Deradicalisation programs must resist Medina militantcy

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could deradicalise young Muslims attracted to Islamic extremist groups as easily as we debug computers infected with viruses?

A growing number of countries today have some type of deradicalisation program directed at Muslims who have engaged in, or are on the path to, violence in the name of Islam.

Saudi Arabia’s deradicalisation strategy is known as the Prevention, Rehabilitation and After-Care approach. In Britain, deradicalisation is part of the broader Prevent campaign. Singapore, Indonesia and Morocco all have deradicalisation programs.

Australia, too, has a program countering violent extremism that encompasses deradicalisation. (A Sydney teenager charged with planning an Anzac Day terror attack, and refused bail last week, reportedly was part of a deradicalisation program when he was ­arrested.)

The costs of these programs ­varies: the Saudi deradicalisation program costs $US12 million ($16m) a year. In Britain, funding on “key Prevent deliverables” (a broader category than deradicalisation alone) in 2008-09 was more than $US200m.

What these programs have in common is their limited effectiveness. In 2010, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD said deradicalisation remained rare. Researchers for the Rand Corporation think tank concluded “there are reasons to remain sceptical about (deradicalisation) programs’ claims of success”. This is because of a fundamental confusion about what needs to be done.

First, nearly all these programs fail to take religious ideology as seriously as they should. Second, they underestimate the extent to which a radical version of Islam is being energetically promoted by other government programs with bigger budgets. I would estimate that the funds going into radicalisation dwarf those being spent on deradicalisation by a factor of 10.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, deradicalisation simply means conveying to participants that domestic terrorism is illegitimate. Armed jihad remains legitimate as long as it has been proclaimed by the appropriate religious authority. A participant can remain as committed to political Islam as before, as long as he picks on a foreign target. That is not really deradicalisation. It is just redirection. Other programs aim at little more than disengagement, which means persuading terrorists not to engage in violence in the ­future.

But the process of radicalisation generally occurs some time before Islamists engage in the use of violence. We should be just as concerned about Muslims who do not use violence themselves but in whose midst the plotters of terror can operate. Such people constitute a hospitable environment for radicals, though they themselves do not resort to violence. Until we address the enabling role of non­violent extremists, the seedbed of terrorism will continue to spread.

To make deradicalisation ­effective, we need to do two things. First, we need to abandon the familiar distinction between “a tiny minority of violent extremists” and “an enormous majority of moderate Muslims”, which is standard fare in politicians’ speeches. Second, we need to counter that sustained campaign of radicalisation waged by powerful Muslim organisations such as the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation.

The distinction between extremists and moderates is a deeply misleading one. As I argue in my book Heretic, the Prophet Mohammed’s life, and the chapters of the Koran, can be divided between the early spiritual and apolitical period of Mecca and the subsequent political and military period of Medina.

Under the doctrine of abrogation, the official schools of ­Islamic law have ruled that the later military period of Medina supersedes the earlier, more spiritual Meccan period. The real distinction we need to draw is between those Muslims who would be content to practise their religion along the lines of Mohammed’s Meccan period and those who insist on the militant political religion of the Medina period.

The people we call extremists are in the latter camp. They seek to resuscitate the caliphate of Islam’s early period, a political empire led by a ruler considered to be God’s deputy on earth. In this world view, all Muslims are seen as members of the ummah (a collective body of believers that is said to be indivisible). The caliph’s duty is to impose orthodox Islamic law on the ummah. Ruler and ruled are a witness to the sovereignty of Allah’s laws. Once Islamic law is firmly established, the duty of the faithful is to engage in dawah (a process of Islamisation), a form of Islamic missionary activism that aims to Islamise all of ­society, and to wage jihad against those who resist Islamisation.

Medina Muslims are far from being a tiny minority, not least because they have a major advantage over Mecca Muslims: their mes­sage is coherent. The Medina Muslim can draw the attention of the Mecca Muslim in doubt to the cardinal rule of abrogation. He can do this using numerous quotes from the Koran, from the Prophet and from all established schools of Islamic jurisprudence. I know from my own experience how a young Mecca Muslim feels when presented with a choice between behaving like a “true” Muslim and being condemned as impious.

I passionately believe there is another path available to those who seek a better way forward: doctrinal reform of Islam. I have come to call Muslims who seek such reform Modifiers.

Instead of rejecting Islam outright, as I did, they seek to turn the tables on the Medina Muslims and to fight for the Mecca position.

I have spoken to several of these Modifiers and they love the sense of identity and belonging their religious community provides to them. So they don’t want out; they want to change Islam from within. I wish them well and sincerely hope they succeed.

Western leaders should, of course, be doing much more to support the Modifiers, as their predecessors once supported the dissidents in the Soviet Bloc. When it comes to national security, however, citizens in liberal democracies cannot afford to wait for a Muslim Reformation to happen. That could take decades, if it comes at all. So what more can our leaders do to give meaning to their talk of deradicalisation?

The answer is to stop tolerating the aggressive efforts at radicalisation going on under their noses. The focus on individual radicalisation risks obscuring more structural trends in the world that have been conducive to the spread of radical Islam, both violent and non-violent. For several decades, Medina Muslims have been engaged in dawah through the OIC, led by none other than … Saudi Arabia. The mission of the OIC is explicitly one of Islamisation, a process that begins by getting Mecca Muslims to accept the Medina point of view.

Saudi Arabian individuals and foundations have spent more than $70 billion exporting these toxic religious views to all corners of the globe since the 1970s. Compare that with the paltry sums being spent on bogus deradicalisation.

A deradicalisation policy that fails to counter the OIC and its numerous offshoots is doomed to fail. Going after the little guy essentially ignores this vast infrastructure of radicalisation.

The West is desperately in need of some fresh thinking on Islamic extremism. On one side are establishment politicians insisting “Islam is a religion of peace”, terrified of being accused of Islamophobia. On the other are the likes of Donald Trump, demanding blanket bans on Muslim immigration. It is hard to know which is doing more to help the Medina Muslims gain their objectives.

More than ever, we need to show our love for Muslims and — for their sake as much as for our own — to combat the campaign to force them all to choose Medina over Mecca. Deradicalisation needs to get radical. That means backing Muslim Modifiers and fighting the forces of Medina.

Anyone whose computer has been infected by a virus knows you do not solve the problem by deleting a few files. In the battle against the Medina virus, it is time the West installed some serious antivirus software and the mother of all ideological firewalls.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali will present the Centre for Independent Studies’ 2016 John Bonython Lecture in Melbourne on May 12.