[LINK] "How Berlin's Muslims Are Tackling Jihad"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Donna Abu-Nasr looks at the various strategies used by Muslims in Berlin to prevent disaffected young people from going off to join ISIS. Engagement, it seems, is key.

Security services say it’s crucial that imams and Muslim families help combat extremism in a way they can’t, even if that means they are blamed inside their communities for selling out - while at the same time confronted by growing animosity toward Islam in their adopted homelands.

“If I had to learn about Islam from the movies and the media, I would be afraid of myself,” said Mohammed Matar, 25, a university student who attends the Dar Assalam Mosque. “They see over there people claiming to speak for Islam. They see Muslims here and they lump us all together.”

From the bombing of London a decade ago to the slaughter at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, home-grown militants have long been on the radar of security forces. The rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq means it takes more to combat the extremism at its root.
[. . .]

So far more than 650 Germans have traveled to Syria, according to a senior German security official. They’re among an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 European Muslims, many with Arab immigrant backgrounds, who have exchanged life in a stable country for a place where dissenters are killed.