ISIS recruitment mission thwarted
THAT the international extremist groups would cast their net in Bangladesh is not surprising or unexpected, and arrests of two young persons intending to join the so-called IS Jihad in Syria and Iraq indicate the active presence in Bangladesh of their recruiters. We commend our security forces for their quick action.
It is significant that latest arrests including some of the leading members of JMB and HUJI have been made after the message of Zawahiri speaking of establishing an al-Qaeda wing in South Asia was broadcast recently, and also the spurt in IS operations that have taken a wide swath of Iraqi and Syrian territory under its control.
The eyes of the recruiters have been focused on the malleable and vulnerable youths, and contrary to common perception, poverty despair has nothing to do with the psyche of the target group. And this is something that this paper, through these very columns has been highlighting in the recent past. It is worthy of note that the two young men were university students and from relatively affluent families.
In this context we should not fail to comprehend the underlying message that the arrests of the two youths puts out. And it is that there are young people in Bangladesh motivated enough to risk their lives fighting in foreign lands for their beliefs. Unfortunately, the narratives of the so-called Jihadis are finding resonance in the impressionable minds of some of our youth. And the only way to achieve a psychological insulation of the vulnerable group is to put out a counter narrative to show that it is not the path of real Islam that the so called Jihadis are following but a corrupted interpretation that defiles Islam and its true followers.
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