We Must Challenge the Ideology Driving Terrorism
By Matthew Levitt
Last week I was visiting Australia for meetings and lectures on a variety of issues, including combating violent extremism. Following up on that trip, my colleague Scott Carpenter and I wrote an piece in The Australian on this issue:
The recently foiled parcel bomb plot, tied to al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, demonstrates today's persistent terror threat from abroad.
Yet Western democracies face an equally serious threat from home-grown terrorists. In the past two weeks, the US government unsealed charges against six men accused of funnelling money to al-Shabab, the Somali terrorist organisation responsible for the July 11 World Cup attacks in Kampala, Uganda. Three of the men are from San Diego, California, and three are Somali, one of whom lives in Missouri, one in Minnesota and one who is thought to be in Kenya or Somalia.
These indictments follow just three months after charges against 14 Americans for providing financial support and recruits to Shabab. Unsealing the indictments, US Attorney-General Eric Holder highlighted the sharp increase in home-grown radicalisation: "We are seeing an increasing number of individuals -- including US citizens -- who have become captivated by extremist ideology and have taken steps to carry out terrorist objectives, either at home or abroad."
Admirably, the Obama administration's May national security strategy explicitly lists as one of its goals "empowering communities to counter radicalisation." But without identifying the ideology driving radicalisation, it will be difficult to build community resilience against radicalisers.
The full article is available here.