Rewarding Jihadists

  
The Swedish capital of Stockholm has released its new policy document for dealing with ISIS fighters returning to the city after having had their fill of rape and beheadings of civilians. At first blush it seems strange that such a document would be all of 9 pages. 

I mean, “Shoot!” should only take up one page, even with a large font.

Oh well, let’s see how Stockholm intends to handle terrorist-trained and combat-hardened fanatics. Here are a few translated highlights to capture the gist of things:

“Post-perspective: When a person wishes to leave a violent extremist grouping or coming home from combat overseas, it is crucial to provide customized inclusion efforts. Even then, it is important to have a local cooperation between various actors. Voluntary organizations can provide targeted support and advice. Even faith communities working with advice, but also psychosocial support.

When it comes to people who participated in combat there is likely to be great need of health efforts. Therefore, it is important to establish cooperation between social services, social psychiatry and drug units, as well as health centers and psychiatric services (trauma, PTSD, etc.)

When it comes to security, it is important that cooperation between social services, income support, employment and other efforts by the Labour Department, as well as assistance with job placement.
Finally, the accommodation issue is a prerequisite that must work. Therefore, cooperative housing companies needs to be included in the post-perspective.”

To summarize: The city of Stockholm will make it a priority to provide the returning ISIS fighters with housing, free health care (physical and mental) and full financial support, until they have received earmarked jobs. All this of course fast-tracked past the line of law-abiding immigrants and indigenous Swedes. 

Since they now provide all the recruitment incentives for joining ISIS, the only thing missing is a city-run recruitment office. Oh, wait. That would the Employment Office, where it was recently revealed that tax-paid clerks were recruiting for ISIS. Sorry, my mistake! 

Then it’s time to make proactive efforts to discourage radicalization. The solution, the city concludes, is to pour tax money into muslim organizations already in contact with the at-risk persons:

“Support to associations and other stakeholders locally
There are examples of local actors which can contribute to efforts locally. For example, the Islamic Association and the mosque in Rinkeby-Kista has initiated education for interested parents and youths in the Järva area. It is very important to support such local initiatives. It is also important to involve local associations, some of which have contact with residents that the  authorities do not come into contact with.”

As journalist and blogger Per Gudmundson points out, the Islamic Association of Sweden is a remarkably poor choice for “fighting Jihad” since it is the Swedish branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Their official motto reads:

“Allah is our goal, the prophet is our leader, the quran is our law, Jihad is our way, and death for the honor of Allah is our greatest desire!”

Gudmundson notes that they are in active combat in Syria at the moment, in coalition with Jabhat al-Nusrah which is a branch of al-Qaida.