John Maguire ISIS video is silly, say radicalization experts

I think the experts have it about right. The videos may resonate with some who are already down the radicalization path but are unlikely to trigger interest in radicalization:

[Amarnath] Amarasingam says ISIS’s belief that it can win followers by throwing a few local references into its boilerplate message about Muslim grievances is ineffective.

Theyre “making an argument from deep inside the jihadi narrative,” hoping that it will resonate with westerners “who don’t believe in that narrative.”

The fact that Maguire emphasizes that he was a “bright” student with a “strong” grade-point average in university is ISIS’s attempt to counter the idea that Westerners who join the group suffer from mental problems, says Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria.

Maguire appears to be challenging “the notion that only terribly alienated, dislocated, or mentally disturbed people might be attracted to this particular religious or political ideology,” says Bramadat, who is also the co-editor of the book Religious Radicalization in Canada and Beyond.

“By underlining his very ordinary upbringing – the hockey, the music – he is saying, Look, I have been a normal member of Canadian culture. I know what I am talking about. I am not an outsider.”

But any right-thinking person can see through it, says [Robert] Heft. “Who is [the message] really going to? A young, uneducated, sometimes depressed and unstable person in society.

“Theres nobody who is a balanced person who says, Wow, he’s fighting a great cause.”

John Maguire ISIS video is silly, say radicalization experts – CBC News – Latest Canada, World, Entertainment and Business News.