Understanding motives is vital to combating terror.
In his Church Times column, Paul Valley notes that a Muslim psychiatrist "recently suggested that there are four ways in which the children of immigrants may react to the clash between the culture of their parents and that of the nation in which they have been brought up. All are stressful in different ways."
Deculturation: This leads them to reject their past in favour of their present.
Assimilation: This is where they retain a loose association with the old ways, but essentially adopt the host culture.
Integration: This keeps stronger cultural ties, but the children of migrants function fully as members of the host society.
Rejection: They rebuff the host culture entirely. Violent jihadists are drawn from this group, but the process is not simple. There can be huge cognitive dissonance in the process of their rejection,
The crucial task is to re-educate fundamentalists into a more complete understanding of their faith so that they can no longer wrench verses of the Qur'an from their wider context.
While not becoming illiberal in our defence of our liberty, we need to consider a broader understanding of what kind of behaviour ought to be illegal - for example, should people who glorify terrorism, as well as those who incite it, be guilty of an offence such as breach of the peace?
However, it is important that anyone convicted and imprisoned under such new regulations should not simply be detained, but also be subjected to an intensive deradicalisation programme, run not just by secular psychiatrists but also by mainstream Muslim scholars.
Source: Column piece: Inside the mind of extremists by Paul Vallely in The Church Times, 9 July 2017
