How families can counter the pull of violent extremism

2015/08/25 Leave a comment

Michelle Walrond, mother of suspected extremist, Luqman Abdunnur (see ‘My son has screwed up his life,’ Ottawa woman says), on indications of radicalization:

  1. If they don’t accept your family, they don’t accept you. If their new friends or teachers or clergy don’t want to know their family then they don’t want a “whole person” to join their ranks, they want a cog in the wheel of their mechanisms. When I converted to Islam, the first thing my imam-appointed guardian did was to ask to meet my parents. I barely spoke to my mother before I converted, but I was told if I wanted to be a Muslim, I had to make good relations with her. When I said I was once married but living on my own, he insisted on meeting my husband too. When my son, who was born Muslim, joined the mosque that taught him radical ideology, they told him and his classmates, “Most of your parents are not (really) Muslims.” And by a fabricated extension, he no longer had to give them their rights as family members. That lie was antithetical to Islam.
  2. If you get to meet your loved one’s new acquaintances, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that your loved one and his or her influencers provide verifiable facts about themselves. Mr. Bledsoe says: “Involve them in conversations. Get them to talk to you.… Go where they are going, even if it’s a religious institution.… We tried to go to Nashville to meet Carlos’s friends, but they would disappear.”
  3. Radical extremists prey on people with weak personalities. Unfortunately, moderate Muslim communities often encourage conformity, close-mindedness and banality. Positive influences should strengthen character, encourage creativity and innovation. In ultra-conservative Muslim communities “innovation” is a sin, but skewed interpretations of social responsibility are presented as activism. Encourage your loved one to challenge their fabrications and deceptions.

How families can counter the pull of violent extremism – The Globe and Mail.

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My radicalized son chose the other Islam

2014/11/27 Leave a comment

Powerful statement from an obviously distraught mother:

My son embraced the harsh, isolating view of the Wahhabis. He was encouraged to reject any information from non-Saudi sources. He scorned moderate imams and his parents. He learned to speak Arabic, read the Koran and form his own legal rulings. But since he’d never lived under a totalitarian regime, he broadcast their teachings openly. You mix a few ounces of religious fervour with a pound of a dogmatic, irrational ideology and you end up with extremists and terrorists. That’s the concoction ultraconservatism offers. His teachers and friends criticized him and withdrew. Now they claim they don’t know him.

They offer no guidance to men who take Wahhabism to its inevitable extreme. There is no authority among them who can rein in people who let their emotions or lusts inform their religion. No one among them takes responsibility for what they teach. If a follower becomes mentally ill, he will be scorned, perhaps accused of demonic possession.

Wahhabism or Salafism is the same Dr. Frankenstein that created the monstrous Islamic State, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda. It’s a politically motivated, pseudo-religious cult designed to extinguish the free-thinking liberality of moderate, traditional Islam. Salafism, fed by petro-dollars, teaches political obedience to Muslim rulers as a religious obligation.

Wahhabism is one of the vehicles by which ignorance is spread. Ignorance of Islamic history, Islamic law and modern politics fuel that vehicle. Ignorance should not be spread by religious leaders.

Here in Canada, religious teachers should be held responsible for what they teach and how their students interpret their teachings, especially when those teachings have led to the kind of chaos, strife and destruction Wahhabism has caused. Men like my son have taken sail on the ship of ultraconservatism, and his mentors have abandoned him and set him adrift. He was not a radical until he was radicalized.

And even when it does not lead to violence, extreme fundamentalism, in any religion, means living apart from society, with little or no integration.

My radicalized son chose the other Islam – The Globe and Mail.

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