Worth reading article in NYT about a parent trying to deal with radicalization of his son. some excerpts below;(f.sheikh)
“FREMONT, Calif. — The banging on the door jolted Sal Shafi awake.F.B.I. agents were looking for his son. “Where’s Adam?” they yelled. “Where’s Adam?”
Terrified, Mr. Shafi led the agents, guns drawn, up the stairs toward his son’s bedroom. He watched as they led his 22-year-old son away in handcuffs, backed by evidence of Adam Shafi’s terrorist ambitions.
He had come to the attention of officials not by a well-placed informant or a sting operation. His father, concerned and looking for help, had simply picked up the phone and led the government right to his son. For months, over the objections of his lawyer, Mr. Shafi had been talking to the F.B.I.,believing he was doing the right thing.
“My God,” he thought, soon after the arrest in July. “I just destroyed Adam.”
Had things been different, Mr. Shafi, 62, a Silicon Valley executive, might have become a much-needed spokesman for the Obama administration’s counterradicalization campaign. Who better to talk to other parents about the seductive pull of terror organizations? Trust the government, he would tell them. They do not want to take away your children.”
Despite nascent efforts to steer young people away from terrorism, the government’s strategy remains largely built on persuading people to call the F.B.I. when they first suspect a problem.
“Alert law enforcement,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in December. “It could simply be your neighbor having a bad day. But better be safe than sorry.”
For parents, particularly those who see their children as misguided but not dangerous, the decision to make that call can be agonizing. Do you risk sending your son to prison? Or hope things improve and he does not hurt anyone?
“This is an abject failure, that there is no system in place that doesn’t result in spending 20 years in jail,” said Seamus Hughes, a former National Counterterrorism Center official who once helped implement the Obama administration’s strategy for countering violent extremism.
“Though the White House and a congressional task force have endorsed this concept, no such program exists. So Mr. Shafi tried to create one. He flew to Washington in November to attend a Brookings Institution seminar on radicalization. There he met Daniel Koehler, a German de-radicalization expert who offered to help.
“There have simply been too many cases of families who didn’t have any help,” Mr. Koehler said in an interview. “I thought back then that this could be a good test case.”
“The process has shaken Mr. Shafi’s faith, both in his decisions as a parent and in his government.
“Every minute, I just imagine him in that solitary confinement, facing 20 years, because I cooperated with the government,” he said, adding, “It’s a horrible feeling. I can’t get rid of it.”
Less than a year ago, he had offered to quit his job and help build support for government counterterrorism programs. His message now to parents of troubled or confused children? “Don’t even think about going to the government.”
Nightmare scenario for every parent in the West/America.
Its easy to relate with Mr. Shafi’s conclusion that one should never go to the authorities like he did in good faith but I don’t agree with his conclusion. His son was a dead man walking when he discovered about his son’s escapades that led to his decision to get help from the authorities. He can’t see this and finds the arrest of his son as the destruction caused by his (father’s) own actions – at least now his son will not probably be found lying dead among the casualties in Syria or hunted and shot like a dog by the authorities. Either one of the possibilities were very real. If not intercepted he would have gone to Syria or had taken lone ranger action in America.
What Mr. Shafi is not talking about is how he played a passive role in the radicalization of his son. Living in America I am well aware of kids left unsupervised and vulnerable to many ills of this society and culture and at the same time what is discussed on the dinner table (if family is ever together) also has consequences.
Why his son felt so strongly about the plight of Muslims, why he did not relate to American point of view instead, like his peers here? Mr. shafi can’t walk away clean.
His son was done once his brain washing was done at home just like once kids start experimenting with drinking and drugs there is no stopping…the damage is already done.
Now his son has a chance to live and that life might be behind bars or on parole at some point and a long term therapy might bring him back in the life but there is hope however little it might be, otherwise, his son had no chance. His decision was right. What he did wrong, though unknowingly, was probably commenting on the plight of Muslims and atrocities committed by Western countries watching news frequently with his son. Its the picture he presented (right or wrong) to his son that led to waste this young boy’s life and if not him then some moron in his circle, a teacher in mosque, or a” desi” friend from a radical family. It takes a village to raise a kid but it takes a village also, to destroy a kid.
The only victim here is the boy….the whole village is the culprit.
Babar