Baker Institute policy paper weighs efforts to rehabilitate Muslim radicals

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Thousands of Muslim radicals have been captured and imprisoned around the world in the last 20 years. A new policy report by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy evaluates efforts by Muslim and non-Muslim governments to rehabilitate the radicals before they are released back into society.

	DAVID COOK

Report author David Cook, assistant professor of religious studies and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute, looked at the various “carrot-and-stick” approaches adopted by countries from Egypt to Britain, with the goal of proposing for the United States “a workable policy for reintegrating radicals into society, thus defusing the power of recidivism.”

After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States began rounding up large numbers of Muslim radicals with the aim of extracting useful information. Because little thought was given to rehabilitating these prisoners, Cook said, many of them returned to a life of violence when they were released.

While U.S. policymakers may hope that freed radicals would abandon their beliefs and participate in peaceful debate, Cook wrote, the best realistic outcome is a rehabilitation that simply means “a return to society without engaging in violent action.” Incarcerating radicals in prisons like the ones in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Bagram, Afghanistan, only serves to consolidate them and allow them to teach each other new tactics while conferring prestige and “street cred” on those who are released.

Governments have used different methods to de-radicalize imprisoned militants. “In general, the non-Muslim governments have tried education of a secular or a semisecular nature, relying to various degrees upon official Muslim elites in order to help them out. Muslim governments have taken much more directly religious methods,” Cook wrote. “Both types of rehabilitation can claim successes and failures.”

The Baker Institute policy report examines the rehabilitation efforts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia and Singapore, Central Asia, the United Kingdom and other European Union countries.

The Egyptian government, for instance, has faced a serious threat from Muslim radicals for decades, which was highlighted by the 1982 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Cook noted the successful use by Egyptian authorities of major religious leaders — including repentant prisoners and former prisoners — who argued that the use of violence was illegitimate.

The Saudis, for their part, have ruthlessly pursued militants who staged several high-profile attacks in 2003, but also offered amnesty and pardons to radicals. Cook pointed to mixed results for the Saudi policy.

The Indonesians, reacting to the 2003 Bali nightclub bombings, chose a military approach to pursue the militants. But like the Saudis and Egyptians, they also relied on religious figures to repudiate the militants’ violent ideology. This appears to have been relatively effective in breaking the morale of radical groups, Cook wrote, but he added that militants continue to “have extensive control within the prison system, so there is room for improvement.”

Non-Muslim Europe has also faced difficulties in rehabilitating Muslim radicals it holds, Cook found. Britain, which only began to take the threat of radical Islamists seriously after the 2005 London suicide attacks, initiated deportation procedures against foreign militants. The large British-born Muslim community, however, poses a more difficult problem for British authorities. And the effort to rehabilitate jailed radicals “is clearly a failure in the United Kingdom,” Cook wrote. France, despite its hard-line policy, hasn’t fared much better, he added.

Compared with the Muslim countries’ attempts to rehabilitate imprisoned radicals, the Europeans seem doomed to failure, lacking both the carrot and the stick components of the Muslim countries’ policies, Cook wrote. “While the Muslim countries can at least offer the prisoners a Muslim society into which they can be rehabilitated after their release, non-Muslim countries can only offer the smaller Muslim enclaves of their countries, which are all too often controlled or dominated by radicals anyway. The danger that the released prisoners will slip back into radicalism when a warm and receptive environment is waiting for them outside of the prison is huge. There is also no ‘stick’ to be offered either, as in many cases the prison that could be seen as a punishment is controlled or dominated by the radical inmates, and the Muslim religious personnel who are supposed to debate the radicals sometimes either actually sympathize with them or can be intimidated into ceasing all meaningful dialogue.”

Turning to the United States, Cook stated that “it is desirable –although not absolutely necessary — that there be some attempt at rehabilitation of radicals who are American citizens.” Without any such effort, he maintained, the number of radicals will grow and along with it, the threat.

In conclusion, Cook laid out several recommendations for U.S. authorities that borrow from the lessons of both Muslim and non-Muslim governments. First, he urged the adoption of Muslim educational curricula like those used in Turkey or Egypt that offer alternative frameworks and steer away from radical interpretations of Islam. Second, Cook called for a “careful selection of Muslim religious personnel to debate and dialogue with the radicals as has been done in some Muslim countries.” Third, he advocated strict separation of radicals from non-Muslim prisoners to avoid the spread of militant ideology. And finally, Cook suggested that preparations be made for Muslim prisoners upon their release so that they do not simply return to the radical environment from which they came. “Therefore, rehabilitation of radicals must have a component outside of prison that is equally vigilant,” he said.

Download the report in its entirety, at http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/BI-pub-CookRadicalRehab-100710.pdf.