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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

#51

Post by saboot »

calibraxis wrote: post #17
douche wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead, we have people like that selling out to corrupt career politicians who can't say two sentences without lying through their teeth.

I get the impression that Jeremy Corbyn (in the UK) is much better than Bernie Sanders at helping build grassroots organizations that hopefully persist without him. I heard Bernie Sanders compared with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, whose energy & commitment faded away after Jackson wasn't elected. Same with Ralph Nader, apparently.

It is a bit early to count him out, he has made an announcement regarding setting up persistent organizations to support progressive down ballot candidates (dem or not). Hopefully it turns into something meaningful.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#52

Post by Kenji »

I love how it's always others being evil and 'discriminate' against the muslims that then become terrorists. Like, 'Those evil, evil westerners rejected him and did not appreciate his culture. That was the catalyst for him wanting to become a terrorist.'

Imagine this: You go to a foreign country or are raised in a foreign culture (because things in your own country are horrible at the moment). You feel mistreated (even though they provide you with asylum and quite literally save your life and provide you with all you need), for example in a job or at school. This makes you feel like you have to kill people to make your point, and you have to be a terrorist, so you set out to wage this war. This is utter lunacy. This is not the spark for terrorism - a careless upbringing without proper values and with extremist ideologies is. Let me tell you something: Culture matters. A lot. Not race and not birthplace. But what you believe to be moral and true fundamentally shapes not only how you view the world but how you interact with it. What we need is moral education, a reform (enlightenment) in muslim culture and stop being apologist by blaming ourselves.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#53

Post by jacquesm »

jomamaxx wrote: post #42
Animats wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is very interesting, given that the US is directly involved in Syria, whereas Denmark is not. It has much to do with how people integrated into Europe v America. Europe is very difficult to integrated into - they are ethnic groups. You can mostly 'become American' but it's almost impossible to 'become Danish' unless you are there from a very early age. Americans in particular have a hard time with this, because th…

There is a very strong kernel of truth in what you write. At the same time racism is alive and well in the United States, at a level that I've never seen here.

Integration into an EU country is harder for another reason as well: America is founded on immigration, everybody - even if you may have to go back a few generations - is from somewhere else. In Europe that really isn't the case, people's origins are usually 'over the horizon', lost in the time before record keeping.

So in America you don't easily stand out as a stranger. This is compounded by the fact that in America it is fairly normal to relocate for work, whereas in Europe that is much more rare (but becoming more normal). Ironically, that is one of the main drivers behind the whole 'brexit' thing.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#54

Post by jacquesm »

douche wrote: post #50
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more than welcome to. But there is a ton of evidence that the foundations of many societies are shifting and not for the better. That doesn't immediately reflect in the statistics (death tolls, crime rates) until a certain critical mass has been reached. Just like you can't tell a tsunami from a small wave visually until it reaches the shore. There isn't a country in Europe that has not moved substantially tow…

Is shifting in response to what you experience a bad thing? If you're not seeing much good coming from an external focus, then maybe it's worth pivoting and focusing on the needs of your own people for a while. Of course, I'm an American, so I don't see nationalism as a dirty word. You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

> You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

If that doesn't come at someone else's expense, then maybe yes.

But 'nationalism' to me equates with stupidity. Putting a flag and other symbols above reason, supporting the troops, even when they're committing war crimes and so on.

Nationalism is a dirty word in Europe for a reason, every time it rears its ugly head we have another war to deal with.

America is lucky in that sense, it has only had two wars on its own soil (if you count the Canadian incursion), and none of those were because of foreign invaders (if you ignore the position of the Native Americans), and none of those in recent times.

But imagine if America had been the stage of WWI and WWII, I wonder how you'd feel about nationalism if that had been the case.

War is cheap if you export it, very very expensive to import. The scars of WWI and WWII still run very deep through Europe, it doesn't take any effort at all to find them, even if all for WWI and most of those that took part in WWII are now dead.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#55

Post by d0mine »

crishoj wrote: post #21
HappyFunGuy wrote: post #19

This is a story about Somali Jamal in Denmark, who planned to join ISIS with his friends. But a cop called him, and apologized for uh.., thinking he might be a threat. So Jamal uh, changes his mind, but two of his buddies don't and die in Syria. So if you hug a terrorist, he might not want to kill you as much, maybe. You know who doesn't have this terrorist hugging problem? Japan.

Could you describe Japan's approach in greater detail?

Sakoku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#56

Post by noobermin »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
noobermin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but you are discounting studies for what sounds like your intuition, which I'd argue is the entire point about science, to better inform us against our biases. I'll take what science says over what the media hype is any day.

You're more than welcome to. But there is a ton of evidence that the foundations of many societies are shifting and not for the better. That doesn't immediately reflect in the statistics (death tolls, crime rates) until a certain critical mass has been reached. Just like you can't tell a tsunami from a small wave visually until it reaches the shore. There isn't a country in Europe that has not moved substantially tow…

I really think that the media is giving us an impression that emphasizes sensational stories over more mundane but relevant ones. One is far more likely to die in the US from petty gun violence than a terrorist attack, as gruesome as the recent attacks have been, nothing has changed that statistic. Moreover, I'm more likely to die from a car accident than gun violence, and probably more likely to die from heart disease than both.

If you look at most metrics normalized over the whole Earth, yes we are in an unprecedented era of peace, and we should be thankful. There are issues and there is room to grow. Daesh is an example of forces that threaten to unravel that peace, but are we going to kid ourselves into thinking that Daesh is anything like the beginning of the twentieth century? Let's not fall into recentism and forget what we learned in world history.

When it comes to values/nationalism and such, I think it sounds like your argument then is there is a potential for the reversal of such trends and I agree. But it's discussions like this that hopefully will keep us from repeating the mistakes we make in the 10's or 30's. We are live actors and we have a chance to change things for the better. You can tell that I'm pretty much an optimist.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#57

Post by cyberferret »

Kenji wrote: post #52

I love how it's always others being evil and 'discriminate' against the muslims that then become terrorists. Like, 'Those evil, evil westerners rejected him and did not appreciate his culture. That was the catalyst for him wanting to become a terrorist.' Imagine this: You go to a foreign country or are raised in a foreign culture (because things in your own country are horrible at the moment). You feel mistreated (ev…

Let me guess - you've never been in a large group situation where you are seemingly accepted, but nearly everyone looks down upon you and treats you with constant suspicion and questions your motives and reminds you on a regular basis that you are different, and that you are lucky to be part of the group. Have you?

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#58

Post by noobermin »

Mz wrote: post #16

Hearing a policeman take responsibility for his life getting derailed really moved Jamal. He agreed to come into Link's office. They are doing good work. This all fits with everything I have ever read about how to undermine extremism, radicalization, etc. Time does not tend to heal such wounds. It tends to make them fester. That doesn't mean they cannot be healed.

Unfortunately, this section is becoming a political thread while I feel like there is more to be said about psychology here. It feels unnatural especially to accept someone back when they've essentially fought against you. At worse, one would wonder if you embolden criminals when you do this.

I think it comes down to motivation. If a criminal is say like a sadist rapist, giving him a hug after he rapes will just embolden him to commit more crime. That's because his motivations are due to internal forces/perversions. However, if someone is motivated like Jamal due to discrimination, the thing he wanted in the first place was acceptance, so accepting him leaves him with no reason to commit crime.

Unfortunately, you can't read inside someone's head. Some people just want to be a Jihadist. Some want to see blood and kill. Some just want to belong. I think the best thing to do is to do both...help those who want to be helped and reach those who could be reached, and fight vehemently those who simply want glory or want to get their kicks. How do you know when or when not for this or that case? I guess you pay investigators a nice salary to figure that out because blanket policy is only so effective.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#59

Post by jacquesm »

noobermin wrote: post #56
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're more than welcome to. But there is a ton of evidence that the foundations of many societies are shifting and not for the better. That doesn't immediately reflect in the statistics (death tolls, crime rates) until a certain critical mass has been reached. Just like you can't tell a tsunami from a small wave visually until it reaches the shore. There isn't a country in Europe that has not moved substantially tow…

I really think that the media is giving us an impression that emphasizes sensational stories over more mundane but relevant ones. One is far more likely to die in the US from petty gun violence than a terrorist attack, as gruesome as the recent attacks have been, nothing has changed that statistic. Moreover, I'm more likely to die from a car accident than gun violence, and probably more likely to die from heart disea…

I used to be an optimist as well.

But the last 10 years have slowly but surely made me wonder if we're really as stupid as it seems that we are.

Just some samples: A couple of days ago there was an article about Duerte here on HN, the newly minted presidente of the Philippines. Whose primary solution to everything seems to be a well placed bullet, oh, and never mind a couple of rapes, as long as he's the first one in line.

In the UK, we have a bit of a situation at the moment, with lines being drawn at the level of 'we reserve the right to kick out your citizens' or to use them as bargaining chips. Northern Ireland and Scotland may break away from the UK, or they end up leaving the EU. Either way, that's bad news for a very large number of people. As an immediate result of that violence against people of other races (even the ones that have been in the UK for many generations) or from different nationalities is up to levels unprecedented for many many years (decades).

In NL, Belgium, France and Hungary we have nationalist movements that would all love to destabilize the EU further for personal gain and never mind the consequences. Power hungry 'strong men' (and some women) are in vogue all over, and people lap it up, using their words as covert signals to engage in violence and open hostility.

Then there was a coup in Turkey, and the displacement of very large numbers of people in Syria with all the associated misery (and death toll).

Note that none of this is about 'terrorism', I fully agree that statistically it is - for now, and let's hope it stays that way - insignificant.

Re: How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

#60

Post by HappyFunGuy »

It's a good thing this thread stuck with ISIS and terrorism in general, and not rape stats by hewho'snamecan'tbespoken, in the nordics, because that would really derail the topic, which is I guess quelling local extremism in youth by uh, what would you call this strategy? Hmm. Submission and apology?
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