Shiraz Maher

‘Isis says: “We offer you an identity, a vision”’

Religion clearly plays a role in radicalisation, but only in some instances. I’ve interviewed 100 individuals who’ve gone to Syria and Iraq from across Europe, and many are religious novices, with no sophisticated understanding of what they’re doing. I have written a book on salafi jihadism and read about all this stuff they’re supposed to believe in, and they don’t know it. When you talk to them about some of the most important scholars in their own world like Abu Qatada, they don’t realise that they are deeply opposed to Isis.

The west doesn’t really know what it stands for; we don’t have anything to offer people to buy into and be part of. By contrast, Islamic State is self-assured; it’s very certain about what it stands for. It offers very powerful things to people who feel increasingly confused about hyphenated identities: “Am I British-Muslim?” “Am I British-Pakistani?” Isis says: we can transcend all of that; we offer you an identity, a vision, something not grounded in geography. We offer you an ideological and intellectual identity. You’re a Muslim; you’re part of the Ummah, part of this global fraternity of the faithful of 1.5 billion people and that’s very, very powerful.

I find five different types of people have gone to Syria and Iraq. At the start of the conflict, 2012 to 2013, people were going out for genuinely humanitarian reasons. They compared themselves to people who fought in the Spanish Civil War. They felt that the Syrian people had been betrayed by the world and someone had to help them. They did not see it as being morally contentious and were genuinely confused that Theresa May called them terrorists.…

Shiraz Maher is a senior researcher at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London. This text was taken from a talk given at The Battle of Ideas conference in London, October 2015. Reproduced by permission of The Institute of Ideas

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Erin Marie Saltman

‘The propaganda is about the promise of a better future’

For the last two years the international community has been transfixed on the rise of the terrorist group Daesh, or Islamic State. In the west, there has been a particular focus on the supposedly shocking phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters and female migrants. It is estimated by the Soufan Group that over 5,000 western European citizens have travelled hundreds of miles to join what we know to be a violent and brutal terrorist group.

Yet, despite the intense media focus and public discourse around this trend, there remain many misleading headlines and misunderstandings about processes of radicalisation and prevention.

My work at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is dedicated to understanding what radicalises individuals into violent organisations. This type of research is used to develop projects for mobilising positive activism to effectively counter hate-based movements, including Daesh but also violent far-right groups.

When we look at Daesh, the question is much broader than “why are young Muslims being radicalised?” In fact, many of the recruits are not young, and there is a large proportion of converts joining, people that have not been raised in Muslim families or communities…

Erin Marie Saltman is a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counter-extremism thinktank