Self-made radicals: Living and loathing among ‘unbelievers'

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino shooters, are poster children for self-radicalised Muslims that are on the rise: Muslims no longer need mosques, imams or Islamic centres to radicalise them, as this transformation increasingly happens in the privacy of their homes, using smart-phones, tablets, and computers; and social media links the radicalised with terror organisations and criminals. Imams in the West may not be preaching violence to the faithful or urging them to engage in terrorism, but they are teaching orthodox Islam and Islamic etiquette of living a Muslim life in the West. Al-Huda, where Tashfeen studied, is one of hundreds of such organisations, whose message can easily escape scrutiny — yet Al-Huda is a nursery for promoting the ‘Otherness’. Young Muslims are told that they may be living in the West but that they are different; their identity is the only Muslim identity, and nothing else matters.