New Radicalization Model: Salafis’ Way of Educating Young Bosnian Muslims into Extremism

• In Event: Schooling in conflict & post-conflict societies: the politics of knowledge

Proposal

Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) has become a primary global concern of multi-level actors: states, I/NGOs, and the private sector. However, little is known about the ways the violent extremist practices are learned, and the role of educational channels through which they are spread. In this study, we analyze empirical evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) where Salafi extremism has radically altered the dominant social norms within a relatively short period of time. We introduce a new mentored radicalization learning model. At its core is an informal teacher and a mentor as a source and guide to transformative and experiential learning.
Recovering from one of the worst genocides in the 20th century, the nation was left with a vacuum of competing ideologies, providing the necessary context for the emerging spread of radicalization. In that struggle for socio-economic or political influence, we find, a stakeholder’s ability to secure a broader population’s self-regulated conformity to the stakeholder’s preferred views, values, and behaviors helps guarantee the stakeholder’s meaningful influence within the country long-term. This self-conformity is not a sole function of the stakeholder’s resources. Instead, the education and outreach model a stakeholder develops in local contexts is essential in aligning the local social norms, behaviors, and values to those of the stakeholder. The study is specifically intrigued by how Bosnia’s Salafis have built this self-confirming behavior and transformed initially unreceptive Muslims into supporters of radical ideas.
We take a multidisciplinary approach to analyze this complex and informal Salafi model of teaching, mentoring and learning that has radicalized Bosnian Muslims. We apply the Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), which “affords equal status to multiple ways of knowing” (Rainey & Kolb, 1995, p. 131). According to Kolb (1984), learning occurs in 4 stages: learners go through an experience; reflect on it; analyze the process in abstract to learn from it; and finally engage in actively experimenting with the new knowledge by applying it.
This research involved 50 in-person, audio-recorded and semi-structured interviews with radicalized individuals. Semi-structured interviews included around 200 questions, covering the participants’ demographic, socioeconomic, religious and educational profiles, their views on Islam, Salafism, formal and informal education, information access, social norms, values and beliefs. Audio recordings were analyzed for content and subtle signs of participants’ divergence from specific topics. Data was analyzed using systematic trend and content analyses. For this article, we looked for repeated mentions of mentors that have assisted learning about radical views. No prior scholarship exists on links between Salafis’ approach to education and growing radicalization of Bosnian Muslims.
The study ascertains the youths learn to radicalize in their broader social communities that expose them to the local radicalization guides. We decode this process in a new mentored radicalization learning model through which extremism has bred and which Salafis employ in their radicalization efforts in Bosnia. We find that Salafis have effectively diminished the importance of schools, homes and mosques to instead elevate informal religious mentors as teachers and ideological transformers of Muslim communities. Salafis in Bosnia provide continuing education for the marginalized and operate their schooling network through the establishment of functioning and mentorship-based clinics and lecture spaces that have become de facto schools within marginalized Muslim communities. Salafi mentors deploy their rigid interpretation of Islam under the veil of secrecy and through one-on-one relationships. In doing so, they are gatekeepers to the unique and personalized radicalization process.
Salafi mentors are the core of radicalization learning model that has 5 key defining controls securing its success: language control, information/knowledge control, trust control, relationship control, and guidance control. They employ exclusionary and marginalizing language to dehumanize and invalidate non-Salafi viewpoints. As others have shown, language can build social prejudice to solidify one’s own power and credibility (Quasthoff, 1989, Chilton, 2004, Holly, 1989, Wodak, 1989). Through language and exclusionary narrative, Salafi mentors transform their students thinking so that mentors control who enters their circles and who is to be trusted (trust control).
As mentors curate content for the new converts, Salafis learn how to navigate the approved sources and other go-to platforms for the portrayal of the others (knowledge/information control). This mentor curated knowledge controls information and knowledge that a new convert to Salafism is exposed to. Though the interviewed Salafis were displeased with their own negative characterization in the mainstream media, they have actively delegitimized mainstream sources of information and maintained the Salafi version of Islam is the only true Islam: for them, Salafism is “the only correct and valid [emphasis added] way to follow Islam” (Interviewee TZ003). Consequently, the interactions between Salafis and non-Salafis infrequently occur, further limiting Salafis’ exposure to diverse viewpoints and at times even their interactions with family (relationship control).
Mentors are seen as learned men who are devout Muslims and knowledgeable about the Koran, often educated in the Middle East. One of the college-educated, unemployed interviewees shared he had no formal education on Islam, but benefited from his mentors who “studied in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt” (Interviewee TZ00X). No interviewer mentioned that his or her mentor was employed by an institution or compensated for his work, which further validated the mentor’s status as a sole guide to true knowledge for all life matters (guidance control). Al-Ghazali has similarly argued in the 12th century (Gunther, 2006): teachers in Islam are expected to teach without compensation and solely for the benefit of spreading Islam.
This research did not focus on exploring the globally networked power and money behind the Salafis’ radicalization effort in Bosnia, but the façade shared with the targets of the Salafi mentorship effort suggests the mentees lack understanding of the intricate workings of the funding web that must be supporting the global spread of Salafism. Our focus is on how Salafis have mastered this deeper and more personalized mentorship-centered approach in Bosnia by informally educating the masses and the marginalized rather than the societal elites. Salafis have used informal education via mentorship to disrupt the power play, fill the vacuum, and spread radical ideas.

Authors

• Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Natasha Mansur, Penn State University