Terrorists hail from all over the globe
As the most recent terrorist attacks unfolded in London, President Trump took to Twitter to express anger and frustration toward the resistance to the travel bans he has sought to institute since coming into office. Those bans target citizens of Muslim-majority countries.
Yet it is ideology — not nationality — that is driving terrorism. As the recent wave of terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom has shown, terrorist attacks are increasingly committed by homegrown extremists with little or no training abroad.
The identities of the three London Bridge attackers that have been revealed within the last 24 hours illustrate the complex nature of the problem. Khuram Butt, widely considered to have been the ringleader of the operation, is a British citizen of Pakistani origin. Rachid Redouane, a Moroccan-Libyan, had secured Irish citizenship. Youssef Zaghba, whose father is Moroccan, was present in the United Kingdom by virtue of his European Union passport, something afforded to him by his mother’s Italian citizenship.
The complex and multinational identities of the three attackers underscore the fact that seeking to institute blanket bans against certain nationals will not only discriminate against huge numbers of innocent people, but will ultimately fail in its goal of encompassing wouldbe attackers.
Indeed, it is often those with mixed identities and nationalities who prove to be most vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment. For individuals who often struggle to feel completely at ease in any one environment or identity, Islamism offers a solution, a cause and ultimately a way out.
Islamism is a political ideology that sees Islam as a complete sociopolitical system. It advocates for an “Islamic” state, or caliphate, where state law is derived from sharia (Islamic principles and laws). As Islamism is rooted in the belief that the world is divided into Dar al-Islam (“lands of Islam”) and Dar al-Kufr (“lands of disbelief”), it is a political and religiously ideological framework that can offer those struggling with a lack of identity a justification and a way of seeing the world — however binary that world-view may be.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, usually known as the “underwear bomber,” typifies this dynamic. Though he grew up in Yemen, he spent large portions of his life leading a cosmopolitan existence as a London-based student, something made possible by being the son of one of the richest men in Africa. The dissonance created by such by contradictory experiences led him down the path of radical Islamism, and, ultimately, a failed attempt to destroy a passenger aircraft on the way to Detroit from Amsterdam in 2009.
It is likely that threats to national security in the future will continue to come from propaganda rooted in Islamism that encourages homegrown individuals to carry out violent attacks. As a result, success in the broader fight against terrorism will be more forthcoming if a greater focus is placed on Islamism as an ideology, to better identify and understand the individuals caught up in its toxic allure.
An important way to do this is to identify and remove hateful content and material that legitimize this ideology, both online and offline. Networks that promote Islamism exist in online forums, but also in focal points such as bookstores, charities, community centers, gyms and mosques. Banning people from traveling to such spaces will not end the presence of the ideology in these operational bases — it will just change the way that content, training and material are spread and disseminated.
Policymakers should consider the application of civil orders to restrict the access of recruiters to outlets used to publish propaganda promoting Islamist ideology, such as YouTube. We must also protect vulnerable individuals such as children, as well as those with a history of petty crime convictions, from this toxic ideology. Key recruiters have been known to target youth.
Potentially, these orders could also be used to deny individuals platforms within public-sector or charitable institutions.
To prevent violent radicalization, we must understand the spaces in which it occurs, as well as the ideology that forms the backdrop for the breeding ground of extremism. By doing so, we can begin to prevent those who feed off its narrative from engaging in mass-casualty terrorism, regardless of where they come from.