Tuesday 26 January 2016

Can We Stop Homegrown Terrorists? - WSJ

Very interesting article. At once disturbing ("lone wolf" attacks) and optimistic (9/11 style attacks unlikelyar least in the US). 
Interesting too, to read of what the US has done in countering the radical Islamist threat, in both psychological and behavioral areas. 
/snip
The first such effort [at counterradicalisation] was undertaken by the New York Police Department in the years after 9/11. A 2007 NYPD report concluded that most homegrown jihadist terrorists were "unremarkable" male Muslims, aged 15 to 35. Generally well-educated and middle-class, many had grown up as nonobservant Muslims or had converted to Islam. Most had no formal links to terrorist organizations, but they had undergone some kind of personal crisis—the loss of a job, the death of a close relative, an encounter with racism, a rising sense of moral outrage over the way their fellow Muslims were suffering in foreign conflicts—that provided a "cognitive opening" for a turn to fundamentalist beliefs.


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