Are 'terrorist groomers' warping our kids?

Full Story:
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0537.htm
In turning terrorism into a child protection issue, where we must shield fragile youth from sleazy al-Qaeda, Britain has abandoned the battle of ideas. For some time now, the arguments on terrorism put forward by Western governments have exposed a paralysis of the political imagination. Officials issue statements that implicitly acknowledge that they have little idea of who or what constitutes the enemy. It seems that the conventional Hollywood caricature of a ruthless, professional, amoral maniac is no longer sufficient to cover todays disturbing phenomenon of the homegrown terrorist. In recent times, British officials have tried to harness public fears and anxiety about paedophilia as a way of explaining the threat from Al-Qaeda: they have talked about the strangers in this terrorist outfit, and the danger that they pose to ordinary people and their children. Now, Jonathan Evans, head of the British intelligence agency MI5, has used his first public speech to argue that the war on terrorism has effectively turned into a child protection issue. It seems that Evans and the rest of Britains security apparatus are most concerned about sleazy Al-Qaeda predators who prey on vulnerable Muslim children and groom them to do their dirty work. According to Evans, speaking yesterday at a gathering of newspaper editors in Manchester, England, Britain faces a steady flow of new recruits to the extremist cause (1). And since many of these new recruits are apparently children, the security services will have to draw on the expertise and techniques of the child protection industry in order to confront the threat of the new terrorism. As a country, we are rightly concerned to protect children from exploitation in other areas. We need to do the same in relation to violent extremism, said Evans. He continued: As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country they are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism. This presentation of potential terror recruits as vulnerable isolated children reveals more about the disorientation within officialdom than it does about the reality of terrorism. Instead of asking the question What it is about the terrorists ideas that might attract a youthful following and why are we so inept at influencing these young people to take a different path?, the authorities have diagnosed the problem as one of immature vulnerability amongst potential future terrorists. Last week, the UK secretary of state for communities, Hazel Blears, announced that Pfund70million would be spent on training Muslim role models to counter the influence of terrorist groomers and to help imans support their vulnerable charges (2). Blears imagines that these vulnerable charges are similar to the stereotype of the lonely and isolated child as depicted in child protection literature. In some cases, people are isolated from family and friends, indoctrinated and manipulated within a matter of months, she claimed. And like real-life paedophiles, these terrorist groomers are apparently lurking everywhere you turn on the World Wide Web.