The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

LONDON: The latest wave of terror attacks across Europe has drawn the spotlight on popular platforms being used as a recruiting tool for groups like Daesh to spread their message of hate and recruit young extremists with increasingly sophisticated narratives.

As the front lines of conflict extend from the Middle East to the streets of Europe, media is becoming an increasingly important weapon of war.

The youngest of the perpetrators that carried out last month’s attacks on the busy tourist-filled streets of Barcelona was just 17 years old.

That has led many observers, from academia to the security services, to ask what is driving young people into the arms of terror groups?

According to those trying to combat online extremism, the nature of the content used by groups such as Daesh is forever becoming more sophisticated, with high production values, conveying messages and an ideology that seem to connect to vulnerable youths.

But while social media companies are becoming quicker to close down accounts preaching violence, the extremists are equally quick to open another or find a platform that better serves their needs — such as being able to send encrypted messages.

“They will move from one platform to another depending on where they can operate with least resistance and best outreach,” said Rashad Ali, resident senior fellow from the UK think tank, the Institute of Strategic Dialogue.

“Media consumed is a mixture of short high impact videos, concentrated sermons, memes and online echo chambers reinforcing their ideas and breeding hatred through accentuating the grievance narratives and increasing a sense of victimhood, and superficial fundamentalist appropriation of scripture,” he said.

Fiyaz Mughal, the director and founder of the UK-based community action group Faith Matters, which works to counter extremism, said the quality of media in terms of production, is improving and therefore helping it find a wider audience.

“It is much cleverer. It is done with plots, it is done with themes. It is cleverly thought-out, and essentially it is really well-structured. The industry of extremism has effectively taken root,” he said.

The content of the videos posted is also evolving, according to the international non-profit organization, the Counter Terrorism Project (CTP).

While Daesh videos continue to be violent, often depicting victorious military campaigns, some content has “shifted away from an emphasis on the physical caliphate to stressing the need to fight until death and punish opponents,” according to CTP’s executive director David Ibsen.

He said that videos are beginning to be less about promoting the “wonders” of the utopian caliphate, but rather opting to portray Daesh and its supporters as victims.

Daesh has also begun to more actively encourage its supporters, via online platforms, to carry out more attacks in the West, Russia and parts of the Middle East – rather than calling for new recruits to travel to Iraq or Syria, the NGO said.

Due to the availability of a range of extremist online content, the process of radicalization has also evolved, according to Mughal.
“The extremism journey has changed from 5 to 10 years ago. It had previously involved group radicalization, involving peer-mentor radicalization where individuals would radicalize others and they’d work to reinforce each other’s views as a collective or small group What we find today is that most of it happens with singular individuals going online. There has been a fundamental change in the process,” he said.

He explains that individuals now tend to go online to search for material themselves, rather than being directed to it by a peer. “It is a process of self-radicalization right now,” he said.

There are inevitably a multitude of reasons that motivate people to search out extreme online content, although a common underlying thread seems to be a lack of connection with their community and a lack of a sense of identity.

“The issues, though, are broadly speaking a sense of political grievance, social disenfranchisement, whether that is created by either their political environment and protagonists or recruiters or acquired through their life experiences, personal search for belonging and identity and group connection — am I really British or European or Moroccan or do I have a supra-Islamic identity that makes me part of a global diaspora with a global mission,” Ali said.

Similarly, Mughal notes that there are certain characteristics that may make an individual more susceptible. “Many have existing elements of vulnerability, trauma, instability in their lives,” he said.

He called for more effort to be made to detect those who might be most vulnerable. “We need early education intervention, we need the ability to work out whether people are vulnerable in schools, colleges and universities to this kind of material and are vulnerable to being manipulated.”

In the UK, the government has set up an initiative called Prevent — which forms part of its wider counter-terrorism strategy — that aims to work with Muslim communities to assess who might be vulnerable to radicalization, and provides practical help to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.

It is a scheme that has been criticized by some who say it could potentially vilify Muslim communities and encourage people to spy on others within their own community.

Mughal rejects these claims. “On a personal basis, I have seen lives saved by the government’s counter extremism agenda,” he said. “Yet, where we have had to be critical because of overreactions in schools to Muslim pupils and through poor decision making around safeguarding that has affected such students, we have done so in a timely and robust fashion,” he said.

There are also organizations such as the UK-based JAN Trust which set up a program called Web Guardians, which works with Muslim women — often mothers — to tackle online extremism in an effort to prevent more young people becoming radicalized.

However, the battle against radicalization also requires social media companies to play a role, as a spokesperson from JAN said: “We have seen and experienced that terrorism affects all irrespective of a person’s background and religion and hence other sectors, not just the public sector, should recognize the need to support the work to tackle extremism. By this I mean the private sector and social media companies who can look to provide resources and funding.”

Social media companies have taken steps toward tackling the problem. For instance, Facebook launched its online Civil Courage Initiative in the UK earlier this year which, among other measures, includes setting up a dedicated desk at Facebook to deal with concerns.

The Counter Extremism Project wants to see more being done to make platforms that allow encrypted messages, such as the online messaging system Telegram, tackle online extremism. “Telegram has become one of the most important platforms for spreading extremist content in 2017. Telegram serves as a major aggregator for extremist content from these and other sites,” said Ibsen.

There are also calls for social media companies to be as vigilant about extremist far-right groups using their platforms as they are about Islamist groups.

“When ministers speak to social media platforms, you’ll find they mostly say ‘you need to tackle Islamist extremists’. It would be nice for ministers to say to social media platforms, that you need to deal with extremism from extreme far-right groups too — because that resets in the minds of some Muslims the reality that there are other forms of extremism,” said Mughal.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment, while YouTube directed Arab News to an Aug. 1 blog post by the company which outlined its latest efforts to combat online extremism, including using more advanced technology to identify and take down offending material.

“We promptly take down any terrorist content that is reported to us — all Telegram apps have built-in reporting functions and we also accept reports over email. Each day we take down an average of 200 terrorism-related channels before they can get any traction,” said Markus Ra, a spokesperson for Telegram, in a statement.

For years, violence kept most of Pakistan’s aspiring young musicians from following their dreams, whether the threat of Taliban militant attacks or gang wars in the crowded southern port city of Karachi.

Now, as law enforcement crackdowns slowly improve the security situation across the nation, some musicians are getting help from two-year old Pakistani start-up Patari, a music streaming and production company.

Both the startup and the musicians’ efforts are helping to carve out a new creative space for young people in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where those below 30 make up 60 percent of a population of almost 200 million.

Karachi rap ensemble Lyari Underground was once afraid of putting its music on Facebook, deterred by episodes of bloody gang war in the precinct of the same name that many Pakistanis consider the most dangerous in their largest city.

But the same violence has inspired many of the group’s songs, taking cues from the music of U.S. rapper Tupac Shakur, said its founder, who uses the name AnXiously.

“In a ghetto, rap exists naturally,” he added. “If there is no rap, then it is not a ghetto. Rap is a product of this reality and these surroundings.”

Band members said when they first heard the music of Tupac, although half a world away, it reminded them of their own experiences living with violence and poverty.

Lyari remains one of Karachi’s poorest areas and financial limitations often force its young people to forego creative pursuits.

FROM STREAMING TO PRODUCING

Launched in February 2015, Patari now boasts a library of 40,000 Pakistani songs and podcasts, and subscribers exceed half a million, said Chief Executive Khalid Bajwa.

Nearly 30 million of Pakistan’s people use the internet, mainly on mobile telephones, says digital rights organization Bytes for All.

Bajwa declined to discuss revenue, apart from saying the company was “self-sustaining”, mostly by producing events for established firms such as drinks company Pepsi, consumer goods giant Unilever and Pakistani clothing brand Khaadi.

The company’s latest initiative, Tabeer, or ‘Dream Come True’, pairs established artists with unknown musicians to produce six songs and music videos, completed on a budget of $15,000, and features on its app.

Patari exploited the fact that Pakistan’s tiny pop music scene comprised a couple of “corporate branded shows” featuring the same artists every year, but excluded amateur musicians.

“We saw an inefficiency in the market, where you have all this talent, all this interest, but there is nothing bridging the two,” said Chief Operating Officer Ahmer Naqvi.

The first two videos, featuring Abid Brohi, a rapper from remote Sibbi in southwestern Balochistan province, and 13-year-old tea vendor Jahangir Saleem, have drawn more than a million views, matching Coke Studio, Pakistan’s premier music programme.

Another video features Nazar Gill, from the capital, Islamabad, who was one of the cleaning staff at an apartment building where Naqvi once lived.

One day, Gill knocked on Naqvi’s door and asked to sing a song he had written.

“I sang my song for him and he liked it,” recalled Gill, a member of the country’s tiny Christian minority that prides itself on its musical tradition.

“He said, ‘Nazar, I will not let your voice go to waste.'”

OUT OF THE TALIBAN’S SHADOW

Tabeer’s sole female artist, Malala Gul, grew to love music as a child, by listening to an aunt who sang songs in the Pashto language spoken across Pakistan’s northwest.

Times were tough when she began singing five years ago, in a city roiled by Taliban-led violence.

“Conditions in Peshawar were very bad, but thank God the situation is much better now,” she said.

Gul stressed the importance of music, rebuffing those who call it unIslamic.

“This is a big world, and some people will say one thing, others will say another, but anyone who understands and values music will go very far.”

Swiss authorities were monitoring the social media activity of about 400 possible jihadists who might pose a security threat, the NDB federal intelligence service said on Monday.

Switzerland is not a primary target for Islamist attacks because it is not part of the military campaign against groups such as Islamic State, but the security threat level has been elevated nonetheless, the NDB’s annual report said.

The report showed a photo of a Swiss passport next to an explosive belt posted online by a suspected Swiss jihadist who had travelled to the Middle East, and an Islamic State video showing the Swiss flag among the 60 countries seen as targets.

“Attacks in Switzerland are more to be expected from lone wolves or small groups that would be conducted with simple means, little preparation and minimal logistical effort,” the report said.

Authorities have been closely tracking suspected jihadists who return to Switzerland from countries, Syria in particular, where they are believed to get training in carrying out attacks.

A Swiss court last month sentenced three Iraqis for terrorism offences, a verdict that the senior prosecutor said should send a message to jihadists not to see the country as an easy target.

The three main defendants, who had denied wrongdoing, were arrested in early 2014 on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks and helping Islamic State militants enter the country.

The Swiss attorney general’s office has more than 60 open cases linked to jihadist militancy, it said on Monday.