How to prevent a Boston-type bombing

On the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, one focus should be on how Muslims can prevent fellow believers from drifting toward radical ideology. What if the Tsarnaev brothers had been given such help?

|
AP Photo
A Muslim man stands outside the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., as a pedestrian walks by. Leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston said bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev occasionally attended Friday prayers, but had protested the community's moderate approach.

A year after the Boston Marathon bombings, experts still dispute whether the homegrown terrorist attack might have been prevented. Much of the debate focuses on which law enforcement agency – or which country, Russia or the United States – should have detected the steady radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers. The debate is useful, up to a point, to improve surveillance of such radicals.

Less discussed, however, is whether other Muslims might have persuaded the pair to reject Islamist extremist ideology and instead embrace alternative, nonviolent views.

The elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, for example, was expelled from a mosque in 2012 after interrupting Friday services in protest over American Muslims celebrating Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. What if, instead, he had been invited to discuss his grievances against the US, urged to listen to other views about Islam, and offered counseling for his anger?

That approach is not widely used among the Muslim communities in the West, in large part because of a strong reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Many Muslims are under pressure to simply distance themselves from radicals prone to violence and their interpretation of Islam. Most of all, with police asking them to report potential terrorists, mosques are more likely to expel radicals rather than work with them.

Last month, however, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group, began a campaign called the Safe Spaces Initiative aimed at training mosques on how to help a congregant whose words or behavior indicates a shift toward extremism. In Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s case, for example, his request to change his name to “Muaz,” an early Islamic scholar, might have been a tip-off.

In a 139-page guide, the council says expelling a member should be only a last resort. “There are multiple opportunities for communities to protect their friend, family member, or brother/sister-in-Islam from going down a dangerous and destructive path,” the document states. Individuals should be given a “healthy outlet” to deal with complaints about nonMuslims. In essence, writes council president Salam Al-Marayati, “we want to enhance both a spiritual safety and public safety.”

The council’s campaign is an echo of a similar campaign in Britain, where the government’s Channel Program seeks “to identify and provide support to people at risk of radicalization.” A former Muslim radical in Britain, Maajid Nawaz, author of “Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism,” says Muslims need to inoculate young believers against extremist ideology by pointing out its flaws and contradictions – such as the fact that the Taliban kill far more Muslims than nonMuslims. But they must also help them “believe in certain core principals of human rights and democracy.” Would-be Muslim radicals can be rescued from their identity crisis of living in the West, he says, by giving them an alternate narrative about democratic values.

Such a positive approach is being tried under a global campaign launched last year by Turkey and the US with the aim to counter the “local drivers of radicalization to violence.” Governments, however, have a difficult time in such campaigns. They can be seen as mainly spying on Muslim communities, often with secret informants, and not acting as a voice for peaceful alternatives. A government is also in the tricky position of having to counter radical religious views.

The best approach toward preventing attacks by Muslims living in the West is the kind of grass-roots campaign begun by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Its timing is welcomed on this first anniversary of the Boston bombings.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How to prevent a Boston-type bombing
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2014/0414/How-to-prevent-a-Boston-type-bombing
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe