Victorian woman charged over comments about Islam on Facebook

A Victorian woman has been charged with serious religious vilification after posting comments about Islam on Facebook.

Man charged over Facebook messages to MP

 

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The Swan Hill woman, 38, was charged on 15 December for a post on 27 November which police alleged would encourage others to commit harm to Muslims.

The woman used Facebook to defend herself saying she had made the comment on the Stop the Mosque in Bendigo page and said “all mosques should be burnt down with the doors locked at prayer time”.

“Probably not the best thing to write but that’s my opinion, others commented after my post agreeing with it and unbeknown to myself it got a lot of likes, that is where their incitement charge is coming from,” she wrote.

“Yesterday I got a call at work by the detective and he told me I was being charged. I told him how can I be charged for an opinion and how can I be charged with a religious vilification when I don’t acknowledge those that are Muslims and those that follow the Quaran (sic) as a religion but as an evil, hateful ideology.

“I am more than happy for it to go public, if I do nothing about it and let them win it goes against everything I stand for and I can’t do that! I didn’t want this or the publicity that will come with it but it is what it is and I’m not about to back down.”

The Stop the Mosque in Bendigo page has put a call out for participants to start their own complaints.

“It is time to start our own discrimination and racial vilification actions on anti-white, anti-Australian and Anti-infidel Australian posts, videos and sermons. If you find them... screenshot or capture them and send them to us,” the post says.

Shopping Mall Apologises After Requesting Giant Wall Mural Not Feature Islamic Veil

A Swedish shopping centre has been forced to apologise after insisting a wall mural they had commissioned did not feature a woman wearing a hijab. The secular organisation said they did not want to display religious symbols.

The shopping centre had commissioned the UNITY Burlov and Ungdomsgruppen Burlov youth groups from the Burlington area to paint a wall inside the local shopping centre, just outside Malmö.

The youngsters decided to draw a “diverse” range of people, but management saw it differently.

“It’s so horrible you almost can’t believe it’s true,” complained Pia Jönsson, whose husband Magnus Heberlein works for a local anti-racism group, in a post on Facebook.

“What kind of message are you sending to customers? How can you play into the hands of racists in such a disgusting way”, she added.

As the mural went up management called the youngsters into a meeting and explained that they did not want religious imagery in their building. The hijab was subsequently replaced with hair.

“The young people are angry and sad. They have grown up in this municipality, and are proud of its diversity and want to show it off as something beautiful. But they have been trampled on”, Ms. Jönsson wrote.

Speaking to SVT News Skåne, Ms. Jönsson’s husband, who works for the ‘Network Together in the Neighborhood’ anti-racism organisation, said:

“We think it’s very upsetting to censor young people’s work in this way… We want to promote solidarity and cohesion, and these young people want to emphasise that everyone has a place and will be accommodated here.

“When it becomes infected, it is very upsetting”.

Grosvenor Fund Management, a London-based firm which owns the shopping centre, put out a press release on Saturday apologising for what had happened.

“We apologise that a mural of a woman in a hijab was considered a religious symbol and was therefore altered,” they wrote.

“That the picture was changed was unfortunate. For us it is important to welcome all customers regardless of their religion, ethnicity or sex.”

Isis 'not my cup of tea' says British woman who went to Syria to join

A British woman who fled Islamic State with her five children after travelling to Syria to be with her husband has told of her experience of life under the group’s rule, describing the “gangster mentality” among supporters as “not my cup of tea”.

Shukee Begum, who fled Isis and says that she was then held by smugglers in northern Syria, said that she wanted to return to the UK but feared what the reception would be from British authorities. She is currently believed to be living in Syria.

“The UK is my home. I grew up there, my friends are there my family are there. That is where I consider to be home but I am just not sure at the moment of the track record of the current government if the UK is somewhere I can come back to and achieve justice.”

Begum travelled from Manchester to Syria with her children to find her husband, Jamal al-Harith, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who left the UK 18 months ago.

But months after joining him, Begum said that she and her children aged nine, seven, five, three and 11 months, fled Isis-controlled territory and were held for a time by smugglers in Syria’s war-torn city of Aleppo.

Speaking about the reasons why she left the UK to join al-Harith, she said: “He’s my husband and all of a sudden he’s not there. It didn’t feel like home any more. I was trying to manage school runs, things like that.”

“I was thinking about the children’s futures. Was he part of it? Will he come back? All these things go through your mind.”

Insisting that she had never been a supporter of Isis, she said that she had taken her children to Syria because her husband was a family man, adding: “For me to take the children to see him and then come away from there that would have been more powerful than anything else I had to say to him at the time.”

She said that she wanted other women to know about the reality of life in Isis controlled territory.
Begum said: “You have got hundreds of families living in one hall and sharing perhaps one or two bathrooms between them. You have got children crying, children who are sick.”

“There was a gangster kind of mentality among single women there. Violence was talked about, war, killing.
They would sit together, huddle around their laptops, watch Isis videos. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.”

Begum said that she asked her husband to help her get out, to no avail, and permission to leave was denied by Isis courts.

“This is what I want to make clear as well to other women thinking of coming into Isis territory – that you can’t just expect to come into Isis territory and then expect that you can just leave again easily. There is no personal autonomy there at all.”

After managing to flee, she said that she and the children were held by smugglers close to the Turkish border and for a number of months in Aleppo before they were released. The circumstances of her release are unclear, although according to Channel 4 news, Syrian rebels from the Nusra Front intervened to facilitate it.

Demise of the bilingual intellectual

Dr Rohit De is a young and credible historian. Trained at Princeton University, he is currently teaching at Yale University. Now that his wife is pursuing her PhD at the Cambridge University, he divides his time between Yale and Cambridge. While in Cambridge, he is a frequent visitor to the Centre of South Asian Studies. It is here that I interact with him occasionally on various issues of mutual interest.

In one of our discussions on Pakistan’s history and politics came up the issue of language and its role in determining the intellectual trajectory of any nation/community. Rohit’s concern about the decline in the bilingual intellectual tradition in India drew my attention to the state of uni-lingualism that has steadily crept in Pakistan’s intellectual tradition over the last few decades. The gradual demise of bi-lingualism besets both countries but the situation obtaining in Pakistan is somewhat different.

Ramachandra Guha in his essay ‘The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual’ which appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly has traced the genealogy of multilingualism having been substituted by the overriding supremacy of English language. That happened despite Gandhi’s exhortation to the Indians to adopt vernacular as a medium of intellectual exchange. Gandhi’s advice was not taken but, from 1920 to 1970, the multilingual tradition remained well-entrenched in the Indian intellectual tradition.

Guha notes in his essay, “Between 1920s and 1970s, the intellectual universe in India was — to coin a word — ‘linguidextrous’. With few exceptions, the major political thinkers, scholars and creative writers — and many of the minor ones too — thought and acted and wrote with equal facility in English and at least one other language.” However, things started looking awry and the lingual plurality started giving space to English.

Thus multilingual ethos has been shoved to a few pockets where it is fighting for its survival.
To elucidate the point, I cite Guha yet again, “The intellectual and creative world in India is increasingly becoming polarized — between those who think and act and write in English alone, and those who think and write and act in their mother tongue alone.” Ironically, in Pakistan, the intellectual activity performed in the mother tongue (the regional languages) is considered antithetical to the interests of the state. Thus the ‘bilingual’ in Pakistan’s case means Urdu and English.

The intellectual scene in Pakistan is currently divided quite tangibly between Urdu and English, with regional languages languishing in utter marginality. Like India, the bilingual tradition persisted until the 1970s.

Vernaculars though were conspicuously absent from the educational curriculum. These languages had informal existence in homes and public sphere.

Till the early decades of the 20th century, children were given informal instruction of Arabic and Persian at home but one of the classical oriental languages was mandatory at school. Such intellectual engagement with more than one language resulted in cultural enrichment and also helped opening up newer creative avenues.
Talking about Punjabi, one must commend Najm Hosain Syed who has kept the flame of Punjabi language and literature burning. Najm too is bilingual and so were Shafqat Tanvir Mirza and Mushtaq Soofi. These scholars are a rare breed now.

Curiously enough, the pre-partition generation of the Pakistani intellectuals had the privilege of expressing themselves in more than one language. Majority of them were well-versed in Urdu, English, Persian and also Arabic and could write in the first three languages. Laureates like Zafar Ali Khan, Chiragh Hasan Hasrat, Faiz and Noon Meem Rashid could express themselves in more than one language. Before them Iqbal himself used three languages for expressing his thoughts and poetry. Among my own senior colleagues and friends, Gilani Kamran, Razi Abedi and Sajjad Haider Malik carried on the tradition of bilingualism.

Now that tradition is a saga of the past. For the last quarter of a century, the state of Pakistan has relinquished its responsibility to educate its people. The education system in the public sector has virtually crumbled and been replaced by a mushrooming private sector. These private sector institutions tend to cater to the needs of a free market where English is perceived as a vital instrument of empowerment. Thus, cultural development ceases to be the agenda of the education system which is in place in Pakistan. Those who can afford send their children to private (English medium) schools while those with meager resources are forced to be content with public sector Urdu medium education.

Thus, the English-Urdu divide has become tangible. On top of that, Urdu is the medium of instruction in madrassas where the socially and economically marginalised are sent to study. Hence, class question becomes even more pertinent when it comes to education. Two different classes with absolutely divergent intellectual traditions and world views which are mutually exclusive are being churned out. The privileged read, act and think in English, and the under-privileged do all that in Urdu because both languages represent different thinking patterns and epistemologies.

Despite Urdu being highlighted as state’s official language and an emblem of Pakistani nationalism, Pakistani middle classes seem to be aware of Urdu’s inadequacy to guarantee a rewarding future for their children. English is the only option for them. Now that higher education has been privatised as well, the polarisation is likely to drive a social wedge alienating the rich from the poor and vice versa.

In such a scenario, the ball is in the court of the state which must bridge the yawning gap within the education systems prevailing in Pakistan. Otherwise, social anarchy is a foregone conclusion. The same holds true for India too.

Court: YouTube should not have been forced to take down anti-Muslim film

YouTube should not have been forced to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in the Middle East and death threats to actors, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a victory for free speech advocates.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal sided with Google, which owns YouTube, after free speech advocates urged the court to overturn a 2-1 decision by three of its judges. The three judges had ordered YouTube to take down the video.

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia wanted "Innocence of Muslims" removed from the site after receiving death threats. Her lawyer argued she had a copyright claim to the low-budget film because she believed she was acting in a different production.

Google argued Garcia had no claim to the film because the filmmaker wrote the dialogue, managed the production and dubbed over her lines.

It wasn't immediately clear if or when the video would be reposted on YouTube. A Google spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The film inspired rioting by those who considered it blasphemous to the Prophet Muhammad and President Barack Obama and other world leaders asked Google to take it down.

Google, which said those requests amounted to censorship, was joined by an unusual alliance of filmmakers, other Internet companies and prominent news media organizations that didn't want the court to alter copyright law or infringe on First Amendment rights.

YouTube and other Internet companies were concerned they could be besieged with takedown notices, though it could be hard to contain the film that is still found online.

A lawyer for Google argued in December that if a bit player in a movie has copyright privileges, it could extend to minor characters in blockbusters, shatter copyright law and ultimately restrict free speech because anyone unhappy with their performance could have it removed from the Internet.

"The ultimate effect is to harm the marketplace of speech," attorney Neal Katyal told the court during a hearing in Pasadena.

Cris Armenta, a lawyer for Garcia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. But Armenta previously said the extraordinary circumstances justified the extreme action of a court injunction against YouTube.

"She is under threat of death if she is not successful in removing it," Armenta argued.

Garcia was paid $500 for a movie called "Desert Warrior" she believed had nothing to do with religion. But ended up in a five-second scene in which her voice was dubbed over and her character asked if Muhammad was a child molester.

The film drew the attention of federal prosecutors, who discovered that filmmaker Mark Basseley Youssef used several false names in violation of probation from a 2010 check fraud case. He was sent back to prison in 2012 and was released on probation in September 2013.

The Veil Across Europe

Countries across Europe have wrestled with the issue of the Muslim veil - in various forms such as the body-covering burka andthe niqab, which covers the face apart from the eyes.

The debate takes in religious freedom, female equality, secular traditions and even fears of terrorism.

The veil issue is part of a wider debate about multiculturalism in Europe, as many politicians argue that there needs to be a greater effort to assimilate ethnic and religious minorities.

France

France was the first European country to ban the full-face Islamic veil in public places.

France has about five million Muslims - the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe - but it is thought only about 2,000 women wear full veils.

As President, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration brought in the ban, said that veils oppress women and were "not welcome" in France.

Under the ban that took effect on 11 April 2011, no woman, French or foreign, is able to leave their home with their face hidden behind a veil without running the risk of a fine.

Headscarves are allowed at French universities - but not schools

The penalty for doing so is a 150-euro (£133, $217) fine and instruction in citizenship. Anyone found forcing a woman to cover her face risks a 30,000-euro fine.

The French Interior Ministry said, as of September 2012, 425 women had been fined and 66 had been warned for violating the headscarf ban.

The European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban on 2 July 2014 after a case was brought by a 24-year-old French woman who argued that the ban violated her freedom of religion and expression.

Most of the population - including most Muslims - agree with the government when it describes the face-covering veil as an affront to society's values. Critics - chiefly outside France - say it is a violation of individual liberties.

A ban on Muslim headscarves and other "conspicuous" religious symbols at state schools was introduced in 2004, and received overwhelming political and public support in a country where the separation of state and religion is enshrined in law.

Continue reading the main story

Muslim headscarves

The word hijab comes from the Arabic for veil and is used to describe the headscarves worn by Muslim women. These scarves come in myriad styles and colours. The type most commonly worn in the West is a square scarf that covers the head and neck but leaves the face clear.

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Belgium

A law banning the full-face veil came into effect in Belgium in July 2011.

The law bans any clothing that obscures the identity of the wearer in places like parks and on the street.

Veiled women in Belgium have staged protests against the ban

In December 2012, Belgium's Constitutional Court rejected appeals for the ban to be annulled, ruling that it did not violate human rights.

Before the law was passed, the burka was already banned in several districts under old local laws originally designed to stop people masking their faces completely at carnival time.

Spain

Though there are no plans for a national ban in Spain, the city of Barcelona announced a ban on full Islamic face-veils in some public spaces such as municipal offices, public markets and libraries.

At least two smaller towns in Catalonia, the north-eastern region that includes Barcelona, have also imposed bans.

Barcelona was the first major city in Spain to ban the full-face Islamic veil in public buildings

But a ban in the town of Lleida was overturned by Spain's Supreme Court in February 2013. It ruled that it was an infringement of religious liberties.

Barcelona's city council said the ban there targeted any head-wear that impeded identification, including motorbike helmets and balaclavas.

Britain

There is no ban on Islamic dress in the UK, but schools are allowed to decide their own dress code after a 2007 directive which followed several high-profile court cases.

Many Islamic groups see a ban on full-face veils as discrimination against Muslims

In January 2010, then Schools Secretary Ed Balls said it was "not British" to tell people what to wear in the street after the UK Independence Party called for all face-covering Muslim veils to be banned.

In September 2013, Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne called for a "national debate" about Islamic veils in public places, such as schools.

In 2014 UKIP came first in the European elections in Britain, winning 24 seats in Brussels. UKIP leader Nigel Farage has previously said that full veils are a symbol of an "increasingly divided Britain", that they "oppress" women, and are a potential security threat.

The Netherlands

Plans to impose a ban in the Netherlands under the country's previous centre-right coalition were shelved in 2012 when the government collapsed and was replaced by its left-wing rivals.

The earlier proposed ban reflected the influence of the anti-Islamist Geert Wilders, whose Freedom party was at that time the third largest in parliament and the minority coalition government's chief ally.

Populist politician Geert Wilders, of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, wants tougher policies on Islam

Attempts to introduce similar legislation in 2006 failed. Lawyers said it would probably be unconstitutional and critics said it would violate civil rights.

Around 5% of the Netherlands' 16 million residents are Muslims, but only around 300 are thought to wear the niqab, which leaves the eyes uncovered, or the burka, which covers them with a cloth grid. The wearing of headscarves is far more common, however.

Turkey

For more than 85 years Turks have lived in an officially secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who rejected headscarves as backward-looking.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, Emine, wears a headscarf

Scarves are banned in civic spaces and official buildings, but the issue is deeply divisive for the country's predominantly Muslim population, as two-thirds of all Turkish women - including the wives and daughters of the prime minister and president - cover their heads.

In 2008, Turkey's constitution was amended to ease a strict ban at universities, allowing headscarves that were tied loosely under the chin. Headscarves covering the neck and all-enveloping veils were still banned.

In October 2013, Turkey lifted rules banning women from wearing headscarves in the country's state institutions - with the exception of the judiciary, military and police.

The governing AK Party, with its roots in Islam, said the ban meant many girls were being denied an education. But the secular establishment said easing it would be a first step to allowing Islam into public life.

Italy

Several towns in Italy have local bans on face-covering veils. The north-western town of Novara is one of several local authorities to have already brought in rules to deter public use of the Islamic veil.

Governments have discussed extending the law to impose penalties on Muslim face coverings, but these have not yet been enforced nationally.

This sign in Varallo says that the Burqa, Niqab and Burqini are not allowed by communal decision

In 2004 local politicians in northern Italy resurrected old public order laws against the wearing of masks, to stop women from wearing the burka.

Some mayors from the anti-immigrant Northern League have also banned the use of Islamic swimsuits.

Denmark

In 2008, the government announced it would bar judges from wearing headscarves and similar religious or political symbols - including crucifixes, Jewish skull caps and turbans - in courtrooms.

Thousands of people across the Muslim world protested against Denmark in 2006 over the publication of a controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad

That move came after pressure from the Danish People's Party (DPP), known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has since called for the ban to be extended to include school teachers and medical personnel.

After a Danish paper published a controversial cartoon in 2005 depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a bearded man with a bomb in his turban, there were a series of protests against Denmark across the Muslim world.

Germany

There is no national law restricting the wearing of veils.

In September 2003 the federal Constitutional Court ruled in favour of a teacher who wanted to wear an Islamic scarf to school.

However, it said states could change their laws locally if they wanted to.

At least half of Germany's 16 states have gone on to ban teachers from wearing headscarves and in the state of Hesse the ban applies to all civil servants.

Russia

Russia's Stavropol region has announced a ban on hijabs - the first of its kind imposed by a region in the Russian federation. The ruling was upheld by Russia's Supreme Court in July 2013.

In Chechnya, the authorities have defied Russian policy on Islamic dress. In 2007 President Ramzan Kadyrov - the pro-Moscow leader - issued an edict ordering women to wear headscarves in state buildings. It is a direct violation of Russian law, but is strictly followed today.

President Kadyrov even voiced support for men who fired paintballs at women deemed to be violating the strict dress code.

More than 16 million Muslims live in Russia

Switzerland

In late 2009, Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said a face-veil ban should be considered if more Muslim women begin wearing them, adding that the veils made her feel "uncomfortable".

In September 2013, 65% of the electorate in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino voted in favour of a ban on face veils in public areas by any group.

It was the first time that any of Switzerland's 26 cantons has imposed such a ban.

Swiss Muslim women protested against the cantonal vote in Ticino on banning face-covering veils

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ISIS Ability to Recruit Women Baffles West, Strengthens Cause

Success in stemming the youthful allure of the Islamic State group won't come from attack jets.

An Iraqi Assyrian woman who fled from Mosul to Lebanon holds a placard depicting the map of Iraq and Syria, during a sit-in for abducted Christians in Syria and Iraq, at a church in Sabtiyesh area east Beirut, Lebanon on Thursday.

By Paul D. ShinkmanMarch 2, 2015 | 12:01 a.m. EST+ More

A young woman who says she lives in the United Kingdom posted last August to a Tumblr page reportedly run by recruiters for the Islamic State group.

“i so badly want to go to raqqah and live under the shariah and live in the land of khilafa but as a young muslimah in the uk it's rly difficult,” she wrote, using another term for the “caliphate” the extremist network also known as ISIS or ISIL claims to have founded. “it hurts my heart to live here. I yearn to be the wife of a mujahid and support him and khilafa all the way.”

Moments later she received the same warm, welcoming and thoughtful response that so many others on the site had received before, reminiscent of a well-trained college campus tour guide.

“I swear by Allāh I completely understand the feeling,” the responder began, piling on empathy for the young woman’s fears of leaving her family at home for an unknown cause abroad. But the responder assured her she would find even more stability and support were she to travel to Syria and help solidify territory the group had claimed proudly, in blood.

“I refused in the west to marry anyone unless he was a mujahid, I wanted someone who fought for Allāhs deen,” the responder wrote. “And it is a beautiful feeling being married to a mujahid.”

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The danger of sites such as these has grown incrementally stronger since last summer, as the Islamic State group continues to strengthen its gains in Syria and defy what Western intelligence agencies thought they knew about Islamic extremist networks.

As many as 20,000 foreign fighters have flocked to Syria and Iraq since the Islamic State group first laid siege to the region last summer, according to numbers compiled by the London-basedInternational Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. Of those, as many as 4,000 have come from Europe, 600 from the U.K. alone. Roughly 100 have originated from the U.S. Of the Western migrants, as many as 550 have been women, according to New York-based security firm The Soufan Group.

If the British government and its Western counterparts have any inkling into what actually attracts their young people to an active war zone in Iraq and Syria, it so far hasn’t yielded that publicly. Officials have offered a range of factors: Perhaps disenfranchised Muslim youth feel they can find the stability and acceptance under the Islamic State group that so far has eluded them in their adopted homes, as European countries struggle to shift from monochrome to increased multiculturalism. Others may simply want to participate in the gruesome violence they see constantly splattered across cable news reports. And maybe all believe there is at least some truth to the Islamic State group’s assurances that Western governments have waged war against Islam itself.

The response from the West has been haphazard and largely ineffective. Most recently, headline space has been occupied by still puzzling reports of three healthy, affluent and educated young British women who reportedly traveled to Islamic State group strongholds to support the movement.

Amira Abase, 15, Shamima Begum, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, went missing and were last seen having arrived in Turkey. The British government confirmed last week they had indeed crossed over into Syria, likely with the help of human smugglers. All three were described as “straight-A students” at their highly regarded east London school where they were studying for college entrance examinations. The girls’ families have made emotional pleas for their safe return.

What inspired their journey is yet undetermined, though they will likely become brides of the extremist fighters there.

The Islamic State group now must reinforce a perception it has established a haven where Muslims, including young women, can enjoy the kind of excitement and purity they could not find in their Western homes, and directly contribute to breeding a new generation of believers.

According to propaganda videos, women can marry handsome fighters and raise strong warriors to protect their adopted homeland. Unlike most other Muslim extremist organizations, the Islamic State group has also not ruled out the possibility of women taking up arms themselves.

“The best thing for a women is to be a righteous wife and to raise righteous children,” wrote one recruiter on a propaganda blog, according to a February study from The Soufan Group

“‘This [migration] was never meant for ease but a lesson of patience & hardship to understand what jannah [heaven] was always meant for & see if we’re worthy of it,’” another wrote, according to the report.

Kashmiri demonstrators hold up a flag of the Islamic State group during a demonstration against Israeli military operations in Gaza, in downtown Srinagar on July 18, 2014. 

The Reality

The truth these women face upon arrival is nothing short of bleak.

“It’s heartbreaking to me whenever I look at their pictures,” says Karima Bennoune, an Algerian-American professor at the University of California-Davis School of Law who studies the female casualties of Islamic extremist movements.

“Groups like ISIS believe they have a theological right to the bodies of women and girls,” she says. “It’s the most tragic thing you can imagine – I don’t know whether they have an understanding or not.”

Bennoune's book, “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here” documents the untold stories of female involvement – either by temptation or by force – in previous Islamic extremist movements and the consistent tragedies that traditionally befall them, such as forced marriages and sexual enslavement.

The U.N. documented some of the staggeringly gruesome accounts of rape and torture of women under Islamic State group control in a November report. Fighters prey particularly on unmarried women and girls as young as 13, the report states, forcing them to become brides. Captured women and children of enemy groups, such as the Yazidis in Iraq, were sold in public markets as “war booty.”

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A large contributor to the potent recruitment’s success, Bennoune observes, is the immediate media attention to these actions of the Islamic State group, further magnified by its unprecedented ability to manipulate social media to glamorize its vicious conquest

One of the most high profile cases involves two Austrian teen girls, Samra Kesinovic, 17, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, who reportedly left a note to their parents saying they planned to fight with the Islamic State group. They now apparently claim they wish to come home, infuriating Islamic State group leadership.

The slick videos and flashy recruitment materials the group produces is much easier to pick up on and document than, say, the efforts of someone like Samira Salih al-Nuaimi. The Mosul-based human rights lawyer and activist was a leading voice against the Islamic State group’s vicious actions against her countrymen, particularly young girls, before she was executed by the extremist network in September.

Peshmerga fighters inspect the remains of a car, bearing the Islamic State group flag, which belonged to ISIS militants after it was targeted by an American air strike in the village of Baqufa, north of Mosul, Iraq, on Aug. 18, 2014.

A Halting Response

The response from the West has so far been insufficient, at times seeming slow to recognize the complicated influences that lead young women and young men to gravitate to a life among terrorists.

When asked how the FBI can offset this troubling rise in Islamic State recruitment domestically, former Director Robert Mueller offered a tactical strategy of attacking the group from the top down, similar to the approach in supposed victories against al-Qaida during the last war in Iraq.

“My own view of ISIS is we need to go after the leadership,” he said, while speaking at a breakfast meeting last week organized by the American Bar Association. He referenced U.S. coordination with U.K. and Turkish counterparts, as well as what he considered successes during the last decade in hunting al-Qaida in Iraq, the Islamic State group’s precursor.

“You did not want to be the No. 3 person in al-Qaida in 2007, 2008, because the life expectancy in that particular position was rather short,” he said. “Our success on the ground there was dependent on great intelligence, and focus, through our troops on the ground.”

He later declined to comment on whether military gains abroad would overwhelm the Islamic State group’s ability to recruit inside Western countries.

The quick and tidy victories from intelligence-gathering and military strikes create a partial illusion of success that could slowly erode perceptions of the group’s invincibility. Meanwhile, the grueling, long-term and difficult work at home of addressing radicalization domestically continues.

“It’s bloody difficult to do,” says Robert Milton, a retired commander of the U.K. Metropolitan Police Service at New Scotland Yard. “It’s so much easier to do the hard things, it’s so much easier to have border control.”

“It’s so much harder to deal with the human mind, the psychology of this issue,” he says. “It require a huge amount of resources. It requires communities to trust us, and that’s been a problem in the past.”

Milton, now a consultant, has lectured at colleges in the U.S. that prepare students for law enforcement careers. He emphasizes the importance of finding the root of Islamic extremism in the true intentions of these groups and what they believe they can tangibly achieve. It isn’t difficult to target and kill a leader, but it is extraordinarily difficult to address and offset why a young person believes Islamic State rhetoric that Western forces have declared war on all Muslims.

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The British government has employed a program called “Channel.” Instead of necessarily surveilling and arresting potential terror suspects, police spend time identifying young people who may begin to align themselves with extremist causes, then meet with them directly to determine whether they have the potential to develop into actual extremist fighters themselves.

Police had reportedly held such meetings with the three young British women who disappeared into Syria last week under the auspices of the Channel program. Troublingly to Milton, they passed the test.

“They persuaded that person ... that they were fine, that they weren’t going to do anything,” he says. “They hoodwinked these people. That demonstrates to me, you have to have the right level of training and expertise to have the right intervention.”

“We’re halfway down the route,” Milton says.

Last week, the White House assembled domestic experts and international leaders to a first eversummit on Countering Violent Extremism. President Barack Obama challenged his foreign counterparts to develop internal plans for fighting extremism ahead of the next U.N. General Assembly in the fall.

By then, perhaps the U.S. too will have some comprehensive plan for providing an alternative narrative to those who believe American fighter jets bombing Syria and Iraq deserve a militant response.

U.N. Security Council Blacklists Foreign Fighters, Recruiters

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