The Clash of the Experts

"For extremist groups generally, and even for ISIS specifically, personal contact and one-to-one conversation is hugely important."
"The idea that someone would go onto YouTube, watch a video and then immediately get on a plane or immediately carry out an attack is obviously nonsense. It is much more of a process. Face-to-face is the most likely way to have someone transition from one side of the divide of thinking about it to actually doing something about it."
"I think there is too much focus by government and others on taking material off the Internet and not nearly enough on putting material on it."
"With the nature of the Internet, over 100 hours of YouTube footage gets uploaded every second so obviously you can't ever fully control that space. Much more important is the creation of counter-narratives, so that when someone does go looking -- for the truth about Syria and Iraq, the caliphate, how to travel to Syria -- what they find are things that describe and counter the lies that ISIS and other organizations put out there."
"We need to start engaging in this battle of ideas rather than thinking we need to suppress it."
Ross Frenett, manager, Against Violent Extremism Network; U.K. Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Handout    Young jihadists have been swift to embrace social media in order to amplify the call to militancy. “Every major designated terrorist organization” is active on social media, an expert says.

"The problem is simpler than any politician or moderate Muslim or Christian outreach foundation journalist has ever been willing to admit: Many Muslims who want to turn young believers away from jihad or hatred of Christians, Jews and other non-believers are trapped. They are trapped because the Qur'an -- the six compilations of sacred traditions (the ahadith), which make up holy writ, as well as the biography of Muhammad (the sira) -- all condone or command jihad and hatred for non-believers, and they do so abundantly."
Muhammad led his followers into some 27 battles[2], and his successors conquered half the known world. Muhammad himself ordered or supported assassinations of individuals or groups. One well-documented list shows 43 occasions on which such killings took place, usually because someone had insulted the prophet.[3] A modern Muslim website carries a translation by the American convert Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley of part of a work by the 12th-century jurisprudent Ibn Iyad, entitled, 'The proof of the necessity of killing anyone who curses the Prophet or finds fault with him'."
"Yet for some reason, commentators and politicians still wonder where the fighters of the Islamic State or the would-be assassins of Salman Rushdie or the killer of Theo van Gogh get their inspiration. It is hard for a young man, who wants to emulate the only "true role model," to ignore Muhammad's regular use of jihad; and even harder to be seen to contradict verses from what he and his community consider to be God's word, the last divine revelation to mankind."
Dr. Denis MacEoin, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Gatestone Institute, former lecturer Arabic/Islamic Studies

Ross Frenett is of the school that believes that the road to radicalization requires personal, even intimate contact with a persuasive recruiter. And that the message to engage in jihad should be countered by government security agency, through the very same media messaging that the jihadists use, to persuade would-be jihadists that their veering off into violent Islamism is an error that they can and should self-correct, once in possession of government-provided true facts.

The trouble here is precisely what Dr. MacEoin points out, that 'true facts' are quite consistent through historical data, with the message that the Wahhabist-Salafist Islamists are sending to potential recruits. The West, then, according to Mr. Frenett would be engaged in a desperately ineffective effort to forestall the effects of recruitment aimed at those prepared to accept the messages that their religion does, after all, through a host of foundational sources, support, even urge to the faithful.

In any event, it is human nature to seek out self-validating information. Once exposed to information that doesn't accord with one's core or established beliefs, they tend to be ignored, held to be wrong, deliberate attempts to put the already-convinced off track. People naturally gravitate to sources that support what they have already invested in, rejecting those sources that deny their beliefs.

Those who disdain to connect Islam with the radicalization of Muslim youth and Muslim converts claiming that what they purport to buy into isn't a reflection of true Islam should perhaps be reading those many and varied passages of the critical Islamic heritage/historical oeuvre of documentation supporting the doctrine of political Islam, to better inform themselves.

Martin Couture-Rouleau, the 25-year-old convert from St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec who deliberately struck down and killed an Armed Forces soldier on Monday caught the message direct from historical references and applied himself to following the dictates of the message. As did, two days later, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a petty criminal, drug addict, who shot another Armed Forces soldier in the back, then went on to a hoped-for additional killing spree in the halls of Parliament.

Twitter  This photo of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, taken by a tourist at the war memorial shooting, was quickly posted by a pro-ISIS Twitter account after it was leaked.

Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud,  a refugee from war-torn Somalia and Hamiltonian of Somalian Muslim heritage engaged himself in Canadian life and presumably adopted its values, but like the converts named above, in the final analysis chose to follow the path of jihad, considering himself a faithful follower of Sharia which states jihad not as an imposition but as an absolute requirement.

He too favoured radical Internet forums "And that became his community", explained Hussein Hamdani, a spokesman for his grieving family, since he was reported killed in Syria where he had joined Islamic Jihad. The Internet forums appear to fully conform to the function of personal address in convincing those already attracted to the ideology of fanatical Islam that this is their preferred route to martyrdom.

Those who see in Islamist fascism the appeal that their belief embodies as a bonded duty to the faithful gravitate to the messages where they find gratification that their focus has been validated by all those others who believe as they do.

Handout/AFP/Getty Images    Screen grab taken from a video uploaded by a Youtube channel which posts videos from areas under ISIS's control, allegedly showing an ISIS fighter firing a heavy machine gun in Kobani, Syria.