[The parallels are instructive as Europe tries to recover from two deadly attacks in two months, both of them committed in the name of Islam. Religious ideology plays a central role in the radicalization of young Muslim Europeans currently being lured to join the Islamic State or kill in the group’s name at home. But the psychological process underlying radicalization is remarkably universal, terrorism experts say.]
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Robert Orell in his apartment in
Stockholm. A former neo-Nazi, Mr. Orell
was deradicalized and now runs Exit,
a charity offering far-right extremists
support as they leave the movement.
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LONDON — Born and raised
in leafy West London, Ibrahim Ahmed always supported the local soccer club and
listened to what he called “white music.” But in school he was a “Muslim,” and
he became increasingly disaffected from British society. When recruiters
approached him in a mosque 18 years ago and told him that he could fight a holy
war right here at home, he readily agreed.
In Sweden,
Robert Orell was reading “Mein Kampf” and preparing for his own war. The
immigrants who had bullied him at his school were now, in his view, bullying
his culture as liberal politicians stood by. He fantasized about bursting into
Parliament with one of the guns that his neo-Nazi friends had hidden in the
woods.
The ideologies that once motivated
Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Orell could hardly be more different. Yet strip away ideology
and what emerges are two strikingly similar tales of radicalization, militancy
and, in the case of these two men, deradicalization.
Both had grievances that
eroded their self-esteem and made them angry. Both were seduced by a narrative
that put them at the center of a greater cause and offered them what they
craved most: a sense of belonging and a plan to act on their resentment.
Both eventually walked away
from violence, dissuaded not by law enforcement officials or relatives but by
former extremists like themselves.
The parallels are
instructive as Europe tries to recover from two deadly attacks in two months,
both of them committed in the name of Islam. Religious ideology plays a central
role in the radicalization of young Muslim Europeans currently being lured to
join the Islamic State or kill in the group’s name at home. But the
psychological process underlying radicalization is remarkably universal,
terrorism experts say.
“We are so beguiled with
ideology, we miss the fact that jihadis and neo-Nazis have a lot in common,”
said John Horgan, the author of “The Psychology of Terrorism” and director of
the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of
Massachusetts at Lowell. “The similarities of how they get engaged, involved
and disengaged in terrorism by far exceed the differences.”
Europe’s long and
checkered history of far-right extremism and other varieties of militancy, from
violent Marxism to the Irish Republican Army, makes the Continent a rich
laboratory for counterextremism and deradicalization.
Today, the recruitment
success of groups like the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is considered the greatest
threat. But decades of researching, infiltrating and countering other movements
offer some lessons at a time when governments are scrambling for ways to head
off the threat beyond tightening security, analysts said.
One lesson, they said, is
that former extremists have a central role to play in the argument against
radical temptations. They have a credibility that governments lack.
“We need to replace
fantasy with reality,” said Amy Thornton of the Department of Crime and
Security Science at University College London. “Formers play a very important
role. Only they can credibly say: Syria is not a video game, you may end up
cleaning toilets, babysitting on the front line; it’s not what you’re being
promised.”
Another lesson, experts
say, is that debunking extremist propaganda alone is not enough. Outreach
efforts are most effective, they said, when they offer a counternarrative and
tangible alternatives to violence.
“Teenage brains crave
guidance and are susceptible to strong messages with an action component,” Ms.
Thornton said. “The jihadis have found the perfect formula of us-versus-them
and the need to act.”
One pioneering program in
Denmark treats onetime fighters not as potential terrorists but as wayward youths.
Closely watched by the authorities around Europe, the program involves
counseling, help with readmission to school and meetings with parents. Although
now being applied to Islamic radicals returning from the Middle East, it was
first developed in 2007 for far-right extremists.
There are limits to the
willingness of governments to rely on such a program. But experts in
radicalization said that understanding the process by which people fell for the
medieval brutality of a religious ideology is vital to combating it.
“We won’t make any
progress at all if we continue to obsess over the question ‘why’ someone
becomes an extremist,” Mr. Horgan said. “A better starting point is asking
‘how.’ ”
For Mr. Orell, now 34, it
started on a summer evening in Stockholm in 1995.
Then an anxious
14-year-old with divorced parents and difficulties in school, he suffered
regular intimidation by a gang of boys from immigrant backgrounds. The only
place he felt safe was with a youth club, where he discovered punk rock with lyrics
that spoke of Viking conquest.
That evening, Mr. Orell
wore a Viking T-shirt and a pendant of the hammer of the Nordic god Thor. Two
older boys, far-right recruiters, handed him a sticker with a Viking wielding a
sword. The caption read: “Stand up for Sweden.”
Years later, he drifted
into a group of soccer hooligans with links to neo-Nazis and eventually into
the neo-Nazi scene itself. He dropped out of school and moved in with other
extremists. He read anti-Semitic pamphlets and wore black outfits. Every
weekend, he and his friends would prey on nonwhite youths, badly beating them
up.
“Race was my religion,”
Mr. Orell said. “I was fighting a holy war.”
Holy war was also what
was proposed to Mr. Ahmed in a South London mosque in 1997.
He did not grow up
religious. His parents, shop owners who had immigrated from Pakistan and India,
raised him and his two brothers in a middle-class neighborhood where they were
the only nonwhite children. At school, white boys threw racist insults and
chipped slate tiles at him.
“Often it was 15 of them
against three of us,” Mr. Ahmed said. When he joined a Muslim gang, it was to
defend himself, but also to take revenge.
At a mosque one day, he
met men who told him Britain was a Dar al-Harb, a land of war, and that he was a
soldier. Within a month, he had joined the security wing of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an
international Islamic organization committed to establishing a caliphate in the
Middle East.
For two years he was on
call as part of a secret Muslim brigade that went after anyone reported to have
“given a Muslim brother or sister grief,” he said. He carried a gun and threw
Molotov cocktails.
Did he ever kill anyone?
He paused. “I honestly
don’t know.”
Eventually, both men
began having doubts.
Mr. Orell, who was trying
to live up to Aryan ideals by quitting alcohol and drugs and working out daily,
was put off by less disciplined comrades. When a group of Neo-Nazis was
arrested in connection with the murders of two Swedish police officers, Mr.
Orell was appalled. It was around that time that he started talking to a former
militant who had moved to the countryside with his family.
“It was good talking to
someone without being judged,” Mr. Orell said. “I was still every bit as
radical, but I was getting disillusioned with the group.”
The friend introduced him
to Exit, a charity offering far-right extremists support as they left the
movement. Many social workers at Exit were former extremists, too. They listened,
played soccer with him and gradually “chipped away at the black and white.”
In Britain, Mr. Ahmed
planned to fight in Bosnia. He had never paid attention when his family said
that Islam and violence were incompatible. But when a Salafi preacher who had
once been involved in gang violence told him as much in 1999, he listened.
“He said he shared my
grievances but that violence was not the way to address them,” Mr. Ahmed said.
“He said ‘I get it, I’ve been there.’”
That is the message he
tries to get across to the teenagers he counsels, like a 16-year-old boy who is
tempted to go to Syria.
“I don’t judge him,” Mr.
Ahmed said. If he were 16 today, he added, he might be tempted to go to Syria
himself.
Both he and Mr. Orell,
who now runs Exit, say counterextremism work has become trickier over the
years. The Internet has given militants direct access to teenagers. The
video-game culture glorifies extreme violence. And radical movements have
become smarter at marketing.
“One can never ‘win’ an
argument with someone involved in violent extremism; they are just not open to
counterarguments based on logic,” Mr. Orell said. He tries to get youngsters
passionate about things like sports and music to fill the void.
Mr. Ahmed tries to
channel Muslim discontents away from violence. “I ask them: When was the last
time you wrote to your M.P.?” he said, referring to a member of Parliament.
“Have you ever run a fund-raising campaign? Written a letter to your local
newspaper?”
Indeed, the
post-extremist lives of Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Orell seem to indicate that
radicalism need not be destiny. They know one another through a network of
former extremists brought together by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a
charity active in combating extremism.
“If we had met 15 years ago
we probably would have killed each other,” Mr. Ahmed said. “Now Robert is a
friend.”
