Radicalisation and De-radicalisation

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

The story of the latest terrorist attack in London is both tragic and extraordinary, starkly contrasting the evil of the assassin and the virtues of his young victims. The red-faced authorities are trying to work out how it came about that a convicted jihadist attending a prisoner rehabilitation conference stabbed to death two of the people who wanted to help him. Meanwhile, and predictably, the event has been politicised. It is being cited as evidence that Islamist terrorists cannot be de-radicalised, and that even if they could, we can never know whether a jihadist who claims to have been de-radicalised is telling the truth. The answer for some? ‘Lock them up and throw away the key.’ Those who believe in second chances, on the other hand, might mention that one of the heroes who confronted and helped to subdue the knife attacker on London Bridge was a convicted murderer on day release. But perhaps before we consider how to punish and rehabilitate Islamists we should think about how to stop young Muslims from being radicalised in the first place. ‘Prevention’ is a catch-all term; for some it is code for cack-handed state interference in the private affairs of religious minorities; for others it is about community-building and a sense of belonging. But is that wishful thinking when communities seem so polarised, even ghettoised? Is it unreasonable of our society to preach “British values” to young Muslims who feel both economically and politically alienated? Or does the blame lie with those on both sides who have fought against integration? Featuring Dr Rakib Ehsan, Dr Usama Hasan, Hadiya Masieh and Dr Rob Faure Walker.

Producer: Dan Tierney

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.
0:03.7	Good evening. The irony of the murder scene was inescapable. The contrast between the killer and his victims almost unbearable. The questions it all leaves, perhaps unanswerable. But we have to try.
0:15.1	Osman Khan was the terrorist who was supposed to have reformed. The poster boy, the paper said, for government programs to
0:21.0	de-radicalise dangerous Islamic extremists. He'd been released early, allowed to attend a rehabilitation
0:26.7	conference near London Bridge. And there, of all places, he ran amok with a knife. There,
0:32.5	of all people, he killed two Cambridge graduates trying to help him rebuild his life, bright, promising young people, wanting to do good in a spirit of constructive forgiveness.
0:42.5	Lock him up and throw away the key was the instant reaction in our fevered pre-election climate, and many might agree.
0:48.3	But first we have to decide by what standards they are to be judged before we can work out how they should be treated.
0:54.2	Do these fanatics occupy a different moral universe from ordinary criminals, or indeed the
0:58.7	criminally insane? Are they in any way we can be confident of, redeemable? And where does
1:04.4	this leave the efforts to prevent young Muslims being radicalised in the first place? Hopelessly naive?
1:10.1	A clumsy interference in the private affairs
1:12.2	of an ethnic minority that smears an entire religion, or the necessary first steps in building
1:17.2	a peaceful community out of a divided society, in which many have been marginalised and feel alienated.
1:23.8	That's our moral maze tonight. Our panel, Amana Siddi, professor of Islamic and interreligious studies at Edinburgh University.
1:31.2	Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, the satirist Andrew Doyle and the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser.
1:38.6	Jarls, do you think this murder, these murders, tell us something new about how we're handling Islamist terrorism?
1:47.3	I'm not sure they do. It's a moral maze that we've been going around for a very long time.
1:53.1	We all see red when this happens and there's a strong instinct to sort of throw away the key, as you said,
1:59.9	but once your way of destroying a free and open society is to behave in an authoritarian way towards those who threaten it.
2:06.0	It's genuine moral maze.
2:07.8	Anne McGovern.
	...

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