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The Guardian reports that Britain's most senior Muslim policeman, Mak Chisty, has warned "Islamist propaganda is so potent it is influencing children as young as five and should be countered with intensified monitoring to detect the earliest signs of anti-western sentiment". He gives several examples of indoctrination being forced upon children as young as five (Christmas being "haram" [an act forbidden by Islam]) and teenagers being groomed to join ISIS.
Chishty said friends and family of youngsters should be intervening much earlier, watching out for subtle, unexplained changes, which could also include sudden negative attitudes towards alcohol, social occasions and western clothing. They should challenge and understand what caused such changes in behaviour, the police commander said, and seek help, if needs be from the police, if they are worried.
[...] Chishty said communities in Britain had to act much earlier. He said: "We need to now be less precious about the private space. This is not about us invading private thoughts, but acknowledging that it is in these private spaces where this [extremism] first germinates. The purpose of private-space intervention is to engage, explore, explain, educate or eradicate. Hate and extremism is not acceptable in our society, and if people cannot be educated, then hate and harmful extremism must be eradicated through all lawful means." [...] Asked to define "private space", Chishty said: "It's anything from walking down the road, looking at a mobile, to someone in a bedroom surfing the net, to someone in a shisha cafe talking about things."
[...] He said friends and family were best placed to intervene. Questions should be asked, he said, if someone stops shopping at Marks & Spencer [a shop perceived to be Jewish owned] or starts voicing criticism. He said it could be they were just fed up with the store, but alternatively they could have "hatred for that store". He said the community should "look out for each other", that ISIS was "un-Islamic", as proven by its barbarity.
turgid notes:
As an atheist who enthusiastically celebrates Christmas, eats chocolate eggs at Easter and carves turnips or pumpkins at Halloween, I find it very strange that people of many religions often artificially exclude themselves from harmless and enjoyable local traditional customs. I find it very sad that we have young people brought up in a strictly-controlled environment cut off from the ideas and views of the rest of the world. I also find it abhorrent that the Establishment now finds itself publicly calling for the complete abandonment one of the core values of individual liberty.
Maybe the rest of us shouldn't worry because we're not Muslim? Where have I heard this before?
Meanwhile, our government is attempting to tear up the Human Rights Act. It's easier to control when the proles have no rights.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission. Significant edits to this submission have been made - acknowledgement of the submitter has been changed to reflect this. janrinok]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday May 26 2015, @12:30PM
Its an interesting interpretation, might be correct, but my first guess after the observation of UK teens running away from home to join ISIS was its not a muslim thing its just the same old story of teens doing stupid stuff for attention, then when the journalists feed them with attention, more of them do the same.
Its the same old story for at least decades if not all eternity. Pretty much since the concept of "teen" was invented (you're biologically an adult, but we're going to frustrate you by treating you 100% like a child until an arbitrary calendar date at which time you're 100% an adult).
Flappers, motorcycle gangs, plain old gangland gangs, hippies, band groupies, rabid fans of shitty music, teen suicides ... I think we could play this game for awhile listing similar historical examples. The only new aspect is the teens accurately figured out that the only thing more likely to piss off their parents and get them in the news than offing themselves or becoming hippies is, at least in 2015, to join ISIS.
If you want it to go away, ignore news reports. Eventually the journalists will figure out that "teen ISIS" stories don't generate page clicks, and stop reporting, at which time the "cry for attention" emo teen crowd will find something else to get attention. The problem is I'm not sure offing themselves is necessarily "better" than joining ISIS. Or is it "better" to become a drug addict than join ISIS? Or on the bright side maybe they'd turn to shitty music for attention, hip hop / rap fanaticism would be less bad than ISIS... well... probably.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 26 2015, @12:40PM
Oh and as a follow up I forgot to mention its hardly binary. I'm certain at least some percentage of motivation for the teens is attention seeking, and at least some percentage is ops suggestion that its cultural belonging / pruning.
As a third proposal I just came up with the interesting idea that its like civil disobedience. From what little I know most of the kids get their media attention and are tossed in protective custody unharmed long before reaching the front lines. In that way its kind of a civil disobedience. Clearly the west has killed millions of innocent muslim civilians in the quest for oil and glory while obeying Israels orders, you'd have to be some kind of moron not to see that. If you're part of the group thats being genocided, and 99% of the population around you isn't in the group and don't give a F about a million innocent dead arab civilians, which is also certainly true, then you could interpret making a public statement and getting tossed into protective custody as good ole civil disobedience. Once in awhile, teens, being young and stupid, probably fail in their attempt at "making a statement" and instead of making a big public show of civil disobedience and sitting in the klink for awhile, end up coming back in body bags or captured on the battle front rather than enroute. By analogy imagine how we'd think of civil rights demonstrators if 99.9% of the population actively disagreed with them... "they're just crazy idiot kids running away from home to march and shout slogans none of us believe in toss em in jail and let em rot"