Step up fight against youth radicalisation

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi has called on Muslim scholars to aid in the fight against radicalisation.

In 2014, a police raid on the Musa Masjid Mosque in Mombasa netted at least 200 youngsters, some as young as 12 while undergoing radicalisation training. It is estimated that at least 255 youth, aged between 15 and 35 years have joined terrorist groups since 2013.

These statistics are worrying, and more so when viewed against the destruction that terrorism has visited on the country between 2011 and 2014, a period in which there has been over 70 grenade and gun attacks on the Kenyan soil.

The worst of the attacks was at the Garissa University where 148 people lost their lives. The sad part of it is that it was planned by a Kenyan youth who had been radicalised while at the university.

The arrest of two Kenyan youth in Nairobi recently while planning to stage attacks in the city and who said to have been radicalised at the Kangemi Mosque underscores the urgency in ensuring our youth are not exposed to violent extremism as practiced by groups like the Al Shabaab and the ISIS which has now set base in Somalia.

It is important that Kenyans build on the spirit of Muslim scholars from several countries who met in Mombasa recently to device ways of containing violent extremism. The burden falls heavily on Muslims because terrorists have all along claimed the Islamic mantle and that perception must be corrected.

But even as radicalisation is fought in villages, schools, colleges and mosques, the government’s contribution towards this noble cause would be in creating schemes that keep youth positively engaged.

Not only does radicalisation impact negatively on society, it violates the rights of children and must therefore be dealt with firmly.