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Ideology fight
British al-Qaeda plotter Dhiren Barot - someone with extraordinarily detailed plans to kill - was jailed for life this week. The plots were as ambitious as they were shocking. But in the wake of that terrorism conviction, and a highly-nuanced speech from the head of MI5, it's worth noting that the feeling of shock does not just affect the majority in society. Right at the heart of this storm are fearful Muslim communities in which individuals are trying to comprehend the threat. And so while MI5, the police and others press ahead with counter-terrorism work, the real battle is how to undermine the ideology used by extremists to tempt youngsters to their cause.Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's speech warned of the scale of this task - 30 suspected plots, 1,600 individuals. "More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and websites on the internet. My service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaeda has developed an ideology which claims that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended." The MI5 chief's analysis indicates the huge problems that the government, security services, Muslim communities and wider society face in getting a grip on the mechanisms of radicalisation. Crucially, there are grave concerns in some parts of government and among communities themselves that there is neither a consensus nor a clear strategy in how to de-programme those within networks or to stop others signing up. The most pessimistic analysis is that the security services don't really know what they are looking for - while the communities themselves are too divided to know how to spot it when it's happening. Posted by: Fred 2006-11-11 |
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