and its the gift of eid for pple of tawhid
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The first stage is the "pre-radicalisation" phase, where an individual is often frustrated with his life or the politics of his home government and is looking for meaning in life Middle-class families and students provide fertile ground. Young Muslim men living in diaspora communities are particularly vulnerable. These communities provide "ideological sanctuaries" for radical thought and tend to tolerate the existence of an "extremist sub-culture". The more "pure" and isolated they are from the rest of the community, the more vulnerable they are to extremism.
The second stage is "self-identification", where the individual discovers Salafi-jihadist ideology, a Sunni revivalist movement which aims to create a "pure" Islamic society based on a literal reading of the Koran. Under this interpretation, complex disputes such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and Kashmir are simplified into a single global war between "believers and non-believers".
Many attracted to this ideology have suffered a personal crisis such as the death of a family member, loss of a job, personal discrimination or "moral shock" caused by political conflicts abroad, and turn to religion to deal with it.
They seek out others experiencing the same inner conflict, and clusters form. Recent converts tend to be the most zealous as they seek to prove their new-found religious conviction. At this stage the joiners become alienated from their former lives, often giving up cigarettes, drinking and gambling, while they begin to wear Islamic clothing, grow beards and become involved in social activism. At the same time they gravitate towards extremist incubators such as radical mosques, prayer rooms and book stores. The NYPD study identifies the Michael Street mosque in Brunswick, Melbourne, run by Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah leader Mohammed Omran as the "extremist incubator" for a number of Australians, a place where they "began to self-identify with the jihadi-Salafi ideology".
The third stage in the radicalisation process is indoctrination, when the individual's views intensify and become all-consuming.
"What was merely an ideology transforms into a personal cause" and the individual decides he must take action to further it. The group becomes his new world while unbelievers become the arch-enemy. His new beliefs become politicised: in the Australian case study, this was manifested in a desire to force the Australian Government to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
In this phase, all of the cells that were studied withdrew from their regular prayer room, which was no longer sufficiently radical. The Melbourne group shunned Sheik Omran's mosque and began meeting and worshipping in private homes.
In each case, as they became more isolated from the world around them, the internet played a crucial role, acting as a "virtual echo chamber" and "radicalisation accelerant", while also providing a tactical resource, the authors say.
When Westerners become terrorists, their choice to radicalize is not triggered by oppression and suffering. Rather, they seek a cause to align with in order to escape lifestyle dissatisfaction. Silber and Bhatt claim that the Western social class system, coupled with widespread failure to integrate past generations of immigrants, has created an environment where individuals will take that unfortunate leap towards extremist Islamic ideology.
In many cases, an individual will begin exploring radical Islam, usually Salafism, using the Internet. Soon he or she will encounter like-minded people and the exploration will spread to the offline world. Groups like these will eventually gravitate away from former identities, becoming indoctrinated in new adopted beliefs. Over time, stronger radical beliefs reinforce themselves through group dynamics, with members of the group eventually designating themselves as holy warriors. It is at this jihadist stage that they are capable of organizing and planning operations and terrorist attacks
The fourth and final stage of transformation is jihadisation, the point at which members of the group "self-designate themselves as holy warriors".
"Group-think" becomes a force multiplier for radicalisation and invariably paves the way for action. They engage in bonding activities such as camping, whitewater rafting, target shooting and paintball games. They spend hours on internet chatrooms and watching jihadist videos, which help to psych them up by glorifying death by jihad as a "true hero's inevitable fate".
The decision to attack is made as a group and driven by an operational leader, which the NYPD study found is a crucial element in the formation of a terrorist cell. The next step, target selection and operational planning, happens very quickly and with little warning, in as little as two weeks.
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