How a Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away from ISIS

Every society that gives it's citizens the right to bear arms will have accidents. I also doubt that toddlers will have killed more persons than terrorists this year.

> Does the US 'meddle' in those countries to the extent of placing troops on the ground within their borders in order to shoot at citizens of said country? Does the US conduct drone strikes against people of those countries?

Today the West does so in the Middle East, but there is also a real threat to us. 30-50 years ago it wasn't so and there were few soldiers placed in these countries, except for Saudi Arabia because they are apparently incapable of upholding their fine system without Western help. Still their countries were a total mess like they are to this day.

Of course there was meddling and certain groups were supported like the West always does everywhere. But what those groups did with that support in terms of cruelty when compared to other cultures is not comparable.

I guarantee you this, if every country stopped meddling in the Middle East first thing they would do is getting weapons of mass destruction and then they'd proceed to annihilate each other.

First, he reached out to him with his own agenda. Naturally, having been crapped on by so many people, the young man was suspicious. So, he apologized specifically for the role his own department had played in the ongoing tragedy of this guy's life. He did not just say "Sorry your life sucks." He distanced himself from the wrongdoing of the officers the guy had previously interacted with, showed that his agenda was not harmful, it was a good faith agenda.

Then he hooked him up with a role model who could provide social proof that there was real hope that this could be resolved. He gave him a model for how to solve. He gave him an attractive alternative to becoming a terrorist. The young man did not previously have an attractive alternative.

The article seriously simplified the process. Since this unit is successful in what it does, presumably they are more informed about the various pieces of this than whoever wrote the article.

The forgive and forget model does not work. But this kid was turning bad largely due to bad things happening to him. He was mistreated by the police the first time. His pissed off remark at school should have never turned into so much trouble for him. To some extent, his second contact with the police redressed this wrong. The apology was not just empty words.

Generally I experience that wanting the world to be a certain way does not necessarily make it so. The act of judging Islam, does not necessarily transform it, or its followers. To sway people, you have to understand how they are swayed. I do not discount that some might be swayed by criticism, threat or use of force (i.e. dealing with potential extremists), but these are not necessarily the actions that have the best outcome. I think the "Aarhus model" is interesting in so far as that the officers involved seem to be pragmatical: hey, if we do this, then, in our experience and according to this science, we might very well achieve this certain desired outcome. So let's debate if that is true - instead of getting into this tiresome debate about how people need to be more negative about islam, which in no way I can ascertain contributes to change.

I do not believe in the "debate model of change": that people change when they "lose" a debate, and therefore we must all be voracious in our judgment of those people. The model seems to say: if only the entire western world voiced, in harmonic unison, this grand thesis that Islam itself is the problem, by sheer force of this combined act of judgment, the Islamic world would think "dude, I really think these people are on to something. They are right" and cast off their shackles and their cultural heritage. In fact, I find the model frightening because it says: "unless you join me in disparaging another people's culture, you are part of the problem". Which makes it impossible to have a debate on how to engage with people, because somehow engaging with them is seen as appeasement or agreeing with them (I can empathize with someone I do not agree with). Which limits the options we have in pragmatically working on changing our world: by engaging those people that are problematic, trying to find out why they think a certain way, and intervene in a way that maximises effect.

"In order to be involved in, or be a guide to, the transforming of the present into the future state - the essence of our work - one must have the skill to do this in such a way that the object with which one is working is not violated, but is transformed according its own laws" - Kaplan

EDITED to add: If I interpret you correctly, your argument is that these youngsters are not radicalized, because islam itself is radical, so "radicalized muslim" is a pleonasm of sorts. This is a flawed argument because it can not explain why some Muslims commit to violent action while others do not (reminder, there are hundreds of millions of muslims). For any productive discussion on change to take place, one will have to try and find the x here: "follower of islam + x = commits to violence". I do not know what exactly the x is, but I call people where x exists radicalized.