John Maguire ISIS video is silly, say radicalization experts

2014/12/10 Leave a comment

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.

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ISIS fighter from Ottawa appears in video threatening Canada with attacks ‘where it hurts you the most’

2014/12/09 Leave a comment

The latest ISIS recruitment video, starring John Maguire from Ottawa (see earlier profile on Maguire’s troubled past in  Ottawa jihadi seeking ‘martyrdom’ with ISIS in Syria | Ottawa Citizen):

“It follows quite closely to the theme of a variety of videos aimed at Western audiences, like the video aimed at French Muslims a few weeks ago,” said Professor Amarnath Amarasingam of the Dalhousie University Resilience Research Centre, who is studying Canadian foreign fighters.

“The interrelated themes are of course ones of religious obligation: if a caliphate has been established and Muslims have been persecuted by the state you are living in, you are required to leave the state you are living in. The risk of staying is hellfire. Maguire’s video is similar to the video aimed at French Muslims, asking a simple question: what are you waiting for?”

The video refers repeatedly to the October killings of two Canadian Forces members in Quebec and Ottawa by men who had adopted Islamist extremist beliefs. It said the attacks were a “direct response” to Canada’s military role in Iraq.

“The more bombs you drop on our people, the more Muslims will realize and understand that today, waging jihad against the West and its allies around the world is beyond a shadow of the doubt a religious obligation binding upon every Muslim.”

ISIS fighter from Ottawa appears in video threatening Canada with attacks ‘where it hurts you the most’.

John Maguire, Ottawa man fighting for ISIS, urges attacks on Canadian targets in video

And good in-depth reporting on deradicalization programs in Germany and Denmark in the Globe:

 Reversing radicalization through anti-terror ‘psychological warfare’ 

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Ottawa jihadi seeking ‘martyrdom’ with ISIS in Syria | Ottawa Citizen

2014/08/27 Leave a comment

Profile of an Ottawa man fighting with ISIS in Syria:

Counter-terrorism officials say they are concerned that Canadian fighters who survive the conflicts in Syria and Iraq may return home to spread anti-Western radicalism and conduct terrorist attacks, but Maguire does not seem to want to leave.

“He said he’s not coming back,” his aunt, Allison McPherson, said in the Ontario family’s first public comments about their plight. “My sister doesn’t expect that she will ever see him again, and probably won’t ever see him again alive.”

As a boy, Maguire had a tough time, she said. After his mother left an abusive relationship and then suffered health problems, he was raised partly by his grandparents. “John is a very smart kid,” McPherson said, “but there was always something kind of closed off, and he kept to himself. And, of course, that’s exactly what these people are looking for — a bright guy, kind of a loner, needing a place to fit in.”

According to his online profile, he went to Hillcrest High School and once wanted to be a hockey player or motocross racer. He left home for California for a few months but returned  and enrolled at the University of Ottawa.

During the fall 2012 term, he began musing on Twitter about the brutality of President Bashar Al-Assad, writing, “how can I sleep with what is happening in Syria.” But the friend said Maguire was not an activist and had displayed little interest in issues in the Muslim world.

“Now we’re all just confused. What I’m trying to figure out is how it all began,” he said. Was he swayed by something he found on the Internet? Did someone influence him? Was he upset about events abroad? “I wish I knew what it was, and I wish I could have prevented it.”

As Canadian-born, and presumably not a dual citizenship, he would not be subject to citizenship revocation unlike other extremists not born but raised in Canada.

Ottawa jihadi seeking ‘martyrdom’ with ISIS in Syria | Ottawa Citizen.

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