How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
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Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#2Fascinating, and worrisome.
This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved:
"Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total."
If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people that joined ISIS and 330 potential radicals in total that does not bode well for the rest of Western Europe.
Those numbers, when extrapolated make the problem a lot larger than I thought it was (and I actually thought I was over-estimating).
Aarhus has a population of only ~320K, so that's 1:1000.
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#3Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Scandinavian countries host more refugees per capita than most nations on Earth, so that's probably why numbers look so high. Also, this sort of programs inevitably carry a physiological amount of fraud (problems affording a flat? Pick up the phone and declare yourself ex-jihadi...).
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#4Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Scandinavian countries host more refugees per capita than most nations on Earth, so that's probably why numbers look so high. Also, this sort of programs inevitably carry a physiological amount of fraud (problems affording a flat? Pick up the phone and declare yourself ex-jihadi...).
Sweden, yes, they are very far from the norm in this, but Denmark is actually not that much different (or in fact, lower than) .de, .nl, .fr and quite a few other Western European countries.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_p...
"Than most nations on Earth" is probably right though, but it's a bit of a weird metric because Denmark is more affluent than 'most nations on Earth' and also part of Europe, which tends to absorb a relatively large number of refugees when compared to other parts of the world.
So it would be better to compare Denmark with the countries surrounding it.
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#5Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Going to Syria isn't necessarily joining ISIS. There are many rebel groups, some directly fighting against ISIS.
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#6Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Going to Syria isn't necessarily joining ISIS. There are many rebel groups, some directly fighting against ISIS.
Good point, I missed that. Among others, there's Rojava (feminist anarchists) vs. ISIS (fascist right-wing militia). Those two almost make Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump look identical.
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#7A fascinating story, and a great initiative by the town police. The world needs more role models for non aggressive activism - we lack a Ghandi or MLK of our generation...
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#8Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Aarhus is the second-largest city in Denmark. Copenhagen is only ~562K. But still, that's a lot of people for what most countries consider a small city. "Potential radical" can be anyone who goes to a mosque with a militant iman. That may not be a meaningful designation. Only about 1 in 10,000 tried to join ISIS.
About 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, says the FBI. That's about 1 in a million for the US. Around 100 made it to the battle zone. NBC has a profile of 15 of them.[1]
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/americans-15...
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#9Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Going to Syria isn't necessarily joining ISIS. There are many rebel groups, some directly fighting against ISIS.
That's true, but it is a fairly small portion as far as I'm aware.
Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS
#10Fascinating, and worrisome. This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved: "Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total." If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people…
Going to Syria isn't necessarily joining ISIS. There are many rebel groups, some directly fighting against ISIS.
If you assume none of the ~30 that went to Syria joined IS, that leaves ~300 "of other potential radicals in Aarhus".
That's an enormous amount of _potential_ harm even with low tech attacks like knives in crowds.