Violent extremism is about people who use violence to try to bring about political change.
The problem in America is you have these individuals who are attracted to these ideas, yet they
fly under the radar until something violent occurs like the Boston Marathon bombing or
the terrible shooting in the church in Charleston earlier this year. So the Obama administration
believes, and I agree with them, that a good strategy is to have police working with communities
to try to both prevent the spread of these extremist ideologies and also maybe to identify
people who are headed in that direction and to stop them before they do something violent.
We did a nation-wide survey of police departments and we talked to police and Muslim-Americans
all over the country to talk about these issues and we found a couple of things. First of
all, only about half the police departments were actually working with communities to
try to prevent violent extremism. Second of all, very few if any police departments were
working on the issue of right-wing, anti-government, racist kind of violent extremism. Most were
focused on extremism inspired by Al Qaeda or ISIS. And then with respect to trying to
work with Muslim-Americans to prevent Al Qaeda and ISIS related extremism, we found that
police departments really need to be more sensitive to the concerns of Muslim-Americans
if they're going to build trust and then work together to prevent this kind of violence.
You know the decade and a half since 9/11 has really been pretty tough on Muslim Americans.
We've had negative portrayals of Islam in the media, harassment of individuals at the
airports, societal discrimination, inflammatory statements by political leaders. So a lot
of Muslim-Americans don't know if the government is something to be feared or if the government
is willing and wants to work with Muslim-Americans to try to solve this problem. What's really
important is for the police to work with Muslim-Americans to try to build trust and when trust is built,
then there are many problems of public safety, including terrorism and violent extremism,
that can be addressed.
First of all, it makes sense for local police to take the lead in these efforts. They're
in the communities all the time, they have lots of officers and they're not responsible
for things that can undermine trust like airport security or FBI sting operations. Second,
what's most important is for the police to explain to Muslim-Americans that they are
there as public servants to provide services to their constituents and treat Muslim-Americans
like they do everybody else and that is to provide protection and provide services to
them. When the communities start working together with the police on these public safety issues,
the suspicion can really melt away.
We think when the police and the communities work together on public safety issues, they
build a solid relationship. It's much better than having the police come and say, 'Well
let's work together on terrorism,' because then you're accusing the community of being
potential terrorists and that's not the way to get started. But once you have that trusting
relationship, you can start having some difficult conversations. No Muslim-American wants their
kid to end up getting on a plane to go fight for ISIS in Syria, but that's happened to
over 50 Muslim communities in just the past 18 months. And also the Muslim-Americans very
much want to prevent more violent extremism in the United States. Those are difficult
conversations to have. Once you have that relationship though, police and communities
can talk about how to prevent extremist ideas and how to identify people who are headed
down a pathway toward violence.