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S1E7 - Is "Counter-Radicalization" Hurting Muslims? | DoubleTake
There is a rapidly growing industry in the Western world dedicated to fighting radicalization, the process of individuals developing an intent to support or commit acts of political violence. But is this industry accomplishing what it claims to be working toward? If it is, then at what cost?
In this episode, host Mohamad Zaoud talks to Dr. Tarek Younis, author of the Yaqeen Institute paper “Counter Radicalization - A Critical Look into a Racist New Industry,” about the racism that underlies strategies and policies like Countering Violent Extremism (USA) and Prevent (UK).
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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. There's a growing industry in the Western world that seeks to counter radicalization, fight radicalization. That is the process by which someone develops an intention to commit an act of political violence or support the committing of an act of political violence. But the question is, is this industry, which is huge and we'll discuss it in a sec, is this industry even effective? Is it doing what it sets to achieve? And even if it is, at what cost? Welcome to Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute that looks into questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Google and Spotify. And if you want to watch us, of course, on YouTube. Today on the show, we're looking into counter radicalization, the industry, is it effective and how is it affecting everyday Muslims? With me today is Dr. Tariq Younis, author of the paper Counter Radicalization, a critical look into a racist new industry. Dr. Tariq Younis, assalamu alaikum and welcome to Double Take. Alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Jazakallah khair for having me. Dr. Tariq, thank you so much once again. You're a clinical psychologist and you lecture psychology in Middlesex University. When we look at the tip of the iceberg of this industry, it seems to have a relatively noble cause. I mean, all of us want to eliminate terrorism on our streets. It makes us uncomfortable. We've seen the impact of this whole thing on our lives and on wider society as well. But when you scratch the surface and see how much is being built under the umbrella of countering radicalization, the funding of programs in mosques, the funding of curriculums, Muslims being under surveillance, the development of new media organizations that
hire Muslims. I've seen this. I mean, my close friends were hired by organizations like Breakthrough Media, where they hire Muslims to then present a new narrative to Muslims. It seems like so much is going on that, you know, a layman Muslim doesn't really kind of understand. So I'm hoping in today's episode, you can help us figure out what is going on. I hope so too, inshallah. I mean, it is quite complicated. And I think it's complication really derives from how comprehensive it is. So I look forward to this. So to kick it off, a radical question to kick it off, sorry, I'm really bad with dad jokes. So the program in the US is CVE, countering violent extremism, same thing in Australia. In the UK, it's called Prevent. To kick it off, what is radicalization? What is counter radicalization? And what's it setting to achieve? So radicalization is often conceived of as you had introduced the process by which an individual goes towards the end of either committing an act of terrorism or supporting an act of terrorism. And counter radicalization, then, in a way, symbolically, is trying to act any point throughout this process. So any one, any single point by which a person can even inch a little bit closer towards terrorism, counter radicalization comes in between and attempts to rhetorically, you know, prevent that from happening. I think a lot of this is obviously quite commonsensical. It comes from the sort of, if we think about it in medicine, that, you know, an ounce of prevention is more valuable than a pound of cure. So there is a lot
of that sort of logic of prevention, which comes, which is sort of intrinsic to counter radicalization. But one of the things that's also most significant is the idea of pre-crime, because right now, this isn't just, you know, trying to stop someone from potentially developing whatever disease in the future. We're actually entering into forensic territory, right? We're entering into criminal territory, which involves now rendering certain people potentially more suspicious than others when we're trying to actually prevent them from becoming terrorists in the future. I think, Dr. Tariq, it's probably worth explaining the definition, you know, how would we define terrorism? Because these terms, once we understand them, we can understand the programs a lot more in the framework of Western context. So if you don't mind, I know kind of, it's really intricate, but in your mind, how should we define terrorism, radicalization, and then extremism? What I got from you earlier was that extremism is a very, very simple term, and that if you define terrorism in a context where we don't have any evidence to support that, an cowardly reaction towards terrorist attack, then those kinds of terms work well. If you don't define terrorism in that context, there just isn't any remarkable situation we can see an attempt to stop it. Reason though, is that intelligence we're grew up with isيع 파� display a map of Pan Am and other countries. When we look at the North Korean team, the reaction was that they were just doing some reporting to darum I think that's sufficient just for the sake of discussion. I think radicalization is probably a little bit closer to prior to developing the intent, right? So that's why counter radicalization can operate in spaces such as nurseries, you know, four-year-olds being referred to counter radicalization, right?
So why would a four-year-old really need to be referred to counter radicalization? It's not because they have any sort of intent. It's because it's presumed that there's things in the four-year-old's environment based on what they said, et cetera, that might potentially lead them way down the line, you know, in 20 years to commit an act of terrorism, right? So this is the inherent issue. It's also very self, almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of rather circular logic. I'm going to correct myself. It's the circular logic of counterterrorism in terms of counter radicalization that you're sort of assuming someone will commit an act in the future and therefore you're already policing them. You're already securitizing them. I think, you know, I think there's been a lot that's already been said about the definition of terrorism or the definitions. I mean, in the eighties alone, there's been over a hundred definitions of terrorism and this has been a very widespread discussion that ultimately terrorism can really not be defined outside the power of the state. So it's really the state who gets to really determine what sort of acts are considered political acts, political forms of violence and which are not. I mean, if we take one of the largest counterterrorism databases, which is the global terrorism database, it defines terrorist attacks as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation. So this is perhaps a common definition that's given. Though if anyone's paying attention, so what are sort of the factors here? We have a non-state actor who's using violence to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear or coercion.
No matter of their ideology or no matter of, you know, yeah, all of that. Okay. Exactly. And that's, that's really, that's, so this is where things become very interesting because if I'll, if I'll draw just on my own personal experience, I was once walking down the street in Germany. I've been attacked several times by the way on the street. But this one, I remember very, I remember very acutely because there was a man who approached me and he looked like he was about to attack me. Luckily I had a friend who sort of got in the way between myself and the attacker. And the attacker was screaming, du bist dreck. So in German, that means you're dirt, get out of my country. So he's saying you're dirt, get out of my country, get out of my country. He was about to, he was about to actually attack me. So there we have a non-state actor. We have an obvious intent of violence and we have, we have fear and intimidation, right? From that person towards you. Sure. From that person towards me, it fits, it fits within the realm of terrorism, right? And this is where things become really interesting as other people have already argued. If you really think about it, almost every attack of racism and xenophobia, especially by white people, would actually fit within a definition of terrorism. But of course it hasn't. The only sort of attacks that are often recorded by white people is if they are explicitly ascribed to certain far right groups. Now some researchers have tried to make sense as to why white people happen to be so privileged from being ascribed terrorism, right? And so there's often sort of that common reference that, oh, it's a mental health issue, you know, if they're white and you know, if they're terrorists, if they're brown. But you know, it really is that stupid.
It's, it's quite, it's quite extraordinary how much that sort of dissonance in trying to overlook certain forms of violence and really also then categorizing other forms of violence according to certain people to be terrorism has been inherently a problem that's never been resolved. And it's, it's really at the heart of, you know, who, who is really now defining what, what counts as a terrorist act. So let's, let's accept that definition for, for the sake of argument. You're saying it's a non-state actor, so someone who's not part of the government, who's using violence for, you know, political means, economic means, whatnot. I'm okay with that. As a, as a practicing Muslim, as someone who just wants to pay the bills, I'm okay with calling someone a terrorist if they're using political violence or violence to, to, you know, rock the boat and shake the system. And why do we want that? I just want to live a comfortable life. So what's the problem with that definition? Are we okay with that? So the problem isn't necessarily then the definition itself. The problem is that it's inherently racialized. Okay. From its inception, there's a really fantastic book, which I always recommend to anyone to read. It's called, it's by Lisa Stemnitsky. The book is called Disciplining Terror. And she provides a historical overview of how the word terrorism sort of developed. And remember, when, when we're developing definitions, even in mental health, there's a lot of depth, there's a lot of words which are inherently meaningless. I'm not saying that they, they're absolutely devoid of meaning. I'm saying they're very difficult to define. That's my point, right? So if you wanted to find the word well-being, there's really no definition of well-being. It's just all the practices, all the institutions that are formed around it, that conceptualize
well-being in practice. And counterterrorism is exactly the same thing. So for us to really understand counterterrorism, you actually have to look at how it's developed in practice, how it developed based on colonial logics, counterinsurgency, which then, you know, in the Cold War, developed as a particular field towards the Soviets, really. So it wasn't something that was reflexive. That's why this idea of domestic terrorism is actually quite new in the field. So when you're asking me right now, there's technically no problem with definition. It's really at that point, it's never, these things have never been issues of definition. We can always sit down and find what we think is the way they're practiced. It's basically what's done in the name of that definition, right? And what's not done as well. Exactly. And it's not just then the institutions that are built around. So if we're taking the war on terror, right, the war on terror is a humongous social conflict that's been that's now global, right? China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, everywhere around the global north, they all they have all ascribed to the war on terror, right as a strategy. And they have built institutions upon the strategy, which target particular populations, right, and has particular political goals. And I think here is really, really important. This is why myself and so many people, an increasing number of people, we all say we can't use terrorism. We don't want counterterrorism, because counterterrorism will do nothing actually in terms of securing people's human rights. You know, the sort of democratic values that people ascribe to, it doesn't it doesn't do anything like that. Counterterrorism, what it does is that it creates a two tier justice system. It describes certain people's violence as worse than other people's violence, even though
those two might be actually committing the exact same type of act, and might actually ascribe to that very same definition, right. And so it would be far better than to, to actually get rid of that apparatus and that strategy. And, you know, we might be jumping the gun here a little bit and sort of, you know, it's sort of the discussion I'm usually having is usually what I'm having at the end of any, any conversation. But, you know, the Transnational Institute, for example, which we can link, hopefully, gave a progressive sort of agenda of how we can go beyond the war on terror that is very, very evidence based, that's very theoretical. And that, you know, it's possible we can create a more equitable system of justice. On the topic of counter radicalization, what's happening in the name of this industry and the name of these policies, specifically towards Muslims? Like why, why are we, again, why are we, why are we so focused on this? Like what's happening in the name of counter radicalization towards Muslims? That's that's a great question. So, you know, there was a Muslim woman, she wears the niqab, and she went to see a therapist here in the UK for trauma. And her therapist, with a smile, told her that one of the successful signs of treatment will be her ability to remove her niqab. And that was obviously a huge shock to her. What's interesting here, also, if I may just add, was that she was afraid of a prevent referral, which I can get to. But immediately here, what we're seeing is that sort of rhetoric is very pervasive, right?
This idea of liberation of women, etc. All have that, all of that has become securitized. You know, another example that I write upon, I sort of analyze in my research, you know, just to express how concerning all of this is, there was a girl who was experiencing very severe domestic abuse. And she was she was seeing a mental health team here in the UK. And she converted to Islam. And there were already this sort of trepidation as to what's going on with her. She's still experiencing domestic abuse at home. She put on the hijab. And suddenly, what took precedence in the clinical discussions was the possibility that she might be actually radicalized. So because she put on the hijab, all of a sudden, domestic violence was a secondary sort of concern to what took primacy, which is the possibility of radicalization. And we know already how much obviously women's bodies, Muslim women's bodies, headscarf, niqab and all that has played such, you know, such an obvious sort of point of conflict when it comes to issues of integration, you know, citizenship, whatever, all of that across the West, right. So but here you see that link now between securitization and integration. So that's already sufficient, but it's then including other things. So actual grievances, you know, so our democratic right to have grievances towards what the state is doing. The logic of counter radicalization as as it then applies to Muslims is that when when
a Muslim has an issue with the state, that's immediately a vulnerability towards radicalization, right. And it's so much so that they even write that if a Muslim has or someone has a problem with counterterrorism policies itself, that's indicative potentially as a vulnerability to radicalization, right. So you can't even critique the very thing that, you know, the very thing that that's the sort of suffocating you without without it being without giving the appearance of potentially being vulnerable to radicalization, but then also subsuming all these other political grievances, especially Palestine. And we absolutely cannot, cannot forget right now, we have so, so many case examples across the West as to how activism towards Palestine has become securitized, right. So all these issues that we find are incredibly central for the Muslim community that are all now located within this pre-criminal logic. Like when I'm supporting counter radicalization policy, what am I supporting? Like what am I what am I doing to society, generally speaking? If you can just summarize that for me, because I know that, you know, I know that things are kind of built into this industry that, you know, we were probably against, but in the name of stopping terrorist attacks, maybe I'm comfortable with, you know, isolated events that you know, affect certain people. But what in your mind, it's much bigger than that. What am I doing when I'm supporting these policies? That's an excellent question. So the very first thing you're doing when you're supporting counter terrorism, counter
radicalization, you're already supporting what's now been widely discussed as this good Muslim bad Muslim dichotomy, right? You're supporting a potential logic that we can find and capture Muslims who are bad. And therefore you are good. And I think it's very important. I explained that that role for myself in that. In a chapter that's now publicly available as to how we can't neglect the sort of personal influence that has on us. You know, we know that Muslims who are continuously sort of condemning terrorism, who are playing the role within the counterterrorism apparatus, be it counter radicalization, whatever, they are the good Muslims. Right. But what's really important is that even if someone doesn't have that intention, the moment you're playing into a wider rhetoric or a wider strategy, which dichotomizes Muslim between good and bad, you're immediately throwing other Muslims under the bus. And by that, you know, I mean Muslims who haven't done or said anything, right? Or even if Muslims who are just not engaged in the topic or just kind of living their lives as practicing Muslims, don't really not interested, they're just laymen. Exactly. Exactly. And this is this is really, really significant for people to understand. And that's why we can't be self-centered in, you know, in our in our sort of advocacy to stop violence. We all as Muslims want to stop violence, but we need to have a wider understanding of violence. And that includes the violence of state strategies itself. And by the way, counterterrorism is just one of them. Right. There's austerity. There's so many other sort of forms of violence. Which are occurring through straight state policies.
Right. So I think it's one where we have to have a wider recognition of violence. That's not that doesn't somehow suit political agendas. So, Dr. Tariq, honestly, if I'm like if I'm the leader of a country, big if, and I have a terrorism problem, I won't leave a stone unturned. Like I'll do what it takes to just remove that. If that means, you know, playing with national identity, dialing up identity politics. I don't know. I just need to stop, you know, terrorism. So what's the problem with that? You know, I kind of get the logic. So, you know, what's really interesting, I'll be honest with you, is that your exact point that you just said right now was said almost in those exact words by Theresa May, the former prime minister of the UK. She said, if human rights will get in our way to enact our counterterrorism strategy, then we need to change or modify our human rights. Right. So she's already sort of exactly playing to that to that discourse that you just mentioned, which is sort of leaving leaving no stone unturned. To this, you know, it's it's it's a ridiculous premise in and of itself. But I, you know, just the sort of answer to it, I once drew an analogy for an article that I had written online, which we can share about if we suppose we take a mayor who has a rat problem. Right. And the rat, there's sort of a rat infestation in a village and everyone's sort of complaining about it. So what the mayor does, he comes up with this genius idea because he knows the the you know, the rats are scurrying around the sewers.
So he he poisons the sewer water because he knows inevitably that's going to, you know, at least kill, if not manage the rat problem entirely. The problem with that, obviously, you know, is that it's poisoning the town's water and now people are getting sick. So it's enacting a form of violence to stop an issue. Right. And I think here one of the problems with this analogy, really the limitation of this analogy, is that if we were to complexify it just a little bit more, really, the poisoning of the water isn't affecting everyone in the town. There are certain people in this town that are privileged from drinking poisoned water. And there's wide sectors of the population that are actually drinking poisoned water and are getting ill. And there's a lot of ways by which we can draw similes here to to the impact of the war on terror on Muslims. So if I'm going to just work off that analogy, so you're saying the poisoning of the water supply, I get it, is playing with what it's making people more equal than others. It's developing systemic racism in society. What else is it doing with regards to counter radicalisation strategy? So the actual impact of the war on terror is has been, you know, reproducing the fact that Muslims are a suspect community. Right. It actually recreates that very narrative, which technically they don't want. Right. Because one of the factors that we know might lead someone down any road towards violence is marginalisation. Right. So the more you marginalise anyone, really, you know, the more you suffocate them, the more you're actually creating,
you're creating the sort of atmosphere which is going to push them towards having to find some... So it's counterproductive. It's actually leading towards the actual thing that it's trying to eradicate, right? Exactly. Because if we think about violence, also, we have to imagine violence as a form of communication. I think we often think about violence as just simply just, you know, this act. But violence is often, if not always, a form of communication. Right. And so the more you're sort of suffocating someone, the more you're sort of closing off forms of communication. And I think there it's really, really quite significant for Muslims. What's that? What that's led to? I mean, here I draw on the idea of Islamophobia. And I think we haven't really brought in Islamophobia into this discussion yet. We know already that post 9-11, explicit, very sort of, you know, very sort of verbal and physical forms of abuse have increased tremendously. We already know that, you know, and I used to consult for the police for a number of years just on that issue. But, you know, we haven't really fully captured the impact of the war on terror on the Muslim communities. We have much wider ideas now than we did, you know, right, right after 9-11. But if we're thinking about poisoning the water, we have to think about what Islamophobia is. And here's Salman Saeed. He thinks he he he frames Islamophobia as one in which Muslim agency is depoliticized. So that sounds complicated, but really it's just about that Islamophobia comes from the violence of trying to manage ideal Muslim thoughts and behaviors so that this is what an ideal Muslim is.
Right. And everyone outside sort of these boundaries is is problematic. And, you know, in essence, that's what counter radicalization really is. Right. Counter radicalization is trying to create these sort of boundaries, these symbolic boundaries of what is a sort of ideal Muslim. Right. And who is who are the sort of out of bounds Muslims that we need? We need to always keep an eye on. And naturally, that that has related to so much suffocation. So if we think about the chilling effect, the chilling effect is that people stop speaking out. So Muslim youth, I met a Muslim sister, I mean, a sister, 17 year old adolescent. And her story always touches my heart, which is always why I share her story so often. She's 17 years old in a secondary school, so high school here in the UK. And, you know, we had just a private conversation. I've never really written about her situation, but, you know, she was talking about she was talking to me and she was telling me she was like, look, Tariq, I've been afraid of sharing my thoughts on issues for years. For years, a Muslim adolescent, 17 years old, has been afraid of sharing her thoughts. Right now, 17 for years. So how long of her adolescence, if not all of her adolescence, you know, she's been afraid of speaking out, of sharing her thoughts. And here we need to also remember that, you know, voicelessness, you know, is not just the absence of words. Right. When someone is afraid to speak, it's not simply that they don't have words in their mouth. That type of voicelessness is a very acute embodied suffocation.
Right. It's an anxiety. It's a it's a sort of embodied, you know, apprehension of if I'm going to say something, how are other people going to perceive me? Right. And we know that's so well documented. If we're talking about poisoning the waters, we really we really have only touched the tip of the iceberg of how much this has impacted Muslims. Now, clearly, there's going to be other Muslims who are going to, you know, probably love playing the part. You know, they're going to say exactly the best way of playing sort of the ideal Muslim. Right. And you're going to feel very safe in doing so. Career opportunists and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. So, OK, let's say I'm in I'm in your mayor's town because I like this analogy because it's starting to make sense to me. And let's say, OK, I'm telling the mayor as a as a practicing Muslim, don't poison the water because it's affecting society. It's making my nieces and nephews suffocate because they can't speak up anymore. They're starting to question their identity and, you know, the whole idea of good Muslim, bad Muslims. And then the police are starting to kind of racially profile certain people. And it's building a barrier between some communities and the others. So it's really poisoning the water supply. But as a practicing Muslim who wants to make sure the rights are eradicated. What am I to tell this mayor? You know, what am I supposed to support him with if I'm if I'm telling him or her that their strategy is just not working and it's it's helping or leading to a decayed society in many in many regards? How can I partake in the countering of radicalization or countering of terrorism if that's not the strategy that I that I'm going to kind of push towards?
Jazakallah khair. I think that's really sort of the golden question, right? Because and often, by the way, when I speak about this and I do speak and teach on this quite often, you know, really, your question can be summarized into what is the alternative? Clearly, if this is so much violence and everyone might agree, you know, listening to this, that there's violence here, but they might still recognize that, oh, there's still some form of violence or political violence which is occurring. So what can we do with that? So my answer to this is really twofold or threefold. Really, I think I'm going to I'm going to signpost the last point, which I really, really have to talk about. And I'm going to just say it out loud. So, you know, remember, we have to we have to understand we have to broaden our understanding of violence. That's really, really important. And I'll get to that. But I think, first of all, what we see already with the mayor's approach is that it's a top down approach. Right. And the war on terror and counterterrorism as a whole and, you know, all these various sort of propaganda units and all these things that are being sort of embedded within, you know, increasingly risk based surveillance societies. These are all top down approaches. So really, ultimately, that's inherently the issue with the mayor. Right. You can't stop making these decisions on your own. Right. But but one of the things that the mayor is going to accuse, let's say this is where maybe there's limitations in the analogy. Right. But there's a point here whereby there's a there was immediately a logical jump that's been made after 9-11, especially sort of post 2003, trying to understand counter radicalization that the Muslim communities aren't doing enough. Right. Now, this is something that few people have really unpacked or asked, is that very is that actually true?
You know, there is one study that showed that actually Muslims are very good at self-policing. Right. So, you know, Muslims, if you know, if they see someone who, you know, is speaking very explicitly about forms of violence, whatever it might be, they're going to refer them. Right. I mean, the very tragic Manchester bombing is probably, you know, a very explicit example of that, whereby the Manchester bomber was actually referred twice by the mosque to the police. So there's a point here to be said, OK, if we as Muslims were responsibilizing ourselves, what are we responsibilizing ourselves for? Right. And I think there's a point here whereby it's quite difficult to distinguish the responsibilities that we have among ourselves towards each other and towards society and the responsibilities that are given towards us to preventing potentially something that, you know, it's inevitable. The different forms of violence which are going to occur in increasingly unjust and unequal societies and some of those will obviously also be committed by Muslims. But obviously, we're seeing that a lot of the violence is is is, you know, there's a great book called Age of Age of Violence, which is show which is showing that sort of protest in general is increasing across the world. So we have to, I think, be very clear with ourselves here. What what is it that we weren't doing enough of? Because I think a lot of people immediately just jump to the same conclusion that the state is giving them, which is that the Muslim community simply not hasn't done enough to find and stop that. OK, so I think that's a really important point. I think there's another point here, then, you know, if we're going down that road, it could potentially be that everything that we actually had, let's say, trust in one another.
You know, those are probably one of the most significant factors whereby, let's say, a youth, you know, I've had youth come to me. This has also been documented in research, right, but just speaking anecdotally, I've had youth come to me who might trust me in sharing, like, you know, whatever issues that they're going through, trying to conceptualize different problems. Right. And that trust is so significant because that's sort of that organic way of talking about these things. But now with surveillance and informants, you know, and certain people who are taking state funding and other people who aren't, we know very well. Right now, documented in research, how that completely breaks the trust in the community. Right. That was a CVE program in Boston, for example, and here in the UK, where people just simply are unsure who to talk to. And that was actually very particular to my own research experience and to CVE in the UK. I mean, you could tell from my accent I'm not from here. So I'm going around to people. I'm like, what's your thoughts on prevent? I swear to you, subhanAllah, I've had people, my brothers just walk away from me right away. I mean, it's too risky. Because it's who is this guy? You know what I mean? But that sort of distrust is inherently so there's so many of these factors. There's ways for us to sit down and think about what do we have to do to rebuild trust within the community? Right. Even especially, let's say, among ourselves, but also within wider society. You know, and CVE is the antithesis to that. But then I think, again, there's also the point of violence. And I'm going to just end on this point, but I think it's so significant. And this is something I've also I relate to in the Yaqeen article, but I've also written a little bit more about. Let's take the idea of violence in and of itself and broaden it.
There's a recent femicide census which just came out here in the UK, which has shown that one in three women, sorry, one a woman is killed every three days here in the UK. Right. A woman is killed every three days, you know, from domestic homicide. And that's that's an absolutely incredible number. Right. And if you think about if you actually read the report, one of the things that they mention, why this is continuously happening, why it's getting worse is because femicide, you know, or domestic abuse, domestic violence in general is not taken as a systemic issue. Right. Now, hypothetically, we can create the exact same sort of surveillance apparatuses to capture men who might potentially become violent in the future. That all that is available, right. Sort of psychological profiles. All these things are available. The reason why that's most likely not happening, in my my opinion, I mean, this is a very limited sort of hypothesis, but one most, if not all, I mean, you know, the vast majority of domestic violence and femicide in general is done by white men. And two, there's obviously alcohol involved. Right. I mean, we know in research, you know, in association to violence, if people really, really want to think critically about what are sort of the things that precipitate violence, you know, you actually can't avoid a discussion about alcohol. And suddenly you're actually supposed to now engage in a wider discussion about, you know, well, should there be sort of these surveillance strategies around people who drink? This might sound like I am, you know, sort of conveniently deflecting the question,
but really I'm not. What I'm really trying to do is trying to account for the fact that, you know, why is it that we frame that this is a systemic issue for the Muslim community that has to shoulder and responsibilize itself towards political violence and not potentially domestic violence or all these other forms of violence? I mean, in reality, we shoulder all that violence equally, but also equally among ourselves as a society. It's not only among us. You kind of want to go back to the original definition that you mentioned about terrorism and how it's defined, that it's all acts of violence. And you kind of want to emphasize that. Is that we've kind of gone full circle here. Yeah. I mean, in a way, think about how racist violence in general is protected, right? So racist violence is never really seen as terrorism, even though it would technically fit the definition. Right. And so now Muslims have to shoulder responsibility for a two-tier justice system. You know, so I think we need to think critically about the weight of the things that we're shouldering. Right. And I think it's the fact that we don't have that theoretical clarity. We often have people, as you said, opportunists, others, you know, people who sort of clamor and reach these positions, who engage in these strategies. You know, we need to come together and really try to understand I'm with you. I'm with anyone. Anyone comes to me and says, Tariq, let's let's let's work on violence. Right. Let's do it. But let's also then think critically about what we're talking about in terms of violence and how we can do this all together as a society, you know, as communities that depend on each other, et cetera, without it being a sort of
mayor poisoning the village's waters. So it's so if I was to summarize, the alternative is to redefine the problem from counter radicalization to countering violence in general, because that way you're not kind of targeting certain groups or certain kind of identities. And it's violence full stop. Is that is that have I understood that correctly? Yeah. I mean, that's I think one part of it. It's it's definitely would be a major part, right? Because what you just said was it would be to technically dismantle the war on terror and all its all its sort of strategies and apparatuses. You know, I think inherently terrorism is develops a two tier justice system. So if we want to bring that back, we technically have to dismantle that. You know, the Transnational Institute in their in their report on leaving the war on terror, they talk about democracy. You know, they talk about real actual evidence base. Right. So a lot of what I've written about counterterrorism is really, really important in terms of a very particular function is that it creates policies that are not evidence based. But then these policies, evidence is constructed upon them. Right. So there's a difference here between evidence based policy and policy based evidence. So it's politics being enacted, preceding actual evidence and research collection, which which which which is what we call pseudoscience. Right. So it's not like, OK, let's actually understand the problem, you know, and come together and think critically and reflexively. It's very difficult to do that in counterterrorism because inherently the politics of the entire strategy comes first. There's other things human rights, human rights, and other things that they talk about, community consent, accountability. There's so many of these factors. I do encourage everyone to read that report if anyone's interested. Dr. Tariq, you've
certainly explained the topic to me. I feel like I went through a radical course just now and I'm just joking. If I was to bring my nine year old niece, who's going to ask you a question, what's your problem with counter radicalization? How are you going to explain it to her? And how are you going to explain? It's a good thing she's asking, actually, so she hasn't suppressed the question. So how are you going to explain it to her and how you can explain what the alternative is? Oh, boy. So I'll be honest with you. I'm sorry. I would have to I would have to bring her back to you and say, I don't I don't really know yet how to talk about this with my daughter. But I'll say this inherently, I think, you know, I think the issue of counter radicalization, we need to bring it back to Islamophobia. Right. And I think what we might need to explain to our children is that Islamophobia is felt most when you feel like you can't just be yourself as a Muslim, that you feel like other people are looking at you the way you are as a Muslim, the way you act, you know, the fact that you're about to go pray or potentially that you want to wear a hijab and you're really concerned about how other people will see you. And it's that concern, that point of anxiety. Unfortunately, counter radicalization almost operates in that space. And we already know that there's been trainings whereby people who put on a hijab could be seen as a risk factor. People, brothers who grow their beard. I think they explain to a nine year old. We just want to, first of all, tell them that it's OK for them to feel that way. You know, they're not alone in feeling that way. And I think that's the way we need to explain it.
They're not alone in feeling that. We all do. And we need to come together in recognition and trying to understand where that comes from. And that's what we're going to do as a community. I'd add to that, if you don't mind, that I probably won't tell my nine year old niece, but when she grows up, I tell her that this whole industry is counterproductive anyway. You suppress a community enough, they start questioning themselves, they suppress themselves. They feel ostracized and disenfranchised. And that leads to all sorts of stuff. So a lot of navel gazing needs to happen, I think, in the industry. So thank you so much, Dr. Tariq Younis. And we appreciate your work with Yaqeen Institute. And those of us who haven't read the article, Counter Radicalization, a critical look into a racist new industry. Make sure you do so on Yaqeen Institute.org. JazakAllah khair and thank you very much, Dr. Tariq. JazakAllah khair to you.
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