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2 Saudis nip extremism in the
bud By Christopher Boucek
For the past three years, the Saudi
government has been quietly engaged in an
ambitious strategy to combat violent Islamist
extremist sympathies through an innovative
prisoner re-education and rehabilitation program.
After the May 2003 Riyadh compound
bombings, the regime adopted a series of security
measures to fight Islamist terrorism. In addition
to the aggressive counter-terrorism steps taken by
the government, Saudi officials have also sought
to combat the
support of extremist ideology
in the kingdom through a series of less-known
"soft" counter-terrorism measures aimed at
combating the appeal of extremist takfiri
beliefs. (Takfiris hold that Muslims who hold
anything less than an extreme view of Islam that
is intolerant of non-Muslims are themselves no
better than kafirs - infidels.)
These measures have included a
sophisticated hearts-and-minds campaign consisting
of a combination of state-sponsored education
programs, coordinated public relations and media
efforts, and the deployment of the government's
considerable religious resources. It is from this
background that the re-education program has
emerged. Only three years old, the program was
initially kept a secret to encourage its success
away from media attention. Thus far, it has
generated some noteworthy results, and it is now
discussed openly and frequently in the Saudi
media. The program's structure, process and
relative successes, however, are all but unknown
in the United States.
The counseling
program to re-educate and rehabilitate terrorist
sympathizers is part of a self-described "war of
ideas" against extremism in the kingdom. This
quiet struggle has been ongoing for some time, and
the program represents a very distinctive Saudi
solution to a Saudi problem. It incorporates many
traditional Saudi methods of conflict resolution
and conflict management. The fact that the program
was started in secret, and not in response to
outside pressures, is telling; its origins arose
out of recognition in the kingdom that something
had to be done to address extremist sympathies and
is a tacit acknowledgment of the threat that the
"war of ideas" posed.
The centerpiece of
the Saudi strategy is dubbed the "counseling
program", which is intended to assist those
individuals who have espoused takfiri
beliefs to "repent and abandon terrorist
ideologies". The program seeks to de-radicalize
extremist sympathizers by engaging them in
intensive religious debates and psychological
counseling. It is important to stress that
participants in the counseling program are only
terrorist sympathizers, and at the most
individuals caught with jihadist propaganda. They
are not individuals who have been active in
terrorist violence in the kingdom; people "with
blood on their hands" are barred from
participating.
Structure of the
Advisory Committee The re-education
program is organized under the auspices of the
Ministry of Interior. [1] Within the ministry, the
counseling program is administered by a group
called the Advisory Committee. The Advisory
Committee is headquartered in Riyadh and has
permanent representatives in seven major cities
throughout the kingdom. Members also visit prisons
across the country and meet with detainees.
The Advisory Committee is made up of four
subcommittees: the Religious Subcommittee, the
Psychological and Social Subcommittee, the
Security Subcommittee, and the Media Subcommittee.
The Religious Subcommittee is the largest of the
four sub-groupings. It is made up of about 100
clerics, scholars and university professors, and
it is the group that directly engages in the
prisoner dialogues and the re-education process.
The Psychological and Social Subcommittee
is composed of about 30 psychologists, social
scientists and researchers. They are tasked with
evaluating a prisoner's social status, diagnosing
any psychological problems, assessing the
prisoner's status and compliance during the
process, and determining what support the prisoner
and his family may need.
The Security
Subcommittee performs several functions: its
members evaluate prisoners for security risks;
make release recommendations; advise prisoners on
how to behave upon release; and monitor prisoners
and whom they associate with once they leave
prison.
The Media Subcommittee produces
materials used in the program and also makes other
educational materials for use in schools and
mosques. This subcommittee is focused on outreach
and education, and targeting young Saudi men.
The counseling process When
members of the Advisory Committee initially sit
with a prisoner, one of the first things they
stress is that they are not employees of the
Ministry of Interior or associated with the
security forces. [2] Rather, they explain, they
are independent and righteous scholars. Before the
government adopted this technique, it was not
uncommon for families to ask clerics and scholars
to visit their family members in jail and talk
with them about their behavior.
In their
first meeting, committee members will simply
listen to the prisoner. They ask them about what
they did, why they did it and the circumstances
that brought them to be in prison. Throughout the
process, the scholars engage prisoners in
discussions about their beliefs, and then attempt
to persuade them that their religious
justification for their actions is wrong and based
on a corrupted understanding of Islam. The
committee first demonstrates that what the
prisoners were tricked into believing was false,
and then teaches them the proper state-approved
interpretation of Islam.
The Advisory
Committee runs two programs. The first includes
short sessions, which typically run about two
hours. While some prisoners recant their beliefs
after the first session, typically a prisoner goes
through several of these meetings. The others are
called "long study sessions". These are six-week
courses for up to 20 students led by two clerics
and a social scientist. Ten subjects are covered
over the six weeks, including instruction in such
topics as takfiri, wallah (loyalty) and
bayat (allegiance), terrorism, jihad, and
psychological courses on self-esteem. At the end
of the course, an examination is given; those who
pass the exam move to the next stage of the
process, while those who do not pass repeat the
course.
Why does it work? The
counseling program is based on a presumption of
benevolence, and not vengeance or retribution. It
presumes that the suspects were abused, lied to
and misled by extremists into straying away from
"true Islam", and that the state wants to help
security prisoners return to the correct path.
The vast majority of prisoners who have
participated in the program, according to research
conducted by the Advisory Committee, have been
found not to have had a religious education
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