Good grassroots initiative led by Christianne Boudreau, mother of Damian Clairmont, and Dominique Bons, mother of Nicholas and Jean-Daniel Bons, all of whom were Western converts and were killed while fighting in Syria.
No universal strategy but the more grassroots and community level “soft” initiatives, the better, to complement the “hard” security measures. Sheema Khan also advocates a strong role for mothers (Partner with Muslims to root out extremism).
And for the mothers themselves, likely part of the grieving and healing process regarding their sons:
After sitting for hours and sharing lovingly built photo albums of their sons as little boys, parsing their lives and deaths and constantly replaying the questions about signs they saw or missed, they got to work.
Canadian-born Muslim convert Damian Clairmont left Calgary in 2012 for Syria, where he was killed in during battle against a faction of the Free Syrian Army.
The pair decided to form an international mothers group, determined that there must be a way to intervene and stop the radicalization process before it’s too late. They are sharing best practices as they find them and are both poking at their respective governments to step up.
Boudreau has also set her sights on establishing the Canadian chapter of a German group called Hayat. That means “life” in Arabic, and its aim is to work with families to help de-radicalize young men and women.
Hayat is an offshoot of a German organization called “Exit,” which has had good success in deprogramming neo-Nazis; as if plucking them from a cult. Hayat adopts similar methodology and applies it to dealing with militant Islamists.
After meeting with its organizers in Berlin, Boudreau came away convinced that with the right funding and staff, a Hayat chapter could make a difference in Canada.
“Its a sense of reining them [radicals] back in so they are closer to the family again,” she said. “They work with them closely after theyve taken a step back and decided maybe this is not for me, and help them get reintegrated within the community, finding a job, so they focus on the normalities.”
Mother of fallen Canadian jihadi launches de-radicalization effort – Canada – CBC News.
Satyamoorthy Kabilan of the Conference Board has a somewhat naive view of government and social media and its potential to reduce radicalization:
Despite the risk of individual mistakes and the required change in mindset for bureaucracy, I would also argue that the risk of not being a core part of the conversation and simply remaining mute, is far more dangerous. The benefits simply outweigh the risks.
We have recently seen successful uses of social media by authorities in emergency situations such as the 2013 Calgary flood and the tragic shootings in Moncton. Organizations like the Toronto Police Service TPS have had policies in place for some time that allow members of the force to represent the organization on social media. TPS has also been very vocal in sharing experiences. Learning from these and continuing to build a social media presence can help combat the threat of violent extremism in the virtual world. We simply cannot afford to have the extremists leading the conversation on social media.
By quickly occupying the public space around social media before someone else does, we can prevent others from setting the agenda and grant ourselves the opportunity to tell our own story first.
Hard to imagine any federal government taking such risks, let alone the current one, given the need to control messaging. One thing for local issues like the Calgary flood, another for issues related to radicalization where government will be very risk averse.
Better at the community level where there is likely more credibility than government.
To beat terrorists online, let’s raise our social media game – The Globe and Mail.
