The young men going to Syria and Iraq to fight with Isis

Aka Exactly my point re Billy Graham type tactics! Many young people feel the need to seek out a purpose/ reason/cause at a particular age and some unscrupulous people play on that need.

Jingle OTT Islamaphobia (rather than necessary anti terrorism) is that it provides the extremists with fuel to convince young Muslims that they are not part of UK society ..it forms part of their grooming tools!

I think this quote from jess's link above says it all.

'Zane Abdo, imam of the South Wales Islamic Centre, said he believed the men had been "groomed" by people they had met outside of their mosque.

"These are young men who are very sincere, they want to do something good," he said.

"But you can be sincere and you can be sincerely deluded in what you want to do, and they have been groomed to think a particular way." '

Police comment re Cardiff
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-28045179

NO Riverwalk I don't agree. Remember how the Syrian civil war started - Assad cracking down viciously on those who were challenging his regime (remember the Arab spring?) Putin and others kept supporting Assad and the thing escalated. It then got nastier and nastier, and Al Qaida etc piled in to help. Millions of people have been turned into refugees. During this time many people have sympathised with those who are against Assad and a few of them have gone out there. Some of them are Syrians with family out there. A % of them might have been fundamentalist before they went out there, but what Teresa May says is that she fears some of them might have been radicalised due to their contact with fundamentalist fighters.
I read an article about a teenager who went out there "to help" and was very distressed to realise he was much more of a hindrance as he was wildly ill-equipped to help - and that several people risked their lives to get him out again so he could go home.
Even Obama recognises publicly that there are moderate Syrians fighting Assad. (today's news)
Yes quite penstemmon all this Muslim bashing ain't going to help. Particularly when politicians pile into the fray (Gove) to deflect attention from that fact that he is unable to adequately monitor all these schools that he has liberated from LA control. Even the chief of police in Birmingham was furious with him.

But they also need a Cause.

They want to play at be soldiers with real guns. Young men are much the same the world over.

I don't think I agree with that. I don't know why they do it, but I don't think it's because they feel isolated or victimised. Perhaps more likely to be because they see others doing it on the television and want to join in. They want to be heroes?

I pledged myself to Jesus at a Billy Graham rally. Fortunately it did not require me to fly across the world and take up arms, but the strategy is the same! Emotive and persuasive language is used to impress large groups , of mainly teenage / early 20s crowds. It is a strategy that has been frequently used... Hitler was good at it!

I think there is more that can be done to minimise this type of radicalisation of previously decent young people. However I believe that what does not help is the 'Islamaphobia' that is now rife and acceptable in many quarters of society. All this does is feed the young Muslims' feelings of being isolated and victimised and makes young men even more susceptible to crazy and dangerous terrorists masquerading as clerics.

Have a go at working it out.

Jingl your post at 12:34 highlights the dilemma .......

I agree that it would be hard to sort out the ones who went for a good cause (fighting against the Assad regime) and those that went for hard line Muslim reasons.

They are one and the same people ...... so who would you arrest on their return to the UK?

As I have posted before, be a start if we had the software to track who is coming in and out of the country. Other countries do.
There are no easy answers. Some young men that get sucked in are not very bright but there was at least one example - an attack at Glasgow airport, where one of those involved was a doctor.
Its very hard to know, and may be impossible to generalise whether the "community leaders' have influence.

I agree that it would be hard to sort out the ones who went for a good cause (fighting against the Assad regime) and those that went for hard line Muslim reasons. That is a fly in the ointment of my suggestions in my OP.

Photograph and identify all departing and arriving passengers and use existing technology to link all that to personal details already held. Then weed out those considered to represent the greatest risk and concentrate on them. Are we prepared to accept sort of state involvement? I somehow doubt it unless another 911 comes along, God forbid.

Me neither

I just don't know how we can compete with it - young men seem to be hard-wired to need to fight. This has been "bred out" in most civilised nations, but under the influence of fundamentalist beliefs it creeps back in with dire consequences.

It does upset me that young men who have reaped the benefit of a civilised nation in which to grow up and been afforded every opportunity now turn and bite the hand that fed them.

But being upset does not solve the problem and I know not what the solution is.

Yes, it is a dilemma, but one that needs to be tackled. As Mishap has pointed out, failure to get to grips with this issue would ave serious repercussions.

No one wants another 7/7.

Links are being forged between the Muslim community in Birmingham and the police, which is a start. But watching these meetings on the local news most of the attendees are Muslim elders. I don't think these young men have the same respect for the older Immans and community leaders any more.

They want action, uniforms, guns and A Cause. Much in the same way young British men flocked to sign up at the outbreak of WW1. How can we hope to compete it this fervour?

I think JessM has summed up the dilemma well. The question remains still - what to do about it? How do we distinguish the well-intentioned and honest people from those who are terrorists and fanatics? How do we know which of those decent people might become radicalised whilst on their travels?

Terrorist acts are ruthless and defy reason and can kill and maim large numbers of people in one stroke - so we have to take measures that may fall short of the democratic standards we hold so dear.

Not a perfect world.

How would you like to see it dealt with JessM?

I think you will wait a long time for any organisation to hold their hands up and say 'yes, we covered it up' - it doesn't follow that the rest of us don't know that they are guilty by association of duplicity.

Can you make it a crime to "become radicalised" by fighting abroad. This does not make sense. You cannot legislate against peoples opinions, beliefs and attitudes. There seems to be a confusion between going abroad to fight against the ghastly Asad in an idealistic way and going abroad to fight for the Taliban in an idealistic way. Or to get trained to be a terrorist.
Some of them might well come back from Syria having been brainwashed into plotting against the UK. But this does not mean they all are.

If you did have a mechanism for detaining interrogating every young person returning from Syria etc (which we don't) you would end up detaining and interrogating a large number of innocent, peaceful and well intentioned people who have been visiting their grandmothers or working in refugee camps.
There is a risk of radicalising innocent people if the security services get heavy handed with them. That could turn more people against the british state and doing more harm than good.
I am still waiting for the Catholic church to be held accountable in any way or to reassure the world that they are dealing with sexual abuse perpetrated by their staff.

So young Muslim men and women are known to be joining in the fighting in the Middle East and may be returning to the UK bringing back very anti-UK attitudes and dangerous intentions. Are they a risk to the UK? Yes. The fact is that we've got to work out how to deal with a number of such potentially dangerous British fanatics without making things worse. Are we prepared to tolerate fellow UK citizens of any ethnicity who take it into their heads to carry out extreme action against the UK if they dislike any aspect of UK policy or conduct. Certainly not!

So the first thing to do is to reinforce the law to make such conduct a very serious criminal offence with very harsh penalties. Second, is to identify and record potential suspects using the integrated resources of the travel industry, border control agencies, the police, intelligence agencies and the military. Much of this need not be secretive or covered up. Anybody travelling to suspect parts of the world for quasi-mercenary purposes would have to accept that by so doing they would be inviting surveillance and investigation.

None of this will be easy but it must be done now for the good of all UK citizens. Anybody who breaks the law must face the penalties for so doing. David Cameron and Theresa May should really start to get their act together on this, or depart to the back benches or the House of Lords and let somebody more efficient take over.

Perhaps there won't be all that many of them coming back?

They can't be watched for at airports because our immigration service is in the same state as all our public services...crushed. I don't know what we can do about these young men. Obviously some sort of deterrent needs to be put in place quickly to try to stop them going in the first place. But what to do if they come home is a dilemma. If we imprison them will they be further radicalised. Taking away their british citizenship and the threat of being stateless might do the trick, but is it legal? I do have some sympathy for the parents though. One one hand to be ashamed and on the other worried about their child's safety must be an awful burden to carry.

I also wonder about the practicalities of how they get there - cost of flights, visas etc. We listened to a discussion on LBC and one man alleged these young people are paid to go, all expenses and a wage.
Probably funded by one of the oil rich Arab nations.
Listening to one young man this morning, it's the idealistic age, emotions overcome reason.

Just what I read in the newspapers and see on the BBC JessM - like most of us. I posted a link recently about the radical Muslim that had been invited to speak at one of the schools at the heart of the Trojan Horse debate - I doubt that that was a one-off incident and that they didn't really know who he was or what he represented.

What do you base your facts on? Do you keep an eye on every Mosque in Britain to ensure that all is above board? I somehow doubt it which kind of negates your question to me.

If the Catholic Church can be held accountable for not policing its own, why should Mosques be any different?

I sort of think one should have first hand evidence e.g.about what is being said in mosques, before passing judgement."Hearsay" evidence cantend to morph into Chinese whispers Not every Muslim let alone cleric is a fundamentalist and if we tar them all with the same brush we risk inducing a feeling of defensive solidarity.Opinion is one's prerogative of course.