Mark Fallon Interviewed: Radicalization and U.S. Muslims

March 11, 2011

Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewer: Jonathan Masters, CFR Associate Staff Writer

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Interviewee: Mark Fallon, Senior Vice-President at the Soufan Group, former Special Agent for Naval Criminal Investigative Service

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Radicalization seems to have become a politically loaded buzzword. Could you discuss what the concept means and its significance for law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals?

I prefer violent extremism versus radicalization, because every radical isn’t a violent extremist, and every violent extremist may not be a radical. There is a bit of differentiation, as we found in a global study of released terrorists. We found that there are some useful tactics people use around the world that are helping to curb the number of candidates going down the path of violent extremism. And as it pertains to the United States, there are a number of things that we can learn from some of these efforts. One strategy is, and it’s something that law enforcement has done for years, community-oriented policing. What police around the globe have learned is that unless you engage the communities and the stakeholders in a coordinated approach to go after crime, and this is crime, your efforts are going to be very…

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In other words, Muslim radicalization is declining?

The Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, which is a research center with Duke University and the University of North Carolina, published a February 2011 study on Muslim American terrorism and they saw that in 2009, forty-seven Muslim Americans were arrested for terrorist-related crimes. In 2010, that number dropped more than half, to only twenty. In addition, they found that the Muslim American community is very engaged in trying to help law enforcement thwart terrorism. Tips from the Muslim American community were the source of information that led to the prevention of a potential terrorist plots…

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How are we doing as a nation in terms of deploying this community-policing strategy?

The global environment is used to recruit these people, but it’s generally some local condition or individual event in that person’s life that turns them. It wasn’t about ideology…

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To read the full article please click on the link below:http://www.cfr.org/counter-radicalization/radicalization-us-muslims/p24354

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