White House summit to assess domestic terrorism in October
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עברית (Hebrew)
The White House is planning a summit in October to consider domestic extremism. The planned summit will include Muslim faith-based organizations, mental health providers, social services groups, and youth-support organizations. The leaders of U.S. security services agree that Muslim-American communities should be seen as the “front lines” against the efforts of terror groups to recruit impressionable youth.
Tensions continue to mount due to increasing warning of ISIS threats on mainland United States and the first airstrikes against the terrorist group through a U.S.-led coalition, which also includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain.
As Government Executive reports, President Barack Obama’s administration is using diplomatic resources in order to identify any Americans who might be contemplating joining ISIS, as the first step in handling them.
Many American faith-based Muslim groups are responding favorably to the new program – an encouraging sign for security and intelligence services that have to grapple with a shifting and dynamic threat from terror groups that seem to be resourceful in using the internet and the social media to recruit supporters.
Yasemin Aksoy, a spokesman for the New York-based interfaith non-profit Alliance for Shared Values, told Government Executive that “We need to remind our youth that all terrorist groups, including ISIS, are simply hiding behind a false flag of religious rhetoric to serve individual or political interests.”
