Feedback from SDU meeting
selsh...@gmail.com
Good Morning and Azzeiakum,
On 21 August 2015, I attended a very moving and fascinating meeting organised in London by the Sudanese Doctors' Union of Britain and Ireland. The topic was 'Youth Culture, Radicalisation and Extremism' and the trigger was the departure to join Da'ish ('Islamic State') of quite a number of young Sudanese and Sudanese Britons. That included some offspring of some of the attendees, including the group which made the headlines in the United Kingdom. (Africa Confidential wrote at length about this in April: see website). What I write now is not meant to be an article, though: just some personal thoughts.
Speakers and those who contributed from the floor all spoke with heartfelt concern and extensive knowledge: it was clear that many private and sometimes public discussions had preceded the gathering. The most painful contribution came from a speaker, no Islamist himself, who had suffered two of his children travelling to join Da'ish: one of them died. Yet his was also a very intellectually powerful contribution, as were most throughout a four-hour meeting.
Most of the meeting was held in English and that in itself highlighted the dilemmas of identity that speaker after speaker stressed. They were almost entirely middle-class, highly educated professional people with fewer financial constraints, at least by now, than those which most refugees experience. Yet there was a sense of homelessness in the hall near the Edgware Road. 'I lived in Saudi Arabia but it was not my home', said one young woman (I paraphrase only slightly). 'I went back to Sudan: it was not my home... I came here: it was not my home'.
Parents acknowledged, indeed agonised over, their role in not understanding their children's needs and their failure to adapt to a land of nuclear families, where the traditional support mechanisms of extended family, friends and neighbours were lacking. The fact that they were always expecting to 'go home' recurred over and over. Sudanese are now starting parenting classes, a completely alien idea in such a traditionally supportive society. The very thought of baring such personal agonies as some voiced yesterday is indeed itself completely alien – Sudanese don't normally wash their dirty linen in public – and it was a measure of the anxiety over radicalisation that so many made their 'mea culpa'.
It was also a great privilege to be party to discussion that was not only brimming with emotion but extremely serious in terms of seeking to remedy the problems. The fact that doctors undertook this meeting may well have helped, though doctors were not the main speakers. They gave the event a very focussed and disciplined framework and highly unusually for such meetings, time constraints were rigorously imposed!
Many in an audience where women, also unusually, seemed to outnumber men, were visibly and audibly shocked by what they heard. A youth worker of Sudanese descent told horrified Muslim parents that '70 per cent of violent crime in Westminster is committed by 14-18 year olds of Muslim heritage'. It takes a lot of courage and determination to confront such issues, and the SDU is now planning its next moves to build on yesterday's meeting.
Discussion of religious and political questions was minimal compared to that on why so many kids were 'radicalised' and what to do about it. It seems to me – and to some Sudanese attending, I gathered – that both aspects will need to be included in future actions. The avoidance of politics was partly to maintain civil debate among people whose political affiliations ranged over the vast Sudanese spectrum. As a charity dealing mainly with the welfare of medics, the SDU also has to maintain party neutrality. However, it also lists 'democracy' as one of its main pillars and that would seem to allow for the serious discussion that is needed if the Islamism ('political Islam') that is the core of the attraction of Da'ish for so many youngsters worldwide is to be tackled effectively. Several contributors did discuss the monopoly of Islam which Da'ish claims and how that relates to actual Islamic history (brief answer: not much) and other Islamist organisations were also mentioned, including Al Qaida.
Yet nobody really asked what the impact on young people of going to study in Sudan (where Al Qaida was itself parented) might be – in any institution – after more than a quarter of a century of Islamist rule. The changes in society and above all, the impact of official policy, will surely have to be discussed in greater depth than they were on Saturday. A string of graduates of Khartoum's University of Medical Science and Technology, where many of those joining Da'ish have studied, were keen to deny any connection between UMST and radicalisation. The phrase 'no finger pointing!' was widely heard. However, the role of similar educational establishments and similar issues will doubtless be confronted in later meetings. Contexts and causes are all multiple.
It would be refreshing and, I believe, extremely helpful, to go more deeply into how to convey alternative Islamic theory and practice to the next generation – and the one after. Parental failings in this regard were duly voiced, both by devout people and those less practising. A next step might be to discuss this more fully.
Another next step, constantly mentioned, was the lack of the very young people under discussion at the meeting. 'I asked lots of young people', one doctor told me, 'but they didn't come'. There was discussion of why youngsters might think such a meeting irrelevant and why parents might be to blame for this. There was a lot of confession going on and some suggestions for the future, all with an astonishing degree of openness and honesty. It was a good start – a very good start. Notwithstanding the excruciatingly painful subject, it was a joy to be there.
End.
Gill Lusk
Sent from my iPhone
Mohmamed Sawrabi
Saudi brothers, a pilot and a terrorist, die on same day
Manama: In a dramatic development for the Al Harithi family of Saudi Arabia, two brothers died on the same day. But while Nasser was killed during a military mission for his country, Zaher died in a suicide attack he conducted on behalf of the terror group Daesh.
London-based daily Al Hayat said that Nasser was a pilot with the Saudi-led coalition to restore the rule of Yemeni president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and that he died when his Apache helicopter went down. Another pilot, Ali Al Qarni, died in the incident at the southern tip of the kingdom on Saturday.
“The two pilots fell as martyrs when their aircraft crashed while they were defending the borders of Saudi Arabia from these aggressors,” the coalition said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), referring to the Al Houthi militia that has staged a coup in Yemen.
Zaher was a technician working for the health ministry — and not a doctor as initially misreported in the news about the suicide attack on a factory on Thursday against a factory near Samarra, north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The bomber reportedly targeted an assembly of Iraqi soldiers.
Daesh sources said that Zaher had joined its ranks two years ago and that he registered himself as a suicide bomber.
The sources added that he had a Daesh wife who was pregnant in her ninth month and that Zaher had refused to delay the suicide attack until the birth of his baby.
The wife of Nasser, the pilot, too was pregnant in her last month, their brother Dakheel told Al Hayat. The couple already had a daughter.
According to Dakheel, Zaher had a diploma in nursing and was appointed in Tabuk in the northern part of the kingdom. He married his cousin, but left her for one year before divorcing her. He then left again and the family knew nothing about his whereabouts for two years, Dakheel said. Their resilient father, Mohammad, told Saudi Television Al Ekhbariya that he regularly communicated with Nasser, but had no contacts with Zaher for a long time.
“Nasser often requested me to support him and to pray for him,” Mohammad said from Bisha, a town in the southwestern province of Asir. “He often told me that he wanted me to be pleased with him and satisfied with his behaviour. I often stressed in my advice to him to be faithful to his religion and to loyal to his country. We thank God for his death on an honour field while serving his country, nation and king,” he said.
The father added that he had no contact at all with Zaher and that the two did not communicate since the son left Saudi Arabia.
“I knew nothing about him or from him and the news of his death reached me through his brothers. Unfortunately, Zaher has upset me, just like he has upset his country and nation,” the father said.
Mohammad said that Zaher had been a good man before he left their home.
“They are both my sons, and they were brought up together in the same house. However, Zaher was snatched from me and they changed him when he went to work in the northern part of the country. He could have died as a martyr, like his brother,” the father said.
Isam Osman
Isam Osman FRCS, FRCS (Gla)
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Visit SDU-UK&I website: http://www.sdu.org.uk/
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