Understanding the Root Causes
of Radicalization, ISIS, and
the Attack on Charlie Hebdo

The CSID Founding President Dr. Radwan Masmoudi welcomed the audience, reminding them that in an interconnected global village, what

The principle cause of this violence and extremism in Masmoudi's view is the existence of corrupt, ruthless regimes and dictatorships in the majority of Muslim countries. These regimes fail to provide their citizens with basic necessities, decency or dignity. Millions of young people risk losing hope in peaceful, democratic change because of the nature of these regimes. Half of the population in the Arab world is under 26 years of age. An increasing portion of those losing hope are joining groups such as Al Qaida, ISIS, Ansar Sharia, Boko Haram, and others, and there is a risk many more will do so. Supporting human rights and democracy and giving young people a voice in determining their future is not a luxury we can avoid or neglect. Freedom and democracy are the best cure and antidote for rising violence and extremism. Masmoudi called on the U.S. and Europe to denounce all forms of oppression, corruption, or dictatorship committed in the name of Islam or of secularism. He called for new measures to stem the tide of discrimination, racism, alienation, isolation, and frustration experienced by Arab and Muslim youth in European and other western countries. He also called for an end to the civil war in Syria, which has already caused over several hundred thousand deaths there and rendered the country a factory and hub for global terrorism, through the implementation of a no fly zone. He called for an end to Western acquiescence to the regime in Egypt and full-throttled support for democracy, freedom, and dignity through the Arab and Muslim world. Finally, he called for a new moderate Islamic narrative for the 21st century from credible, independent Muslim scholars to combat radical Salafism and Wahabism.
National Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Nihad Awad lamented that


The U.S. has more free speech than any country in the world (and significantly more than France), but the society has decided nonetheless that certain things cannot be said, not because they are illegal but because they are immoral. We rightly cringe at racist depictions, and we have decided as a society not to depict people in certain ways, again not for legal reasons. She said she was offended by the Charlie cartoons not as a Muslim, but as an American, because they reminded her of Jim Crow era depictions of African Americans. France, she said, needs to hurry up and join with the moral indignation that bigoted cartoons increasingly provoke in most societies. Finally, the main issue at hand in the recent U.S. Islamophobic backlash is fear. Fear of foreign influence, manufactured fear of other religions, all of which lead to efforts to pass state laws against sharia, which is in no way a threat to American jurisprudence. Later in the event, Mogahed made that point that the terrorists are not hijacking Islam, they are hijacking Muslim grievances, justifying illegal acts by associating them with widely shared common causes among young people. The worst thing that can happen is to allow extremists to hijack these grievances.
Imam Talib Shareef is the President and 4th Imam of the Nation's Mosque, the historic Masjid Muhammad in Washington DC, and long served as a leading and groundbreaking U.S. military chaplain. He expressed condolences to the families of the victims of terrorism and read his statement (in America's oldest Muslim newspaper) adding, "Without free press, there would be no Muslim journal in America." In the statement, he said that the attack in France was an attack on humanity and on free speech globally. Such criminal acts are not condoned by Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or any of the "beautiful faith communities." He said that not everyone who picks up a gun in defense of religion is an authority on religion. He emphasized that the Prophet responded to verbal and physical attacks with "prayers, kindness, mercy, and forgiveness."
He said that the "deep" roots of radicalization go back to the Crusades and colonialism, and that there were also more modern causes, such as the Palestinian situation. He said that the decline of Islamic civilization in the Middle East since the Golden Age had caused negative psychic repercussions in Muslim communities. Shockingly low literacy rates in many countries in modern times complicates matters, along with corruption and despotism. He singled out Saudi Arabian intolerance toward minority religions as a cause of generalized religious intolerance and of the mentality that led to 9/11. Some terrorists and criminals are motivated by desperation; others by provocation; and still others by lack of loving attention within families. He said that people who know little about Islam were falling in with criminal terrorists in part because of their attraction to beautiful but misappropriated religious language.
James Le Sueur, Professor of History at Univeristy of Nebraska Lincoln and a leading French historian, filmmaker, and author of several books including

In 2004, laicité laws were hardened under President Jacques Chirac, leading to the outright banning of the veil. As France continued to create atrocious living conditions for its immigrant communities on the outskirts of cities, anti-immigrant sentiment has been consistently expressed and refracted through debates about immigrant attire and place in French society. He cited a French writer of Algerian origin who argued that the roots of extremism lie in the fact that the lack of debate about socioeconomic conditions and alienation in sordid suburbs is replaced by a debate over laicité, which is a trap, alienating communities further from each other. While some extremists are less educated, and some are more educated, all experience disorienting alienation, economic dislocation, and disenfranchisement.
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Editor's Note: Coverage of the event was very positive, but two conservative outlets published (and republished in various venues) erroneous and deliberately skewed accounts building a specious case that the event sought to restrict free speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every single speaker condemned all aspects of these and other terrorist attacks on journalists and cartoonists of any kind "clearly and unequivocally," and no speaker called for new laws or policies restricting free speech in any way. In fact, every speaker defended free speech as a norm essential to modern societies, and, as noted above, one speaker said it was central to Islam under the tenet of "No compulsion in religion." Contrary to these conservative reports, there was no mention on the panel of "sharia censorship," or desired new forms of state censorship, or any defense of Pakistani or Saudi laws. In fact, Saudi Arabian intolerance was specifically criticized. One conservative author completely misunderstood the moderator's passing reference to the Supreme Court's "fire in the theater" quotation, and didn't even mention that an inversion of the quotation came first in his remarks to make the an opposing point, a joke meant to question the theatrics of these incessant debates over Islam and speech. The statement by the moderator was in no way a declaration advocating free speech curbs or a policy prescription of any kind. It was a neutral scenesetter. Panelists, however, were exquisitely precise in their language during the event, not calling for new free speech restrictions overtly or covertly, but the conservative authors took various nuanced observations about current debates out of context and knitted them together into unabashedly incorrect accounts of the event. They left out clear language by all of the panelists defending free speech. They ignored multiple references to Islamic religious teachings that advocate responding to mockery and bigotry with patience and peaceful response. The proof is in the pudding. No one on the panel, before, during or after the event has called for free speech restrictions; several have published articles and further comment, also not calling for legal curbs on free speech. Rather, the hope of several panelists was that French society will continue to evolve in the direction of U.S. society, away from forms of racial and religious bigotry (including racist iconography as a part of religious bigotry), and away from those being seen socially (not legally) as acceptable speech. In each panelist's remarks it was clear that this was to be an evolution of taste and norms of respect, and it was not intended to be advocated as a matter of laws curbing speech, now or in the future. This was eminently clear but lost on these commentators.