Britain's first "anti-terror" summer camp opened Saturday, with the goal of teaching Muslim youth how to rebuff extremists who try to recruit them at schools and in online chat rooms. The three-day event hopes to equip hundreds of students with arguments from the Quran on how to respond to people with radical beliefs, encounters some at the camp said happen regularly.
The issue of Islamist recruiting has made steady headlines in Britain after suspects in high-profile terrorism cases were reportedly radicalised while studying at elite UK universities or after listening to imams who preach holy war. "We want to give youngsters a balanced view of Islam and to remove the misconception of what jihad actually is," organiser Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri told The Associated Press. "Extremists have confined the act of jihad to the act of militancy and violence. This is totally wrong according to Quranic commandments."
In March, the Pakistani scholar who now lives in Toronto issued a 600-page fatwa, or religious edict, against terrorist acts like suicide bombing. Some 1,300 high school and university students are expected to study his fatwa and hear about moderate Islam at the camp at Warwick University in Coventry. Ul-Qadri said that in a series of lectures and debates, he would convince the students "why suicide bombing makes one a disbeliever, and why terrorists will go to hell fire.'
Muslim conferences aimed at helping youths tackle extremism are not new some US organisations have even reached out to Muslim rappers and musicians in an effort to encourage youths to use music and other means as a form of protest rather than violence.
But the issue is particularly timely in Britain. Omar Sheikh, a British citizen who orchestrated the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl, was reportedly recruited while studying at the London School of Economics. Umar Farouk Abdul mutallab, a young Nigerian accused of trying to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam last year, also was said to be radicalised while studying in London.