YouSaid · the spoken record

Atran

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21
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2015-04-23
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2015-04-23
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1
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un-security-council

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  1. “It takes a dynamic movement, at once intimately personal and global - involving not just entrepreneurial ideas, but also physical activity, music and entertainment - to counter the growing global counterculture of violent extremism.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  2. “The results are really a lot more remarkable than that, but Gulalai Ismail will not claim credit publicly. Imagine a global archipelago of such peace-builders: if you can find concrete ways to help and empower them, without trying too hard to control them, they could well win the future. In sum, what is most important is quality time and the sustained follow-up of young people with young people, who understand that motivational factors can vary greatly with context and despite commonalities, whether it be for a young father from Kirkuk, a teenage girl from Paris, neighbourhood friends from Tetuan, Morocco, or high-school soccer fans from Fredrikstad, Norway - all seeking and yearning for ISIS.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  3. “They began by focusing on women's place in society, and as their membership has grown, they are now training young activists to become local peace-builders, challenging violent extremism. They trained 25 young people in each of the past two years to join together to promote tolerance, non-violence and peace. The initiative is proving so popular that last year they had over 150 applicants. The 50 trained young volunteers are now, in turn, reaching out to people in their communities who are vulnerable to radicalization. They hold study circles and one-on- one meetings with those people to develop and promote ideas for a peaceful future. Still in its early stages, the programme will reach almost 1,500 young people in the next three years - building a movement of activists against religious and political extremism.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  4. “Let youth engage youth in the search for meaningful ways to make sense of the issues on their personal agenda, whether that be about oppression and political marginalization, lack of economic opportunity, the trauma of exposure to violence, or problems of identity and social exclusion. Most of all, we must support personal engagement, through mutual support and community-based mentors - because it is almost always a particular personal circumstance, shared with friends, that radical extremism probes for, draws out and tries to universalize into moral outrage and violent action. Allow me to close with this consideration. At just 16, Gulalai Ismail and her sister Saba set up the Seeds of Peace network with a group of school friends to change the lives of young women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North-West Pakistan.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  5. “From Syria, a young woman messages another, "I know how hard it is to leave behind the mother and father you love, and not tell them until you are here, that you will always love them but that you were put on this Earth to do more than be with or honour your parents. I know this will probably be the hardest thing you may ever have to do, but let me help you explain it to yourself and to them." We need that kind of engagement. A third condition is to offer youth the chance to create its own local initiatives. Social science research shows that local initiatives, begun with small-scale involvement, are better than national and large-scale programmes in reducing violence. It does not matter which Government agencies we want to help facilitate this.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  6. “Research with those drawn to the cause show that this is a dangerous misconception. The caliphate has re-emerged as a mobilizing cause in the minds of many Muslims. As one imam in Barcelona told us, "I am against the violence of Al-Qaida and ISIS, but they have put our predicament in Europe and elsewhere on the map. Before, we were just ignored. And the caliphate, we dream of it like the Jews dreamed of Zion. Maybe it can be a federation, like the European Union, of Muslim peoples. The caliphate is here, in our hearts, even if we don't know what real form it will finally take." Without recognizing those passions, we risk fanning them. Any serious engagement must be attuned to individuals and their networks, not to mass marketing of repetitive messages. Young people empathize with each other; they do not lecture at one another.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  7. “Besides, once a person is convinced of the mission's moral virtue, then spectacular violence is not a turn off, but sublime and empowering, as Edmund Burke noted about the French Revolution, which introduced the modern notion of terror as an emergency defence of radical political change. Make no mistake: few if any of those who join militant jihad, or xenophobic nationalisms for that matter, are nihilists. Nihilism is an accusation levelled by those who wishfully refuse, ostrich-style, to consider the moral appeal, and hence the real danger, of such movements. Being willing to die to kill others requires a deep conviction of moral virtue. In Singapore last week, some speaking for Western Governments argued that the caliphate was mythology, covering traditional power politics.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  8. “Moreover, counter-narrative messaging is mostly negative: "So Daesh wants to build a future?" Well, is beheading a future you want, or someone controlling details of your diet and dress? Can anyone not know that already? Does it really matter to those drawn to the cause despite, or even because of such things? As one teenage girl from a Chicago suburb retorted to United States Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who stopped her from flying to Syria, "Well, what about the barrel bombings that kill thousands? Maybe the beheading helps to stop that." For some, strict obedience provides freedom from uncertainty about what a good person is to do.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  9. “The appeal of Al-Qaida and ISIS is not about jihadi websites, which are mostly blather and bombast, although they can be an initial attractor. It is about what comes after. There are nearly 50,000 Twitter hashtags supporting ISIS, with an average of 1,000 followers each. They succeed by providing opportunities for personal engagement, where people have an audience with whom they can share and refine their grievances, their hopes and their desires. In contrast, Government digital outreach programmes typically provide generic religious and ideological counter-narratives, seemingly deaf to the personal circumstances of their audiences. They cannot create the intimate social networks that dreams need.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  10. “Research also shows that the greatest predictor of willingness to sacrifice and join comrades in a sacred cause, one that provides a sense of special destiny and the will to fight, is what initially enables initially low-power insurgent and revolutionary groups to resist and often prevail against materially more powerful groups that depend on material incentives, such as armies and police, which in turn rely mainly on pay and promotion rather than a heartfelt duty to defend the nation. Sacred values must be fought with other sacred values, or by sundering the social networks in which those values are embedded. The second condition is to offer youth a positive personal dream, with a concrete chance of realization.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  11. “When did 'moderate' anything have wide appeal for youth yearning for adventure, glory and significance?" Members of the Council should ask themselves, "What dreams may come from most current Government policies that offer little beyond promises of comfort and security?" Young people will not choose to sacrifice everything, including their lives - the totality of their self-interests - just for material rewards. In fact, research shows that offering material rewards or punishments, carrots or sticks, may only push truly devoted actors to greater extremes.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  12. “Each country will have to create and mobilize those conditions, suited to its own circumstances. The first condition is to offer youth something that makes them dream of a life of significance through struggle and sacrifice in comradeship. That is what ISIS offers. The IdaratAZ-Tawahhush manifesto - The Management ofSavagery - states, "Fly to us youth from the regions we manage. For the youth of the nation are closer to the innate nature of human beings on account of their rebelliousness within them. And the inert groups, they only try to suppress this." When I hear yet another tired appeal to moderate Islam, usually from much older folk, I ask, "Are you kidding? Don't any of you have teenage children?”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  13. “Just as it took more than a decade for Al-Qaida to mature into a global menace, it may be many years before we see the full effect of ISIS, even if it is kicked out of its current territorial base. Unless we understand those powerful cultural forces, we will fail to address the threat. When, as now, the focus is on military solutions and police interdiction, matters have already gone way too far. Ifthat focus remains, we lose the coming generation. What might therefore be done? Foremost, Governments should continue their important work on problems of development, and on immigration and integration, with a goal of transforming the much- lamented youth bulge into a youth boom by unleashing youth's inherent energy and idealism. But let me propose three conditions that I believe young people need, with brief illustrations.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  14. “They radicalize to find a firm identity in a flattened world: where vertical lines of communication between the generations are replaced by horizontal peer-to-peer attachments that can span the globe. Young people whose grandparents were Stone Age animists in Sulawesi, far removed from the Arab world, told me they dreamed of fighting in Iraq or Palestine in defense of Islam. Although typically viewed in military terms, Al-Qaida, ISIS and related groups pose the greatest threat as the world's most dynamic countercultural movement, one whose values run counter to the nation-State system represented here in the United Nations, and to its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has drawn youth from many places into the largest, most potent extraterritorial fighting force since the Second World War.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  15. “As one young woman from the Paris banlieu of Clichy-sur-Bois told us, she, like so many others she hung out with, felt neither French nor Arab, and because she will always be looked on suspiciously for the acts of others, she would choose the caliphate to help create a homeland where Muslims could pool their resources, be strong again and live in dignity. But the popular notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is woefully misleading. Violent extremism represents not the resurgence of traditional cultures, but their collapse, as young people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity that gives personal significance and glory. That is the dark side of globalization.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  16. “The unholy alliance of narrow xenophobic nationalism and militant jihad, which play off one another's fears, are beginning to destabilize the European middle class much as fascism and communism did in the 1920s and 1930s, while inciting willingness to sacrifice among both nationalist xenophobes and militant jihadis. By contrast, our own research shows that even among native Western youth, ideals of liberal democracy no longer elicit willingness to make costly sacrifices for their defence. Europe has a birth rate of 1.4 per couple, which means that without massive immigration it cannot sustain a viable middle class, upon which every successful democracy depends. Yet Europe is arguably further from effectively dealing with problems of immigration than ever before.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  17. “Most have had no traditional religious education, and are often "born again" into a socially tight, ideologically narrow but world-spanning sense of religious mission. Indeed, it is when those who do practice religious ritual are expelled from the mosque - not in it - for expressing radical political beliefs, that the move to violence is most likely. Last summer, a poll by ICM. Research revealed that more than one in four French youth - of all creeds - between the ages of 18 and 24 had a favourable attitude towards ISIS. In Barcelona just this month, 5 of 11 captured ISIS sympathizers who planned to blow up parts of the city were recent atheist or Christian converts.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  18. “It is rare that parents are ever even aware that their children desire to join the movement. In diaspora homes, Muslim parents are reluctant to talk about the failings of foreign policy and ISIS, whereas their children often want desperately to understand. Most foreign volunteers and supporters fall within the mid-ranges of what social scientists call "the normal distribution" in terms of psychological attributes like empathy, compassion, idealism and wanting mostly to help people rather than to hurt them. They are mostly young people in transitional stages in their lives: students, immigrants between jobs or mates, having left or about to leave their native family and looking for a new family of friends and fellow travelers with whom they can find significance in life.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  19. “They knew nothing of the Quran or the Hadith, or of the early caliphs Omar and Othman, but had learned of Islam from Al-Qaida and ISIS propaganda, teaching that Muslims like them were targeted for elimination unless they first eliminated the impure. This is not an outlandish proposition in their lived circumstances; they told of growing up after the fall of Saddam Hussein in a hellish world of constant guerrilla war, family deaths and dislocation, and of not being even able to go out of their homes or temporary shelters for months on end. In Europe and elsewhere in the Muslim diaspora, the recruitment pattern is different. About three out of every four people who join Al-Qaida or ISIS do so through friends; most of the rest do so through family or fellow travelers in search of a meaningful path in life.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  20. “I have spent much time observing, interviewing and carrying out systematic studies among people on six continents who are drawn to violent action for a group and its cause, most recently with colleagues last month in Kirkuk, Iraq, among young men who had killed for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), and with young adults in the banlieus of Paris and the barrios of Barcelona who seek to join it. With some insights from social science research, I will try to outline a few conditions that may help move youth from taking the path of violent extremism. But first, who are these young people? None of the ISIS fighters we interviewed in Iraq had more than primary school education; some had wives and young children. When asked "What is Islam?" they answered "my life".”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source

  21. “Mr. Atran: I thank the Security Council and the Government of Jordan for letting me try to help. I am an anthropologist. Anthropologists, as a group, study the diversity of human cultures to understand our commonalities and differences, and to use the knowledge of what is common to help us bridge our differences. My research aims to help reduce violence between peoples by first trying to understand thoughts and behaviours as different from my own as any I can imagine, such as suicide bombings that kill masses of people innocent of direct harm to others. The key, as Margaret Mead taught me long ago when I worked as her assistant at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York, was to empathize with people without always sympathizing; to participate in their lives to the extent you feel is morally possible, and then report.”

    2015-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7432 (2015) · source