There are no set rules as to what makes young people turn to extremism nor is their a set profile of what a terrorist might look like before committing a violent act. What is true to say is that there is a growing demand of young people searching for answers in relation to their identity & there is a noticeable trend of more young people using their religion as their default identity marker. It has also been proven that whilst there are a growing number of individuals searching for information on their new identity marker there is also a growing number of people / organisations looking to promote an extremely intolerant ideology. If the two of these factors manage to come together then a process of reshaping previously held mainstream views could start to change.

 

 

Many young people start to question who they are and how they fit in to their peer group very early in life. In the early teenage years young people sometimes find that they question their parents values as they do not match their own. This is generic for most young people irrespective of race or faith & is part of youth culture in the UK. For young Muslims in the UK there are added complexities in relation to identity due to the fact society, parents & religion all require a choice to be made. Are they British, Asian, Muslim or a combination? Being made to choose identity based on parent heritage or nationality is a difficult choice & can be questioned i.e. Youngsters might call themselves British but experience racist abuse or when youngsters go back to the parents place of birth be called foreigners because they were born in the West. These types of experiences cause confusion & force difficult choices to be made. Using religion as their identity can never be questioned irrespective of parent heritage or nationality which is one reason why more & more young Muslims are using religion as their main identity marker over nationality or heritage.

In addition to the above there are a lot of mixed messages on what direction youngsters should take in life especially from parents, teachers and their peer group. All these conflicting messages & difficult choices make this stage of their life very vulnerable & this is when safeguarding the individual is key to ensuring that they do not become susceptible to the terrorist messaging. Terrorists messaging today uses very youth savvy vehicles such as flashy websites, You Tube & gangster rap to entice vulnerable youngsters who are searching for answers to their questions into violent extremism. All the above is not enough to make an individual commit an act of violence but when the recruiters of terrorism manage to link local issues to global events & use seductive techniques to solve identity & belonging issues, collectively this can get the vulnerable individual to absorb extreme intolerance to all others who do not share a particular militant view of the world.