New York Times: Britain Is Losing Against ISIS Recruitment Tactics
LONDON — When Tasnime Akunjee’s father, a university student from a middle-class family in Bangladesh, came to Britain in the early 1970s, he thought the streets of London would be paved with gold. Literally.
“In those days, Britain had a powerful story to tell,” said Mr. Akunjee, a London-based lawyer. Once his father arrived, he said, he was shocked to find that he was walking on mere paving stones. But he quickly recovered. Golden sidewalks or not, Mr. Akunjee said, “he wanted to be part of it — they all did in that generation.”
Even educated young men and women in Britain’s former colonies believed in a sometimes absurdly idealized marketing pitch of its former empire. Now, a different pitch, but one that is proving similarly alluring, has swayed hundreds of young British Muslims into believing the Islamic State’s vision of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Leaving behind the Western opportunities their parents came to Britain for, those young Muslims make for a promised land of religious virtue, Muslim community and righteous revolution.
WNU Editor: The British authorities continue to not even identify the role that Islam is playing in these Islamic State appeals .... how can you defeat the enemy when you are not even permitted to define it? And the British are not alone .... other European/Western states and the U.S. are experiencing the same problem. The alternative then is to destroy the enemy at its source (Syria and Iraq), and hope that the recruiting pitches will disappear (which they will probably will). But for the moment the war against the Islamic State has been handed off to the Arab states in the region, and their effectiveness (or lack of) is clearly being shown with each passing day.
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