warped by Wahabi interpretations of religion that have distorted. Many mainstream Muslims growing up in any urban city in the world have, over the course of their particular upbringing, been exposed to one particular variant of Islam which they think is authentic and real and all other interpretations are considered by them to be heretical and distorted. That is a conservative, intolerant interpretation of Islam. Practices have manifested, that are very much localised and only to be found in the last two or three decades in Muslim communities around the world, where all of a sudden Muslims are taught that they cannot listen to music, wish their Christian neighbours a merry Christmas and that women and men have to be completely separated behind a partition. These are all recent manifestations of a puritanical and ultra conservative interpretation of Islam that has been becoming mainstream in the last two to three decades of the 20th century.
If one goes back to the earlier part of the 20th century, or to other moments in Islamic history, this type of intolerance, rejection and animosity towards women, minorities and Sufi Muslims is not seen. It is a by-product of a particular mainstreaming of an ultra conservative, intolerant, puritanical interpretation that has affected the minds of some of these young people. There is an almost identical overlap with Wahabi puritanical Islam when one looks at their behaviour and what they think is authentic Islam.
That is one reason the radicalisation is occurring. The challenge is to provide alternative interpretations of religion that challenge the puritanical, intolerant Wahabi version and give Muslim young people another option, namely, that a person can be religious and a member of a democratic society, respect pluralism and be tolerant. That is a challenge for Muslim communities, in every part of the world. They need to try to compact this particular negative interpretation which feeds into the radicalisation process.