A Better Way to Keep Kids From Joining ISIS: Talk to Them

Aziz says that despite a few sensational cases, in his experience, support for radicalism exists only among a fringe minority. But for those who are at risk for radicalization, political events are a prime driver. “We shoot ourselves in the foot when we try and look for single root causes for social phenomena like this, but the elephant in the room is always foreign policy. Nobody wants to address it, though in my experience, its the No. 1 reason that young people get angry,” Aziz says. “Muslim communities have existed in Western countries for a very long time, but the issue of homegrown terrorism only arose over the past decade with the Iraq War and this period of extended conflict in the Middle East.”
“There is injustice going on in the world, and unless you do something to mitigate those problems, you’ll always end up treating symptoms but not the disease,” Aziz says.