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Are you, your family, or your community at risk of turning to violent extremism? Now you can find out as The Intercept reports that a rating system devised by the National Counterterrorism Center titled "Countering Violent Extremism: A Guide for Practitioners and Analysts,” lets police, social workers and educators rate individuals on a scale of one to five in categories such as: “Expressions of Hopelessness, Futility,” “Talk of Harming Self or Others,” and “Connection to Group Identity (Race, Nationality, Religion, Ethnicity).” The ranking system is supposed to alert government officials to individuals at risk of turning to radical violence, and to families or communities at risk of incubating extremist ideologies. Families are judged on factors such as “Aware[ness] of Each Other’s Activities,” as well as levels of “Parent-Child Bonding,” (PDF) and communities are rated by access to health care and social services, in addition to “presence of ideologues or recruiters” as potential risk factors. A low score in any of these categories would indicate a high risk of “susceptibility to engage in violent extremism,” according to the document. Users of the guide are encouraged to plot the scores on a graph to determine what “interventions” could halt the process of radicalization before it happens.
Experts have suggested that intervention by law enforcement or other branches of the government in individuals’ lives, particularly young people, based solely based on the views they express, can potentially criminalize constitutionally protected behavior. “The idea that the federal government would encourage local police, teachers, medical and social service employees to rate the communities, individuals and families they serve for their potential to become terrorists is abhorrent on its face,” says former FBI agent Mike German calling the criteria used for the ratings “subjective and specious.” Arun Kundnani questions the science behind the rating system. “There’s no evidence to support the idea that terrorism can be substantively correlated with such factors to do with family, identity, and emotional well-being," says Kundnani. "“It is obvious that, in practice, [this] would mostly only be applied to Muslim communities."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15 2015, @11:23AM
Summed up very well on the first page in one paragraph.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 15 2015, @01:51PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15 2015, @02:30PM
After scratching my head for a while, I believe the AC may be referring to the "Letter to the Reader" at the beginning of Craig Winn's book, Prophet of Doom, which I linked to. (The website is in a shabby state, currently. It used to contain the entire book in multiple formats, but now hosts just PDFs.) Here's the first three paragraphs for reference:
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 15 2015, @07:01PM
Thanks - that makes the GP clearer, although I don't agree with his point of view.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15 2015, @07:23PM
If you're referring to disagreement with the content of Fauxlosopher's reference to Prophet of Doom, then may I ask about what you've found to disagree with?
The Koran as it sits on my shelf has each Surah/chapter organized by its length. It is not assembled in chronological order. The history of each piece of the text is important according to the Koran itself, in Surah 2:106 [quran.com]. Newer Surahs that come into conflict with older ones replace, abrogate older Surahs.
Why this is important becomes clear when you examine the history of Islam's origins. Mohummad started Islam in Mecca as a peaceful religion, and the Koran reflects this in the earlier Surahs that read "there is no compulsion in Islam". As far as numbers of followers go, early Islam was a failure with only a handful of adherents. Mohummad then went to Medina and took an entirely different approach, that of the warrior/bandit-king. The Koran records Surahs from this time period with text such as "strike the necks of the kafir until all religion is for Allah". This later flavor of Islam was a resounding success, and as it reflects the last direction given from Mohammad, it has abrogated all the peaceful-sounding parts of early Islam.
Prophet of Doom is heavy with citations from Islam's own source code, as well as parallel history to put all the pieces in their historical order.
Now, you're free to hold a different opinion of Islam, but when someone disagrees that while early Islam was proclaimed peacefully, the peaceful coexistence aspects were abrogated to a literal call for world war, that someone isn't disagreeing with an AC on the internets. That someone is disagreeing with the Hadiths and the Koran, which is what Islam is.