Crackdown on Islamists 'could push young Australians towards radicals'
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Version 0 of 1. Cracking down on radical preachers and other hardline security measures could undermine the fight against Islamic State by alienating Australian Muslims, a security expert has warned, urging the government to focus on building community resilience. Senior policymakers, military officials, police and researchers have met in Canberra to share strategies for stopping the flow of Australians to fight with radical militia groups in Syria and Iraq. The conference heard the problem of radicalisation was “not something the Australian federal police would be able to arrest its way out of”. Mounting passport cancellations and terrorism arrests showed the government was “winning the battle but losing the war”. The government is preparing a $21.7m social media campaign to counter the appeal of Isis, understood to centre on the themes that violence will not advance the interests of Muslims, that Australia affords religious freedoms and political rights, and that Isis’s rule is corrupt and brutal. Professor Michael Wesley, who delivered the conference keynote address, told Guardian Australia that Muslim communities themselves were the most effective advocates against the appeal of Isis. “The most important counter-narrative [to Isis propaganda] will be the argument of other Muslims. We need to increase the ability of people to debate and to discuss these issues,” he said on the sidelines of the Safeguarding Australia conference. “Ultimately, I think the power of ideas within Muslim communities is the most effective way of doing this.” But he said the government had so far favoured a hardline security approach, including more than $1bn in new funding for security agencies. “What I worry about is that very heavy publicity and probably an overweighting of the national security approach acts to undercut the effectiveness of the community resilience approach,” he said. “We have to work with the causes of alienation within communities that Isis is exploiting to gain recruits.” Australia will host a regional summit on countering violent extremism in Sydney in June, bringing together government, civil society and industry from more than 30 countries to develop strategies to blunt the appeal of groups such as Isis. Related: Guardian Live: Syria four years on Professor Michele Grossman, an expert in countering violent extremism from Victoria University, said non-Muslim observers often missed the positive, “pro-social” appeal of Isis to young people. “Part of the Isis narrative is about the building of a caliphate, that is about offering sanctuary and a home and a place for people of Muslim faith to come together to build the world as they’d like to see it,” she said. “I think that’s a very powerful message and we need an alternative powerful message to be able to engage with that.” Grossman said the desire of young people to redress injustices and make change needed to be harnessed in positive, non-violent ways: “There is so much we could set up for young people to do if they want to build a better world.” Ultimately the most authentic counter-narratives would come from disillusioned foreign fighters, she said. “Those are the people who are in a unique position to be able to offer some of the most authentic counter-narratives, because they have been there themselves.” Up to 100 Australians are thought to be fighting with various militia groups in Syria and Iraq, and around 30 are known to have been killed. More than 150 people in Australia are believed to be providing direct support to fighters in the conflict. |