Mosques turned to avenues for recruiting youth into terrorism

Last month’s skirmishes at Masjid Musa in Mombasa, in which police seized crucial information on terrorism activities, has lend credence to suspicions that some religious leaders are using mosques to radicalise and recruit youth into terrorism.

Police have revealed that they seized laptops, textbooks, audio tapes, CDs, memory sticks, terrorist training manuals and other terrorism materials that point at a number of mosques and madrasas in Coast and North Eastern regions, being used by radical Muslim preachers to radicalise their youth and lure them to embrace terrorism.

The Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) has asked the government to investigate individual Imams and preachers involved in radicalising Muslim youth and not blame all Muslims in general.

CIPK chairman Sheikh Mohammed Idriss said the organization was opposed to teachings that introduce unsuitable ideologies to youth, adding that those behind violence were using youth for their selfish interests and agenda.

“It is bad to see that their children are away from the violence,” he said.

Arrest propagators

“The police need to arrest the people that are propagating radicalism and take the necessary legal action,” Sheikh Idriss said.

Since early 1980s, a number of prominent Mombasa businessmen have been linked to terrorism financing and radicalisation of Muslim youth, with majority of them being the conduit of money from terrorism groups like Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab to local terrorism cells.

Some of them are known to receive huge consignments of different merchandise from Somalia and Middle East countries shipped by terror organisations, which they sell and channel the money to terror activities.

INDOCRINATE STUDENTS

Last year, Mombasa businessman, Mr Shahid Butt, the proprietor of Modern Coast Bus Company faced terror-related charges before a Mombasa court, but bonded to keep peace.

According to a recent study by security think-tank, Crisis Group, Somali based Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab terror group, has built a cross-border network with the aim of radicalising and recruiting youth to fight in Somalia and carry out attacks in Kenya.

According to CG’s Horn of Africa project director, Mr EJ Hogendoom, there seems to have been a trend of increased Islamic radicalisation in the North Eastern region.

“There have been a number of factors. One longer-term factor is that for the last couple of decades, there has been an increased funding of conservative madrasas that have made the Muslim community in the Northeast province much more conservative and isolated from the central state,” he said.

In addition to that, Mr Hogendoom said, there has been a spill-over of Islamic extremism from Somalia, where Somali groups, or Somali radical groups, are trying to radicalize Kenyan Somalis.

He says the first group to start radicalising Kenyans is known as Ittihad al-Islam, which was kind of the prototype radical Islamist group with some jihadi fringes.

“It was through the military, defeated by Ethiopia, but its leadership basically went to all the Somali-speaking portions of the Horn and continued their radicalization,” he said.

Subsequent to that, Mr Hogendoom said, Al-Shabaab, which is now taking control of south and central Somalia, has developed extensive networks in the northeast province and other Somali-speaking portions of Kenya and has been trying to radicalise that community also.

He said generally, what they do is indoctrinate students who are in conservative madrasas.

“They then try to get them to join groups that are sympathetic to Al-Shabaab, and ultimately they try to recruit them to fight a jihad with them in Somalia,” he noted.

Mr Hogendoom observed that Kenya has largely taken a counter-terrorism approach towards Al-Shabaab, which basically means that they see this as a security problem, one that can be addressed by either the police or other security services.

“We think that’s problematic. We think that counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation are very different things and require different policies,” he said.

RADICALISATION OF YOUTHS

The Crisis Group raised concerns that the extensive use of police and security services risks alienating the Kenyan-Somali population and in fact increasing radicalisation amongst them.
He said the government should be taking a much more holistic approach against radicalization of Kenyans by Al-Shabaab.

“Obviously, counter-terrorism has a role to play in keeping the country safe. That said, the Kenyan government needs to be much more proactive in terms of monitoring radical madrasas that are promoting very extremist Islamist views,” Mr Hogendoom advised.

He adds that the government should do more to counter the appeal of radical groups in Somalia and also try to increase development in historically very poor parts of Kenya where Somalis liveMr Hogendoom says the government needs to do a comprehensive survey of the madrasas in order to curb radicalisation of Muslims by the Al Shabaab.

“There are very extremist madrasas out there and we do fear that they’re the ones that are driving the radicalisation movement of a very small portion of the Kenyan-Somali population, but of course it still remains a threat to peace and stability in Kenya,” he notes.

He says any attempts to reform madrasas or to reform how the Muslim community is governed should be a Muslim-driven policy.

He adds what’s driving radicalisation is underdevelopment, is feelings of marginalization, and thus we think that much more development could be focused on these very poor areas and could be targeted to try to give poor Muslims more opportunities and a greater chance of being integrated into wider Kenyan society.