A desperate search for the jihadi profile

[rug]

April 6, 2016 4:56 pm

The problem is that there appears to be no single jihadi profile. In broad terms, there are two types: those who are fighting in warzones or perpetrating attacks elsewhere; and those who are radicalised but have not acted — at least, not yet. Some in this second category are on the radar screen of law enforcement agencies; it is likely that many are not.

- snip -

Some studies, however, reach a different conclusion. French anthropologist Dounia Bouzar, for instance, found that a majority of “candidates for jihad” she looked at came from middle-class backgrounds and had no record of crime but suffered from depression. One of her most curious findings was that a majority came from atheist families.

- snip -

But the role of religion, too, is disputed. While the spread of Salafi Islam through Europe’s mosques is seen as a big contributor to radicalisation, Olivier Roy, a French expert on Islamist groups, argues that the theological dimension is thin. What he sees as, in essence, a youth revolt expresses itself in religious terms because jihad is the only cause on the global market. “If you kill in silence, it will be reported by the local newspaper; if you kill yelling ‘Allahu akbar’ you are sure to make the national headlines,” he writes.

The Salafi version of Islam is favoured, he says, because of its simplicity: it has clear dos and don’ts, it is rigid and it negates the cultural Islam practised by parents. For Roy, Europe is facing a “youth movement” in which young men (and some women) have a loose or no connection to Muslim communities. If he is right, it makes jihadi-spotting all the harder.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0227b5c0-fb14-11e5-8f41-df5bda8beb40.html#ixzz454boXffs

[MisterP]

1. presumably "assimilated native-born North Africans who express their dislike for their parents

with bacon, booze, weed, and Friday sex headquartered in a gay bar" doesn't exactly fit with the whole frame of "it's a problem of being too Muslim and not Westernized"

so the point of any cell structure, of course, is to get them thinking only in group cliches and locking out individual criteria, to kill for a cause rather than for cause

[rug]

2. That article has some interesting links in it.