Hard to reach or don’t want to reach? Understanding the significance of trust and respectful relationships in “countering violent extremism”

Abstract

Contemporary research shows that programs developed specifically to counter violent extremism (CVE) in Muslim communities can worsen the underlying issues linked to offending. This can be destructive to the young individuals those programs target and undermine social cohesion. An impediment to CVE programs is that Muslim youth are often reluctant to participate in them. Through four years of ethnographic research with Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah Association of Australia (ASWJ), a so-called ‘hard-to-reach’ Salafi Muslim organization, this paper helps build greater awareness of factors leading to poor responsivity in CVE programs. I propose alternative approaches to CVE that begin by focusing on trust and relationship-building to better understand how to support communities dealing with youth at-risk of offending.

Keywords:

• Community engagement
• countering violent extremism
• youth interventions
• trust building
• ethnography
• participant observation
• hard-to-reach communities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this paper, I refer to ‘young people’ as being aged between around 19 to 23 years, i.e. those in “late adolescence” see https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/drugtreat-pubs-front2-wk-toc∼drugtreat-pubs-front2-wk-secb∼drugtreat-pubs-front2-wk-secb-3∼drugtreat-pubs-front2-wk-secb-3-2.

2 ‘Brothers’ in this article refer to male members of Muslim communities and sisters refer to female members. In Islamic terminology, Muslims call each other brother or sister as they share the same faith.

3 Sunnah in Sunni Islamic terms refers to the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad and is the practical implementation of the second source of Islamic knowledge (the Quran) for Muslims.

4 Mainstream Sunni Muslim traditions.

5 Quran is the word of Allah (God) and the last in line of the Abrahamic revelations and/or religions (Judaism & Christianity). Muslims believe the Quran was literally revealed to the Prophet Mohammed starting in 22/12/609 CE in Mecca, Saudi Arabia and continued through the migration to Medina July 16, 622 CE (start of the Muslim Hijri calendar) and ended upon His death 18/12/10 Hijri corresponding to mid-632 CE.

6 Sadaqa is voluntary charity and is not to be confused with Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam where all eligible Muslims must donate at least 2.5% of their accumulated wealth for the benefit of the poor, destitute and others.