WHY DO WE NEED TO LIVE IN THE “US” VERSUS “THE OTHERS” PARADIGM?

Living inside today’s globalizing society; the man of the third millennium can easily get his discourse away, at least apparently, from the paradigms that seem too rigid, that are from long-gone eras. Globalization makes any local tradition represent something limited and stranger than modernity. Old religious forms seem more and more awkward.

The fight of democratic secularism, religious tolerance and individual freedoms against reinventing authoritarian religions represents a universal constant. Violent manifestations of patriarchal cultures become the content of our normal social lives, periodically becoming bloody wars, massacres, sadism actions and “witch hunting”. Fortunately, today’s era was marked by an increase in the frequency of these episodes of the “holy war” declared by false prophets like Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who represent only the most recent examples (Willis Reference Willis2003).

It can be said that, in the globalization and post-modernism era, Muslims face humiliation, lack of dignity, and being actually in a position that is perceived as “deviant” from the “others” (Langman and Morris Reference Langman and Morris2002).

“The others”, which is the West, are attracted into a big battle with the adepts of these false prophets who talk about a vision of a vengeful God and a humanity led by prohibitive laws. And this war, not the one of Western and Islamic civilizations, but the one for the future of the last one, seems to take place in every part of the Globe (Peters Reference Peters2002).

Apparently, it is a conflict between the promoters of two ideologies, two visions over the World, one religious and fundamentalist, and the other secular, based on the right to choose of the individual (Baudrillard Reference Baudrillard1996).

The difficulty of finding a common way of living is generated by the fact that the adepts of false prophets (who are no other than the attackers in Paris, Istanbul, Tunis, Sharm el-Sheik, Brussels, Nice, Berlin, London, and more) and also us, that is “the others”, are impacted by these visions over the world in order to answer the question: “who are we?”, the existential uncertainty being solved through adhering to a group that was created around a prototype.

Visions over the world are based on a series of myths through which we see reality. On these bases we can find answers to essential questions that decisively influence human existence: who are we, what place do we have in the bigger picture, what is wrong and what is the solution? (Liht and Savage Reference Liht and Savage2008).

This is why the discourses that we consider important directly reflect our perception over life, whereas ideologies that we ignore do not have connections to the way in which we perceive reality or affect us in such a way that makes us reject them (Rowe Reference Rowe1994).

Inside this reflection pattern, people who join false prophets are attracted by their speeches because they reflect a part of their own vision over the world.

Thus, inside conflict zones, the main motivation seems to be trauma, desire to revenge, patriotic feelings, all being tied to psychological needs surfaced after traumatizing experiences lived under foreign occupation or inside conflict zones (Speckhard and Akhmedova Reference Speckhard and Akhmedova2006).

In conflict-free zones, individuals seem influenced by the way in which ideology promoted by false prophets manages to mold to personal failures, generated by social alienation, marginalization, desire to live a better life full of significance, tendency towards heroic acts and powerful emotions. In most of the cases, these individuals are marginalized, frustrated and do not have any more hope (Sageman Reference Sageman2004).

Ideologies promoted by these false prophets offer their followers the feeling of being part of a group and of regaining self-confidence by promising them a “superior”, “divine” destiny.

WHO AND WHY WOULD SOMEBODY WANT THE OTHER’S DEATH?

Even though we cannot state a general truth about the motivations behind an individual deciding to blow himself up or behead another individual, we can build certain hypotheses in this regard.

RADICALIZATION OF YOUNGSTERS OR THE ONE-WAY ROAD IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his followers recruit especially young ones because they are the most vulnerable to fall for the false prophecies. In adolescence, mainly, with to some extent young maturity, teenagers experience an identity crisis characterized by the denial of social norms already imposed by society.

They may come from poor families that did not manage to adapt to the traditions and norms of the country they are currently living in, who feel marginalized, do not have a higher education level, nor jobs that make them feel safe and consider that their failure in life was because society refused them for being different (Williams Reference Williams2004:504).

Teenagers are in search of their identity. One of the main characteristics of this stage of life is thinking in extremes – in black and white – emotions becoming very intense and overwhelming, difficult to control. They are easy to impress, convince and manipulate, especially outside the family environment. In those cases in which the teenager’s relationship with the members of his/her family is tensioned – it does not matter whether he/she was neglected or over-spoiled in the childhood or if there are tensions between parents or there is a conflictual state inside the family – the teenager tries to find a meaning for life outside the family.

Any opportunity that seems to offer them the possibility to do something out of the ordinary, which is apparently easy to achieve, can be very attractive for teenagers, especially for those without family support. The illusion of becoming a big name, which has some elements of spectacular and shine, can seem very desirable, especially for teenagers who are in a full process of getting out of the family’s control.

Psychologists point towards some aspects that boost the process mentioned before:

• • Self-critical spirit becomes more present, the teenager feels a distinct individuality, personality;

• • They manifest independently and try to self-affirm;

• • There appears to be a conflict between generations;

• • There comes the problem of understanding people and societies;

• • They think very seriously about scholar and professional orientation.

Teenagers without a certain objective in life cannot find themselves a place in society; thus they get to think they are main figures of the group that they are representing (which is formed of false prophets) and that sacrifice is for the good of the ones who are not able to fight. In order to subdue the teenager to the group, the radicalization discourse gets him farther and farther from the known environments and people: professors, educators, friends or family. Teenagers are encouraged to get away from everything “impure” in order to get to “what’s pure religiously”. The feeling that is transmitted is that the secular society is unfaithful. In other words, in order to stay away from the general evil, teenagers must develop a feeling of being part of a clearer community, above the rest of the world – teenagers must break from their social environment.

In the first step of radicalization, by comparing their social condition to the others’, he/she starts to ask himself/herself questions and begins to feel marginalized. Sometimes, prior to “affiliation”, in his/her life appears a trigger – an event with a great emotional load, like the death of a close person or losing a job, doubled by the failure in managing to cope with it on his/her own (Lousberg et al. Reference Lousberg, Griffioen-Young, Dyevre and Goetz2007:227).

In the second step, the individual tries to reinvent himself, evaluating religious, ideological and political doctrines, identifying the ones that are defining to him. Then the individual searches the company of people sharing his opinions. For the problems to appear, he will try to find the guilty ones outside of his group.

In the third step, the teenager is subjected to a de-personalization process, being made to give up all the elements that made him different from the rest of the group. The ideas or values in contradiction to the ones of the group will be neutralized. The teenager will start to be convinced that outside the group there will never be an acceptable life and starts to feel saddened by the idea of not being part of the group.

In the fourth stage, the teenager starts to think that any idea in contradiction to the group’s vision is negative. He considers that justice must be done through action. The teenager gets mentally prepared for potential aggressive actions and searches for justification for them.

In the last stage, he is attributed a certain role, receives physical training and anything needed to achieve that role.

Teenagers are the most prone to becoming extremists, representing 63% of those wanting to fight in Syria or Iraq. Over 40% of them are depressive: “Studies show that radicalized teens felt without territory, from nowhere. The new terrorist discourse touches them and the ones without that feeling, who are integrated in the society they live in, even though they are from immigrant families or not. The exile feeling, ties with the immigration or the territory where they live represent a main indicator for teenagers attracted to radicalization profile” (Centre de Prévention contre les Dérives Sectaires liées à l’Islam (CPDSI) 2014).

Big social forces encourage them to “leave home” and start a mission of exploring self-identity, own values, and free expression.

They start to self-analyze, but, whereas teenagers improve their abilities and develop themselves, mainly through art or sports, these ones become an easy target for terror hunters, recruiters of terrorist organizations, who promise them the best in both worlds: expressing themselves, gratefulness, self-respect, combined into a religious context of personal dignity and life understanding.

Suicide attackers in the East are novices, and due to the fact that they are frustrated, they become easily malleable and easy to guide by terror sellers. Their suicidal missions are considered to be mistaken acts for becoming better, a fact that should be interpreted in the context of the Western liberal view of personal identity (Kristjánsson Reference Kristjánsson2008).

There are, surely, teenagers who access terrorism elements because of a need of adrenaline and because they think that, in that way, they will get the opportunity to experience an adventure that will bring them fame.

Fame is not just about being known. It is a fast route to high status and social dominance. Fame delivers the illusion that you matter more than other people. One of the Charlie Hebdo killers, Cherif Kouachi, originally sought to escape his life of petty crime and poverty by becoming a famous rapper.

Fame played a part for Mohammed Emwazi, the British man now known as “Jihadi John”, too. Formerly an obscure London lad with modest prospects, he is now a new human type, the famous beheader. Jihadi John rose to notoriety after he first appeared in a video in which he killed American journalist James Foley (The Telegraph 2015).

Emwazi is idolized by Islamic State recruits as the personification of jihadi cool. Such killers get fans. Such killers may speak as if they are acting piously under the eye of an all-powerful God, but they actually act with a sharp, greedy eye for their audience of human peers.

Daesh recruiters developed five myths in order to be more attractive for potential recruits:

• • The “knight-hero” myth – is especially attractive for males, who imagine that without their intervention nothing would change. Just arrived in Syria, in 2013, Maxime Hauchard (Abu Abdullah al-Faransi), ISIS Executioner, had been sharing a link to an article by a salafi magazine, entitled “The Jihadists, Superheroes of Modern Times?”: “Like superheroes, they fly from their country to unknown lands for deliver endless fighting. As superheroes, they defend the widow and the orphan, the oppressed ...”

• • The myth of “humanitarian hero” – a humanitarian cause such as helping the children gassed by the Syrian government, which attracts women;

• • The myth of “the one who carries water” – this is the model that is applicable to those who seek for a leader, those who need somebody to show them what to do;

• • The “Call of Duty” myth – this refers to the well-known war video games for teenagers, who crave for fighting, for acting. Daily habits, mostly boring and redundant, can be influenced and guided by a fun activity or a game, which is by its nature pleasant. The result is represented by the implication of platform users in the apparent solving of some matters of life. Therefore, the virtual reality takes control over everyday realities, thus becoming the only reference system of a teenager. This technique maximizes the close relationship between the virtual world and the real one and exploits it in order to inform, to guide and to offer the opportunity of some experiences that go beyond the ordinary, both ethical and legal, as well as territorial. Jihadists use the virtual universe from the video games, the virtual violence of an action game, such as Counter Strike, with a view to predisposing a teenager, emotionally instable, to seek a “real confrontation” in Syria or Iraq.

The myth of the “limitless” person is addressed to emotionally unstable persons, who are inclined to commit violent acts, like Jake Bilardi, known as “Jihadi Jake”, Australian citizen, born in 1996.Footnote ¹ After the divorce of his parents, he, aged 10 years at the time, remained with his mother. Jake craved attention, had wild rages and attacked his parents with weapons such as scissors. His search for meaning followed his parents’ divorce, when he lost all contact with his father, then lost his mother to cancer. The link with his father was re-established only in 2009, when he moved to Melbourne with his elder brothers, at his father’s house. There is no clear data about the relationship of Jake and his father, but, apparently, this relationship was glacial. He turned out to be a shy youngster who was doing well in school. Being unfit, he was sometimes abused by his elder high school colleagues, an atmosphere that made him identify himself with “a victim of oppression”. Some teenagers dedicate the majority of their time reading diverse online sources about various terrorist organizations or groups of organized crime, which they consider to be fighters for freedom, the protectors of those oppressed. In mid-2014, he dropped out of school and isolated himself from family and friends. We should underline the fact that incipiently Jake Bilardi had a negative opinion over the terrorist organization, the Islamic State. According to his last post on his blog, the teenager’s vision was radically changed after the long discussions that he had on the organization’s forums and chats. Eventually, a recruiter for Jabhat al-Nusra helped him to fly to Turkey and to join the Islamic State in Syria. This painfully shy, anxious boy, rejected, taunted and bullied, finally found his place in the world as Abu Abdullah al-Australi, part of a glorious struggle that promised him a heroic identity and spiritual immortality as a suicide bomber in Iraq. After his death, he was no longer invisible, but infamous, acquiring another kind of immortality (Manne Reference Manne2015).

TERRORISM 2.0: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN RADICALIZING WESTERN YOUNGSTERS

As we can see, at least in Jake Bilardi’s case, the rapid evolution of the social media phenomenon and the current trend for people to interact and communicate without barriers due to online facilities have led some groups and factions to act apart from tangible reality in the virtual sphere, thus developing a culture of online collectivism (LinkedIn Reference LinkedIn2012).

Terrorists are among those who benefit from the advantages offered by 21st-century technology. Location has become less important in the recruitment and training process of the potential militants.

Individuals who wish to become terrorists see online activity as a substitute for direct violence or direct contact with other terrorists. This fact, thus, excludes the need to travel to a training or indoctrination camp.

Recent research proves that the intermediaries who use social networks can convey persuasive messages by using religious jihadist rhetoric. To accomplish this objective, the recruiters of these children developed a new promoting concept called “cool jihads” that consists of making videos of “rap” songs, whose messages instigate violence and terrorism against the unfaithful.

Targeting the young audience, the extremists use pop culture (rap music, video games and comics) to portrait jihadism in a compelling light. Broadcasting hip-hop videos containing extremist themes is one of the most unusual, yet viral, call to arms on the Internet. The most notorious example is “Dirty Kuffar” by Sheikh Terra that was downloaded on millions of computers worldwide. The users were attracted by extremist lyrics such as “Peace to Hamas and the Hezbollah, OBL pulled me like a shiny star, like the way we destroyed them two towers ha-ha”.

Due to the fact that it does not require any knowledge in Arabic or a high level of education to upload the jihadist content, YouTube quickly became an important platform for the jihadists and their supporters, promoting a certain level of flourishing sub-culture of communication and transmitting their propaganda worldwide. For instance, research performed in 2008, which analyzed the comments that YouTube users posted to the videos illustrating suicide actions in Iraq, showed that most of the people watching them had their residence outside the Middle East and North Africa, with the highest percentage living in the United States of America (Conway Reference Conway2012:12–13).

An Al-Zarqawi 30-minute recording, in which he explained who he was and what he was fighting for, offering, at the same time, details about the attacks he and his group were responsible for, opened the mass-media offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq, at the beginning of 2004 (Conway and McInerney Reference Conway and McInerney2008).

Paul Eadle described this recording as an attempt to create a brand that would bring notoriety to the jihadist community on the Internet. Subsequently, after enhancing the value of the recognition acquired, al-Qaeda from Iraq recorded a video in which the same al-Zarqawi was beheading Nicholas Berg. This video entitled “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sacrifices an American” was uploaded on ogrish.com (a site that offers the possibility to post folders carrying the potential to attract and influence public opinion) and was consequently watched over 15 million times (Talbot Reference Talbot2014).

A change brought by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is represented by the launch of Inspire in 2010, an English online magazine that encourages individual jihad against the Americans and the Occident (Michael Reference Michael2003:45).

This magazine was a mix of ideological material bearing an instructive and pragmatic content, in the attempt to promote the jihadist “do-it-yourself” approach.

In its turn, with the view to promoting its messages, the Islamic State developed a series of communication initiatives on social networks, very easy to access and highly attractive to the public, including the publication of e-books, e-magazines and professional videos, produced and edited by the media centers Al-Furqan and al-Hayat.

According to a post uploaded on the online group Cybers-hafarat, that managed to infiltrate sites for jihadist recruitment, it is remarkable how social media are being transformed into the mechanism through which contact with the jihadist narrative is institutionalized (Treadstone71, 2015a).

For example, on March 27, 2016, with the help of a propagandistic video, Hicham Chaib claimed, in the name of the Islamic State, the terrorist attacks launched in Brussels on March 22, 2016 (Ziare 2016). At the end of the recording, Hicham Chaib (son of a Belgium-based Moroccan family, who abandoned school and started to wander the streets of Borgerhout, the context in which his criminal tendencies were observed) executed in cold-blood a prisoner. It is worth mentioning that the jihadist is leading “Hisba”, the religious police of the Islamic State, to take care of the executions through beheading, stone throwing and crucifixion. Thanks to his Facebook account, where he uploaded various propagandistic video materials of the Islamic State, Hicham Chaib is considered responsible for the biggest number of supporters originating from Western countries, more precisely Belgium, that joined the Islamic State (Hall Reference Hall2015).

The success of the Islamic State in recruiting teenagers from Western countries partly illustrates the potential of the online “show”. It is worth mentioning the fact that the recruits from the Occident are asked not to limit themselves just to support the initiatives of the group in the Middle East, but also to execute terrorist attacks in their origin countries. Consequently, the veterans who choose to come back are not the sole potential threats, but also the followers of the Islamic State who do not leave their countries of origin and who may act at the urging launched online by other supporters of the terrorist group.

Research on the French jihadist portrait reveals that the Internet is the most preferred recruitment method used by the jihadists, as over 90% of the recruits are from the Internet. The humanization of the violence by the overexposure generated by the press, movies and video games led to the dangerous association of fun=violence. The Internet guarantees instant access to data from every corner of the world, but it does not guarantee their truthfulness. The newly established caliphate becomes a “theatre” that presents online the story of a jihadist utopia. Social media emerges as the tool through which the Islamic State institutionalized the recruitment process. While YouTube ensures the delivering of the content, Facebook facilitates the bidirectional online interactions. The biggest consumers of online content are teenagers; therefore the chances of “intoxication” with extremist ideologies rise.

When they are disseminated through means of interactive social media, images and ideologies displayed in this “theatre”, extreme attitudes towards violent concepts, become “normal”, such as “jihad” and “martyrdom”, allowing the public to adhere to virtual groups of people who have the same tendencies for violence.

Robyn Torok draws attention upon the fact that the Islamic State pays great concern to the online recruitment process, according to a very carefully elaborated strategy, through the isolation of the individual from the elements that contravene its own ideology and limitation of “free” time – an objective that is realized by means of “flooding” the environment with diversions (Treadstone71 2015b).

The power of social networks in the process of radicalization among young people is obvious as research on 2112 jihadist forums having 18130 users highlights that “one fifth of the discussions included an explicit call for more terrorist attacks” and “two thirds of discussions contain some form of call for or encouragement lines of terrorist attacks” (Erez, Weimann, and Weisburd Reference Erez, Weimann and Weisburd2011:x).

An example supporting this idea is the case of Giuliano Delnevo, who, on June 18, 2013, died after fighting in Syria against Bashar al-Assad. Delnevo converted to Islam in 2008, changed his name to Ibrahim, and fought in Syria for almost one year (Corriere della Serra 2013).

Another example is that of Anas el Abboubi (born in Morocco in 1992), who moved to Brescia, Italy in 1999. He was an active member of the network Sharia4Belgium and he wanted to create a similar online network in Italy. Even though he was chased by the Italian secret services, he managed to flee to Syria with the help of an Albanian network (Vidino Reference Vidino2014).

In April 2014, the German citizen Denis Mamadou Cuspert died in the “jihad” in Syria. Denis Mamadou Cuspert (also known as DesoDogg – his screen name as a rapper) joined the Islamic State under the name of Abu Maleeq (Agerpres Reference Agerpres2015).

Cases during the last few years have indicated that the cyber-jihadist is growing, both in number and the level of sophistication. The Cyber Caliphate, a group affiliated to the Islamic State, led by Abu Hussein al-Britani, a British hacker that left Birmingham with the view of going in Syria, hacked and took control over some thousands of Twitter and YouTube accounts of The United States Central Command (CENTCOM).

In July 2014, the al-Hayat media center launched in various languages (including Albanian, English, French and German) the first number of the online magazine Dabiq, a publication that is reminiscent of the Inspire magazine, belonging to AQAP.

Dabiq represents only a segment of the effort to support the military activities of Islamic State and also a manner to intimidate its enemies. Another example is the upload of a 22-minute video entitled “Healing the Believer’s Chests”, which illustrated the arson of a Jordanian pilot, Safi Yousef al-Kasasbeh, made by the media group al-Furqan, in February 2015, via Twitter. The video begins with a dramatic crescendo, mixing images containing effects of air bombings with pilots who fly and interviews with al-Kasasbeh’s family, while he heads towards a cage in a dirty area, surrounded by fighters of the Islamic State, who stand in a very theatrical position.

This video, along with other productions belonging to al-Hayat and al-Furqan centers contain cinematographic effects that “seem to borrow something from a Hollywood action movie or a video game” (Maggioni 2015).

“Gamification” is a concept that also appeared in the online recruitment strategies of the Islamic State. In 2014, the Islamic State launched “Grand Theft Auto: Salil al-Sawarim” (Murtaza Reference Murtaza2014).

Grand Theft Auto was released for the first time in 1997, as a game for PlayStation consoles or other platforms, and in 2004 it had already had 30 million users worldwide. The game is addressed in particular to young people, by offering them the possibility to try, at least in the virtual world, the “car thief” career, which seems very attractive to them. In other words, it represents the recruitment potential that the Islamic State seeks to obtain in order to accomplish its objectives. However, in the game released by the manufacturers of the Islamic State, “Salil al-Sawarim” does not try to offer the players the “car thief” experience, but the one of the “jihadist”.

It is worth mentioning that the title “Salil al-Sawarim” had already been used when creating a series of short movies by al-Furqan; the fourth episode of these series, which was released on March 17, 2014, on YouTube, had already been watched by 57,000 people, only in the first 24 hours.

RADICALIZING YOUNGSTERS IN ROMANIA: UMAR AL-RUMAANI’S CASE

Boicea Luigi Constantin, known inside the virtual world as Omar al-Faruq, Umar Al-Amen Ibn Marwaan or Umar Al-Rumaani, is a teenager from Romania, aged 17 years, who was taken into custody by Romanian authorities on December 8, 2015, for terrorist propaganda. Boicea is part of a disintegrated family (divorced parents), his father having spent a certain period of time in jail. It is known that he has a close relationship with his mother, but not with his father, with whom he stopped interacting.

In this respect, we will try to understand the role the mother might have played in preventing and countering the radicalization of Boicea Luigi Constantin, thus offering guidance for a potential best practice in family interventions.

Boicea was very active online: he posted on private and public forums, was a true gamer, expressed on a daily basis his thoughts on social media and, fortunately, did not take any measures to hide his identity.

Inside this chapter, we will present some of his online comments, both under his real name and the name of Umar Al-Amen Ibn Marwaan or Umar Al-Rumaani, which we consider illustrative for this teenager’s radicalization process.

On November 27, 2011, on a website for people with diabetes (http://www.noisidiabetul.ro), the teenager affirmed the desperation he felt when he found out that he was diagnosed with diabetes: “Hello! My name is Boicea Luigi Constantin, I am 13 years old and in March 1^st, 2011, I was diagnosed with diabetes type 1 insulin-dependent. When I got to know I had diabetes (…) it was a real turnover for me (…) and that’s because one week ago I didn’t know I was going to suffer from it, didn’t know what to do and my mother and I despaired (…) and I really don’t know what to do” (Noi Si Diabetul 2011).

Half a year later, on June 9, 2012, he was asking for advice on another website (http://www.tpu.ro): “Hi, my name is Boicea Luigi Constantin and I’ve been playing soccer since the age of 6, now being 14. But a year ago I got diabetes type 1. This made me unable to play soccer, even though I really want to come back to the field since I like it very much… I feel so in shape, like back in the day and I was thinking of training on my own until I feel completely cured and then go again to trainings? PS. Advise me health=harmonious life or sports=money, women, fame, etc.” (TPU 2012a, 2012b).

It is important to underline the shift towards an acute frustration and the attempt to flee from the harsh reality of being a chronically ill person incapable of playing soccer, an aspect hard to cope with for a 14-year-old teenager who got to realize his future plans were ruined. Thus, he tries to find his refuge inside virtual space.

There, Boicea searched for alternatives to a soccer-player career. From his posts it is clear that he wants to find the easy ones: “Hi to all the members and visitors of this site. My name is Boicea Luigi Constantin, I am 14 years old and I am looking forward to being independent from my parents from the age of 15. I found out there is a post for game testers, to cut a long story short, one tests computer games. I have been searching for details on the Internet and I found out that I only need to be a high school graduate… I also found out that you work 8 hours a day and you earn 100 dollars an hour.”

Boicea shows curiosity and initiative, immaturity and superficiality in identifying solutions to his problems. He does not appreciate education and searches for solutions that bring him immediate gratification. From the aspects presented above, it becomes clear that he does not feel that education is an important dimension in building his future. He searches to transform a hobby into an income source. On his personal page inside the online platform Steam (virtual environment where he got to know several people from the entire world) the comments of other users indicate that he was making some mini transactions through the platform. Apparently, he found a method of monetizing his hobby.Footnote ²

According to the data on his Steam profile, the teenager spent over 1,700 hours with shooter games from 2012 to 2014, a simple calculation resulting into an average of approximately three hours daily. This type of game portrays violence as something normal and expresses the idea that a mission should be fulfilled no matter what the cost. An illustrative example is a gamer’s post in the comment zone on December 9, 2015 (after Boicea’s arrest), who says he played a lot of Counter Strike with Boicea and, after several arguments, he threatened him that he would “come to Bucharest to behead him in front of their families…” (Axintescu Reference Axintescu2015).

Even though this information does not come from a trusted and checked source, there are other data that support the idea that Boicea had a perverted system of moral values. Therefore, on an announcement page, he made public his idea to sell a Steam account: “1000% I am sure they want to have a steam as mine. And if this did not make you burst in jealousy, pay attention here! THIS STEAM HAS 1700 GAMES!”

At this moment, according to his Steam profile, the teenager proves an innocent curiosity regarding the Al-Qaeda organization: he uses Al Qaeda as his nickname and he has at the description of his profile a link leading to a parody video entitled “New Al Qaeda Dance”.

In April 2014, Boicea violates the terms of use of the Steam platform and, as a consequence, his access is restricted for an undetermined period. From this moment on, the teenager cuts any connection with the gamers’ virtual world. A six-month period follows, during which Boicea, who was very active on the Internet up to that moment, could not be reached. Only in November 2014 does the teenager reappear online – creating the Facebook page called “Muslims in Craiova”.Footnote ³ Here he posts pro-Islam messages, but without extremist meanings. He continues to be active here, but also on other sites addressed to Muslims, until March 2015.

On January 18, 2015, at the age of 16, Boicea uploaded a post in Arabic on a blog called The Islamic Host, belonging to one of his acquaintances, Damian Maya (Gazda Islamica Blog 2015). Here he presented his real name, as well as his Arabic name (Omar al-Faruq) and he announced that he had converted to Islam. Boicea told that he had a Syrian “friend”, Omar Hamadi, established in Bucharest, who described the situation of the conflict in his country. The stories bearing a strong emotional charge seem to affect the teenager, who stated that he later searched for Muslim groups of people in his hometown. Then he made the following confession: “I found a lady called Damian Maya, who has been converted to Islam for five years and is currently living in Greece. (…) I thank Allah, she agreed to teach me how to become a Muslim. I gave up a world of entourages, which involved drugs, alcohol, lost nights, gambling and false friends with gloomy interests.”

He also spoke about his family’s reaction. He thanked his mother for the fact that she accepted his conversion, unlike his father who disowned him. He presented his plans for the future: to go and study in Saudi Arabia, at the Islamic University from Medina, “with the aim of worshipping the Holy Quran, the Hadith and Islam”.

At the end of his studies, he dreamed to become an Islamic preacher and setting up a family with a Muslim woman. Also, the post has plentiful of phrases in which he expressed his love and admiration for his new confession. The same post appeared on the Internet in Romanian, as an obvious proof of the author’s identity.

The appearance of his recruiter is visible in Boicea’s life and even though he refers to himself as a man, his profile picture and description is that of a woman. Moreover, given the fact that his message was written in Arabic, we can conclude that he was helped to formulate it. Also, by analyzing the way that article is written, we can observe the teenager’s radical transformation. Even though in his early posts he had a rather chaotic and unorganized writing style, full of grammar mistakes and incorrectly built phrases, after his conversion he starts to express himself in a correct and precise manner.

During the first half of 2015, Boicea is absent in the virtual environment, a reality that indicates the fact that he isolated himself and self-radicalized. The jihadist speech becomes widespread starting with July 2015 when he posts a comment on a video uploaded on YouTube that refers even from the title to “Jihad” and that is actually a mix of Arabic and rap rhythms in which drunken Arabic people are presented. This issue generated the teenager’s reply full of hatred: “These things do not hurt our Arabic brothers and our sheik Osama. They only feed our hatred and motivation to join the Islamic State for the Jihad. Keep it up, kaffirs.”Footnote ⁴

Boicea also follows other videos that damage the image of the Islamic State and which give rise to violent comments. In some cases, the teenager states that he is a sympathizer of the Islamic State and he volunteers to give explanations to those who need to get answers for some questions: Umar Al-Rumaani: “I am with ISIS. If you got any question feel free to ask me! Dawlat Al Islam!”

As time passes, the teenager becomes even more precise in writing; he does not bring complex arguments to support his opinion anymore and he prefers to evoke brute force. He loses patience and becomes impatient to act. Before he gets arrested by the Romanian authorities, he is actively trying on the Internet to buy guns and explosives to produce an artisanal bomb.

WHAT ARE MOTHERS ALREADY DOING TO COUNTER THE RADICALIZATION OF YOUNGSTERS?

Maajid Nawaz was drawn to Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s promises to establish an Islamic state, and launched a career as one of their most engaging Islamist recruiters in Europe. Today, after being imprisoned in Egypt, Maajid is fighting for the democratic awakening of young Muslims around the world.

Maajid was attracted to Hizb-ut-Tahrir by the desire for certainty, which derived from his identity crisis. He declares that his mother could not have stopped him, explaining that teenagers do not listen to their mothers anyway. However, his mother became very important to him when he was in prison, where the temptations of the radical group were increasingly countered by his mother’s messages (Schlaffer and Kropiunigg Reference Schlaffer and Kropiunigg2012).

Latifa Ibn Ziaten has been named one of 14 “International Women of Courage” by the U.S. government and has been invited to explain her anti-radicalization message in American cities (RFI 2016). After her son, a French soldier, was murdered by Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah in 2012, Latifa Ibn Ziaten formed a group to prevent radicalization and promote dialogue. In one of her biggest projects, Ibn Ziaten took more than a dozen young people from a Paris suburb to Israel and the Palestinian territories as “peace ambassadors”. In another, she opened a center in a Parisian underprivileged immigrant suburb from where many radicals emerged to listen to the concerns of young people and their families.

Since the Syrian civil war began, some 20,000 foreign nationals have made their way to Syria and Iraq. Over 3,000 are from Western countries. Mothers from around the world have found each other weaving a strange alliance from their loss.

In Copenhagen, Karolina Dam was wild with fear. Her son Lukas had been in Syria for seven months. Three days earlier, she received news that he had been injured outside Aleppo, but she was convinced that he was dead.

In Norway, Torill learned of the death of her son, Thom Alexander, from the recruiter who had sent him to Syria to fight.

In Brussels, Saliha Ben Ali’s husband received a telephone call from a Syrian number about his 19-year-old son Sabri (who loved reggae and chatting with his mother about world events), who had died. Sabri took the nom de guerre Abu Turab, one of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions. He had died as “a martyr”, the man from the telephone said (Ioffe Reference Ioffe2015).

Saliha Ben Ali joined Les Parents Concernés (The Affected Parents), a support group that meets weekly in Molenbeek, a municipality of Brussels. Started by Chantal Dubois and one other parent in 2013, Les Parents Concernés has since morphed into a larger movement of about 20 mothers and fathers who demand a voice in the fierce debate on how to fight extremism, as well as request legal, financial and psychological support from the government to help their families cope with the trauma of their children leaving for Syria (De Bode Reference De Bode2015).

Christianne Boudreau’s 22-year-old son, Damian Clairmont, was a convert to Islam who died in early 2014. He had left Canada in November 2012 to fight in Syria. Regardless of what motivated their children, Boudreau and others like her find common cause in a group called Mothers for Life, devoted to putting out a counter-message: that the sophisticated siren call of jihad is a sure-fire path to self-destruction (Perkel Reference Perkel2016).

Mothers for Life is a global network of mothers who have experienced violent jihadist radicalization in their own families. In most cases, they have seen their sons and daughters leaving for Syria and Iraq and in many cases never return. The network aims to coordinate activities and provide guidance and counsel to mothers who are part of it. Currently eight countries are represented in our network: Canada, The United States of America, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and France. The network is coordinated by Christianne Boudreau and Daniel Koehler.

Women without Borders/Sisters against Violent Extremism (SAVE) is currently implementing a forward-thinking applied research project that aims to involve mothers in combating violent extremism by recognizing the signs of early radicalization in youth (Women Without Borders 2013).

SAVE is the world’s first female counter-terrorism platform. Headquartered at the Women without Borders offices in Vienna, Austria, the SAVE initiative brings together a broad spectrum of women determined to create a united front against violent extremism. SAVE’s “Mothers MOVE!” (Mothers Opposing Violent Extremism) campaign provides mothers with the encouragement, support and necessary tools to protect their children from the threat of violent extremism. The campaign takes place in Yemen, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, the UK and Ireland.

SAVE’s “Mothers for Change!” takes an approach to studying the process of deradicalization by taking full advantage of women’s role in the family and in society. Women are strategically positioned at the center of the family, where they are the first to recognize resignation and anger at their children.

The Your Mother film pack is SAVE’s tool to encourage family members, particularly mothers, to take an active role in safeguarding their families and communities. One clear outcome was the need to provide more resources to develop this possibility, such as a parenting curriculum to help mothers (and fathers) recognize and act on early warning signs and above all to boost family communications.

The Mothers Against Terrorism, Extremism & Radicalization (MATTER) mission unites Muslim mothers. Although its mandate focuses on Arabs and Arab diaspora, mothers of all nationalities and religions are encouraged to come together and join to share knowledge, insights and challenges, and to provide moral support aimed at affecting positive outcomes, whether it will be effective methods of teaching children tolerance, acceptance, and non-violence, introducing children to causes that help victims of terrorism (including bullying and peer pressure), and other every-day challenges that mothers are facing (LaunchGood 2016.).

The MATTER member roster of currently over 6,000 across 15 nations is growing weekly, and serves not only Muslim majority nations, but also Western nations with local youth populations at risk or Muslim populations having elements of marginalization or low levels of integration. By not allowing children to isolate themselves, mothers can insert themselves into any questionable circumstance and deter extremist ideology from growing and leading to that slippery slope that may lead a child to a point of no return.

WHAT CAN MOTHERS DO?

There is a chance that your child may meet people online or visit websites that could lead them to adopt what you consider to be extreme views, and therefore become radicalized. Curiosity could lead a child to seek out these people, or they could befriend your child in order to encourage them to adopt beliefs or persuade them to join groups whose views and actions you as a parent would consider extreme.

Young people may be vulnerable to a range of risks as they pass through adolescence. They may be exposed to new influences and potentially risky behaviors, influence from peers, influence from older people or from the Internet, as they may begin to explore ideas and issues around their identity. There are a number of signs to be aware of (although many of them are quite common among teens). Generally, parents should look out for increased instances of:

• • a conviction that their religion; culture or beliefs are under threat and treated unjustly;

• ∙ a tendency to look for conspiracy theories and distrust of mainstream media;

• ∙ the need for identity and belonging;

• ∙ being secretive about who they have been talking to online and what sites they have visited lately;

• ∙ switching screens when you come near the telephone; tablet or computer;

• ∙ possessing items, such as electronic devices or telephones that you have not given them;

• ∙ becoming emotionally volatile.

There are telltale signs that family members and friends can look out for in combating self-radicalization:

• ∙ spending more and more time on religious practices;

• ∙ being withdrawn; secretive and spending a lot of time online;

• ∙ isolating himself/herself and not having many friends;

• ∙ “being marginalized” and probably neglected by their parents;

• ∙ detaching from his/her social communities, such as school.

What parents and others can do:

• ∙ take greater interest in what their children are doing and pay more attention to what they are exposed to on the Internet;

• ∙ ask open-ended questions of their children such as what they think about radical beliefs, for example;

• ∙ not judge or victimize children, but try instead to understand what is the reason he/she is being radicalized;

• ∙ in case of psychiatric conditions such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder or depression, seek professional help (Ying and Osada Reference Ying and Osada2015).