Ohio – As Islamic State propagandists set their sights on recruiting Western youths through slickly produced videos, newscasts, blogs and tweets, U.S. cities with large Muslim populations are reaching out to fight the threat — and finding that one size does not fit all.
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Two cities in Maine are mining their substantial Somali communities as they recruit officers and teenage cadets.
In Columbus, a prosperous Midwestern state capital with only recent ties to a terrorism case, Somali community leaders meet frequently with law enforcement, and a mosque gives youngsters an outlet for their energies.
And in Jersey City, New Jersey, with a history of connections to terrorism and mistrust of authorities by its large Muslim immigrant population, the city recreation department provides youths with sports, chess and other activities similar to the outreach used to combat street gangs.
“The goal on this is to really stay in front of it and have consistent outreach that reflects the community,” said Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. “You have to talk to young people about what’s important to them on a cultural front, and the important thing is to do it on their terms, not yours.”
The threat of recruitment by extremist groups has come into sharp focus in recent months with a string of arrests, including in Minnesota and Ohio, and just this week in Boston, where authorities shot to death a knife-wielding man they say wanted to kill police officers and had been recorded making a statement that the FBI interpreted as a reference to Islamic State propaganda videos.
Many cities are doing outreach to stem the threat, some with different motivations. Minneapolis, Boston and Los Angeles are participating in a federal pilot program to create opportunities for youth and those considered at risk for joining extremist groups. Some activists worry the program’s leadership by federal prosecutors means it could become an intelligence-gathering mission.
But in Columbus, Jersey City and Portland, Maine, criticism is muted, perhaps due to authorities’ low-key approach.
The challenge of steering youths away from the temptations of radical ideologues hits close to home in Jersey City. Some plotters of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing attended a mosque there, and the Sept. 11 attacks across the Hudson River also reverberated.
“As law enforcement started casting around and trying to predict and interdict the next terrorist plot, by definition we damaged the relationship with that community because we saw that as the source of the threats, or at least the seeds that the threats were hiding in,” said James Shea, Jersey City’s director of public safety.
Those bonds were restored over time, then frayed after revelations in 2011 that the New York Police Department spied on Muslims in northern New Jersey without telling local authorities. The city’s current outreach reflects an attempt to restore trust, as well as to address the recruitment efforts by extremist groups like Islamic State in the Middle East and Al-Shabab in Somalia.
Immigrants often are reluctant to participate in government- or community-sponsored programs, making it crucial to engage their sons and daughters, Fulop said.
Shea added, “Absent the outreach at different levels, you could have the younger generations feeling alienated.”