Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

altmuslim

Home
Muslim
Extremism: Life of a Muslim de-radicalizer

Extremism: Life of a Muslim de-radicalizer

Last updated on: April 21, 2010 at 6:00 am by Guest Contributor

Extremism: Life of a Muslim de-radicalizer 2010-04-21T06:00:12-04:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Don’t mess with Texas

He is a lifelong Texan, registered Republican, die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan and professional Muslim ‘de-radicalizer’ all-in-one. Especially in light of both the recently-foiled Christmas day airline bombing plot in Detroit and earlier high-profile arrests of 5 young American Muslim men in Sargodha, Pakistan; the current debate within the chattering class of our political zeitgeist is revolving around ensuring that young impressionable Western Muslims are not radicalized within the dark recesses of cyberspace and the Internet.

This is where professional de-radicalizers like Mohamed Elibiary come into play.

As founder and president of The Freedom and Justice Foundation in Dallas, Mr. Elibiary has recently found himself serving the American Muslim community by helping to serve families and communities who are concerned about some of their youngsters naively falling prey to the lure of a ‘new jihadi cool’; a sociopolitical term coined by former CIA forensic psychiatrist Dr. Marc Sageman to categorize some of these young impressionable men who seek to perform acts of criminal vigilante terrorism contrary to every normative mainstream teaching of Islam.

“There are two major approaches to de-radicalization,” Mr. Elibiary recently told me during an exclusive interview. “We have to present our youth with better conduits to voice their dissent more effectively in order to fix geopolitical challenges facing the Muslim world” and thus reduce the feelings of disenfranchisement which could possibly lead to potential radicalization.

“All this [professional de-radicalization] stuff started about five years ago,” he further told me as he recalled a 2008 story when he was called by a Texas imam about an Egyptian-American young man who was en route to Pakistan after the traumatizing death of his father. Immediately, Mr. Elibiary was quickly connected to the sister of this young man by the imam and he found out that the young man was flying “over the Atlantic” on an airplane at the moment he received this frantic phone call.

“I was literally on K Street [in Washington DC] when I received the phone call,” recalled Elibiary about the 2008 incident. Immediately, he learned from the sister in Texas that the young man’s mother and another sister were living in Cairo, Egypt at the time.

Mohamed Elibiary immediately thought of a plan.

He told the sister in Cairo to immediately fly to Dubai and meet the brother during his layover for the next segment of his flight to Pakistan. At the airport in Dubai, she met her brother and immediately told him that his mother in Cairo was “completely distraught” and that if he did not accompany her back to Cairo that their “mother would probably die” very soon. With familial obligations now trumping any idiotic extremist tendencies, the young man immediately abandoned his plans for Pakistan and flew back home with his sister to their mother’s home in Egypt.

During this whole concocted ordeal, Mr. Elibiary was here stateside and immediately reached out to his contacts in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and said that “the Bureau was fully cooperative” during the whole plan to intercept the young woman’s brother at Dubai International Airport.

When speaking further about the professional de-radicalization process, Mr. Elibiary also highlighted that the concept of a ‘cognitive opening’ lies at the psychological heart of the de-radicalization process in many cases.

Professor Quintan Wiktorowicz of Rhodes College has written extensively on this subject and says that “the first step to radicalization is a ‘cognitive opening’, which is the first crack opening a person has to extremist ideas.”

According to Professor Wiktorowicz, the phenomenon of a ‘cognitive opening’ can be the “result of social, economic, and/or political discontent from various kinds of alienation, discrimination, and/or victimization.” Furthermore, he goes so far as to include personal issues (such as a death in the family) to being a potential ‘cognitive opening’ for potential radicalization as well.

The common thread of these radicalization experiences is that they precipitate an internal personal crisis that “shakes certainty in previously-accepted beliefs and renders an individual more receptive to the possibility of alternative views and perspectives,” according to Professor Wiktorowicz.

Most recently, Mohamed Elibiary was also at the forefront of the recent case of 5 young American Muslim men who were arrested by law enforcement authorities in Sargodha, Pakistan. At the very beginning of this case, he was quickly contacted by their families and representatives when they realized something was afoul when their sons did not return to their homes in Northern Virginia.

Mr. Elibiary was immediately called by the families’ representatives who had stated that the family representatives had just stepped out of a conference room and that “we got a [farewell] video” from one of the five men arrested in Pakistan.

“I’ll call the Bureau,” Mr. Elibiary responded and immediately was in touch with the Washington Field Office of the FBI to let them know that the American Muslim families of the 5 men wanted our law enforcement agencies to know about their sons’ disappearance.

The one major silver lining for this case in Sargodha, Pakistan was that the concept of ‘community policing’ worked very well. More than a “week and a half” after Mr. Elibiary first received the families’ phone call, CNN reported the fact that the young men’s families went directly to their mosques and Muslim civil rights organizations on the morning of December 1, 2009, shortly after discovering their sons were missing almost two weeks earlier.

“The path for a lot of these kids is essentially like at-risk gangbangers, who want to stand up for their community, to address grievances of the global Muslim community more effectively than they’ve seen the elder generation address them since 9/11,” Mr. Elibiary told CNN’s Anderson Cooper shortly after the arrest of the five young men in Pakistan.

“For over three years, there was been a ‘virtual war’ going on between mainstream Muslim scholars who are trying to block the extremist message in Western countries, which has not been reported in the West,” Mr. Elibiary continued to tell me during our exclusive interview on his work as a professional de-radicalizer.

When asked further what the American Muslim community can do to ensure that our children are not future potential pawns for extremist propaganda; he highlighted obvious and everyday civic duties that we do in our lives like, “Taking your kids with you when you go to vote, while you go sight-seeing at the state capital or visiting your congressperson.”

“That is the best way that we can help bring about positive change in America; not 5 random guys aimlessly going into a war zone somewhere” in the forgotten hinterlands of Pakistan.

Arsalan Iftikar is an international human rights lawyer, a regular weekly contributor for the ‘Barbershop’ segment for the National Public Radio (NPR) Show “Tell Me More with Michel Martin” and also a featured contributor for CNN Anderson Cooper 360. His blog is at TheMuslimGuy.com. This article was previously published in True/Slant.

Commentary

Previous Post

April 19, 2010

US Supreme Court: Will Obama restore the bench?

Next Post

April 23, 2010 South Park: South Park and the freedom to blaspheme

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2012 Elections 30 Dayd 30 Writers (2017) 30 Days 30 Writers 30 Days 30 Writers (2015) 30 Days 30 Writers (2016) 30 Days 30 Writers (2018) 30 Days 30 Writers 2017 Ali Asadullah Ali Eteraz Alper Bilgili Arthur Richards Asides Asma Uddin Black History Month Briefings Charles Turner Commentary Cyrus McGoldrick Eman H Aly Fatimah Popal Hajj Hajj and Dhul Hijjah Hesham Hassaballa Hisham Hellyer Ibrahim Abusharif Inas Younis Irfan Yusuf Jalal Baig Junaid Afeef Laila Alawa Laila Alwala Mas'ood Cajee Muqtedar Khan Nakia Jackson Newsmakers Parvez Ahmed Podcasts Rabia Chaudry Rafia Zakaria Ramadan Reviews Safiyyah Ally Saud Inam Shahed Amanullah Svend White The Opinionated Oncologist Visions Wajahat Ali Zahed Amanullah Zahir Janmohamed Zainab Khan

Select a Month November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What book has the most references to the word "love" in the New Testament?

Select your answer to see how you score.

John Romans 1 John Matthew