I am Muslim, and I think we have been discussing Islamist radicalisation far too comfortably.
We wait for a man to pick up a knife, plant a bomb or open fire. Then suddenly everyone wants to know what radicalised him?
But that is the last chapter.
The story usually begins much earlier. A sense of victimhood is repeated until it becomes identity. A preacher gives that anger religious language. Someone tells a young man that humiliation is not political anymore, it is sacred. Slowly, the world becomes “us” and “them”. By the time violence appears, the argument inside his head may already be over.
This pattern did not disappear with Al-Qaeda. ISIS simply learnt to package it better. Telegram replaced the cassette. Short videos replaced long sermons. The recruiter no longer needs a training camp if he can enter your phone.
And this is the uncomfortable part for Muslims.
No Muslim should be made to apologise for a crime committed by another Muslim. That is absurd.
But we cannot simultaneously say extremists have “nothing to do with Islam” or “terrorism has no religion” and then refuse to challenge them when they use Islamic texts, Islamic history and Islamic vocabulary to recruit.
Governments can arrest terrorists.
Only Muslims can make the radical preacher irrelevant inside a Muslim home.
That fight has been postponed for too long.