Extremists ‘tap into gang mentality of young males’

COMMUNITY worker Ismael Lea South first started doing ‘interventions’ on radicalised youth after his nephew and a group of his friends were jailed for robbery.

While inside, ‘nine of ten of them converted to Islam’. When he came out, his nephew told him ‘there are some people here into crazy Islam, they are teaching us that you can rob and kill in the name of Islam because you are in the land of the unbelievers’.

Ismael said: “You have disaffected youngsters who come from countries that have been invaded and colonised by Britain, and feel ‘I can’t get a job because my name is Mohammed’. Then you have extremists pushing this rhetoric of victimhood. They tell them this is a racist, corrupt society and you can never achieve anything. It becomes a self-fufilling prophecy, that you can’t achieve anything. We have to tap into aspiration, find out what they want to do.

“There needs to be more youth provision, a way of engaging young people. Violent extremism is attractive to disaffected young males because it has the same mentality as the gang mentality – all for one, one for all. The hierarchy is similar, hate preachers gradually groom young people to the point they become father figures, like gang leaders.

“Some of these people who are teaching this rhetoric are coming into the UK freely, sponsored by people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and we need to ban them.

“The mosques do drive hate preachers out. But then they just get a house and invite the young people there. They are also spreading it online with videos – so you get young people with beheadings on their phone.”