EFFORTS TO PREVENT BOSTON AREA YOUTHS FROM JOINING ISIS

 

Here is a letter sent to the Boston Globe reporter who wrote an article May 3, 2015 about efforts of Boston area Muslims to ensure that their children will not be lured by ISIS social network recruiters to join ISIS.

 

Hi Sally Jacobs,

 

I just read your very interesting article in the Globe today, "Fighting the lure of the galaxy of jihad." I think there is an important connection between your article's topic and the topic of my recently published letter in the Globe April 5, titled, "It will take a democratic revolution to remove the rich from power." Here's what I mean.

 

A very big part of the reason that some American (and European) youths are attracted to supporting terrorist groups such as ISIS is that they (the youths) want to be part of what seems to be a very serious challenge to a very big injustice. These youths know that the American government unjustly kills huge numbers of mainly Muslim people--including civilians at weddings, killed by drones that are touted to be extremely accurate and "smart"--in foreign lands, and they want to be part of the resistance to this injustice.

 

Any preaching against ISIS will not be taken seriously by youths when the preaching is by people who are not, themselves, part of a serious resistance to the unjust killing of Muslims by the American government.

 

What kind of resistance to the unjust killing of Muslims by the American government is appropriate and most effective? THIS question is one that will genuinely engage youths attracted to ISIS. In contrast, the question WHETHER OR NOT to join a resistance movement against the unjust killing of Muslims by the American government will NOT engage such youth (to their credit!).

 

The fact is that the egalitarian revolutionary (and distinctly ANTI-TERRORISM) movement advocated by PDRBoston (at www.PDRBoston.org) is the most appropriate and effective way to stop the American government from unjustly killing Muslims. The solution is to remove the rich from power, with a movement whose goal inspires a majority of Americans: to have real not fake democracy with no rich and no poor.

 

By asking youths to join this egalitarian revolutionary movement, we would be FAR more effective in persuading them not to support ISIS, than if we simply preach to them that "ISIS is bad; don't be a bad person."

 

Would you be interested in writing about this "elephant in the living room" aspect of the problem of youths supporting ISIS? I would be happy to give an interview, or whatever else you might think of.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

John Spritzler, editor

NewDemocracyWorld.org  &  PDRBoston.org 

 

PDR--Boston's view on terrorism is discussed here in connection with the larger question of violence; it is this:

 

PDR--Boston says: 1) Terrorism is not resistance, and resistance is not terrorism. 2) Terrorism is cruelty; it is violence deliberately targeted against noncombatant civilians and it is morally wrong. 3) Violence that is not in self-defense is morally wrong, and terrorist violence against noncombatant civilians is not in self-defense. 4) Terrorist violence does nothing--absolutely nothing--to weaken the forces of oppression; in fact it strengthens the oppressors by allowing them to claim they are the ones defending innocent people from harm.