Chapter Six

MISGUIDED

Arvada, Colorado

It all seemed innocent enough, until it wasn’t. On July 2, 2014, Shannon Maureen Conley was halfway down the runway at Denver International Airport when US federal agents put an end to her plans. Clothed in a hijab, the 19-year-old American girl was on a one-way trip to Turkey via Germany when she was discovered. The Muslim convert made no secret of the fact that she was heading to Syria to join ISIS. A simple-looking American girl, Conley had been radicalized within a short time period. In less than a year, she had converted to Islam, fallen in love with a Muslim man online, and pledged her loyalty to ISIS. She was one of many Western girls who had been misguided by male extremists, a victim of romantic fatalism.

Conley had grown up in Arvada, a quiet suburb of Denver, in a home with a statue of Saint Francis in the garden. Nothing seemed amiss. Her mother, Ana Maria, was a professor at Regis University. Her father, John, worked in the computer industry and taught martial arts on the side. The youngest of four girls, Conley wore shorts and jeans and hats. She was friendly and a bright student at Arvada West High School.

Raised Catholic, Conley converted to Islam. During her junior year of high school, she began wearing long dresses and flowing head scarves. She and a friend were even photographed in the niqab, or face veil, showing only their eyes. Conley peered through the conservative dress with wire-rimmed glasses. Her behavior unnerved some of her classmates, who would find her kneeling three times a day in the school bathroom to pray. Bob Taylor was her neighbor. “When she first moved in,” he said, “she seemed normal, wore clothes most kids wear; then she started wearing the long Islamic garb. She would go down the street here to a park and sit on the swing. Swing in the attire for maybe half an hour at a time. I don’t know if she was contemplating or meditating.”

Conley’s behavior grew more alarming. She came to the attention of authorities when she started to stake out a nearby Christian mega-church, Faith Bible Chapel, in the fall of 2013. Like many evangelical churches around the country, Faith Bible Chapel strongly supported the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Each year, they held an Israel Awareness Day with food, dancing, and exhibits. The sight of a young woman in a Muslim conservative dress, dashing in and out of services and classes, made members uncomfortable. The church had reason to be on edge. In December 2007, a man had opened fire in a missionary group’s dormitory housing. Two members died and two others were injured in the senseless crime.

Soon enough, the pastor and the church congregation began to notice that something seemed wrong with Shannon Conley. According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Denver Post, Conley said to her religious community, “Why is this church worried about a terrorist attack?” Once, with a pencil and notepad in hand, Conley pretended to draw the layout of the church as she surveilled the place. She told everyone that she was a Muslim doing research. When asked by an Aurora police detective why she was going to the church, Conley replied, “I hate those people. If they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am.” Concerned, the church told Conley not to return.

Four days later, the FBI contacted Conley. According to the authorities, extremists were using the Internet to recruit American girls by offering them love and purpose. And this wasn’t the first time. Before Conley, I had examined the case of Colleen LaRose, a fifty-year-old woman in Pennsylvania who called herself “Jihad Jane.” At the time, the media were fixated on one particular question: Was LaRose acting alone? I remember responding with a flat no.

“Women are lured into terrorist organizations by men. In all my years, I have never seen a woman acting completely alone,” I told the press. However, at the time of the breaking story, it was too early to tell what relationship LaRose might have had with other men or women. The press had little to no information about the vast network that was likely in place to draw LaRose into violent extremism.

In 2009, LaRose was arrested for planning to attack Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who drew offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, a crime that conservative Muslims punish with death. LaRose was not alone. Like other women and girls who are radicalized, she had a relationship online with an extremist male, who persuaded her to participate in an ultimately failed plot to assassinate Vilks.

The same would be true of Conley. In an early conversation, my journalist friend Vicky Collins described the nineteen-year-old girl as unsure of herself. Conley behaved like a rebel teenager-turned-adult. Like the East African girls, Conley found artificial affection and admiration on the dark web, but this toxic affection was manipulative and short-lived. She found Islam when she met online a Muslim man who convinced the American girl of the righteousness of “holy war” and invited her to join him in service to God. She changed her name from Shannon Conley to Halima, an Arabic name that means “gentle, mild-mannered, and generous.”

With a new persona, Conley described herself as a “slave to Allah.” Her social media accounts were filled with photos of mosques and quotes from the Quran, and she was intrigued by a British television report about women joining the jihad in Syria. On her Google Plus account, she wrote, “When there are so few mujahideen, is it not our duty to fight regardless of our country of birth and/ or residence?” Her Google Plus page also mentioned “The Caravan of Martyrs,” a phrase once coined by Osama bin Laden to describe those who gave their lives for jihad. And when al-Qaeda’s top spiritual guide, a former American cleric in Virginia, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in a US drone strike, Conley said a prayer: “May Allah accept his martyrdom.”

What Conley did online was not surprising. Taking on a new faith, she needed acceptance. Many girls her age or younger turn to the online space and social media sites for instant gratification, friendship, and connection, explorations that are not exclusively Muslim. In her book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, Nancy Jo Sales exposes the new coming-of-age practices for girls. They experience first crushes, longing, and romances in an “accelerated electronic environment.” Although Sales is referring to non-Muslims, the same is true for Muslim girls and converts developing affairs online with Muslim men they hardly know because it feels safe and “Islamic.” For girls like Conley, the social media world is explosive, offering a wide medium of new communication platforms such as Ask.fm, Kik, Tinder, DM, and so many more. To the youth, the technology is easy, fast, and private—most parents, who did not grow up in the digital age, simply don’t know how to access or use the Internet.

Conley’s online love affair with an ISIS recruiter was partially to blame for poisoning her with toxic rhetoric. His real name was Yousr Mouelhi (YM). Conley called the thirty-two-year-old Tunisian man who fought for ISIS her “suitor.” She made plans to fly out of Denver International Airport on a United Airlines flight for Frankfurt, Germany, on April 8, 2014; take a Lufthansa flight to Istanbul; and then board a Turkish airliner to Adana, Turkey, where she would drive with her handler-cum-lover to the Syrian-Turkish border and begin a new life in Syria as a housewife and a camp nurse, which made sense since she had worked as a certified nurse’s aide in Colorado. Conley also said that she wished to fight a guerrilla war in the Middle East or work as a nurse.¹

Before she could leave for Syria, Conley was told she had to marry Mouelhi. Under Islamic law, a woman needs two witnesses and the permission of a male guardian. In Conley’s case, her male guardian was her father, John; he knew that his daughter was talking to a foreign Muslim man and attempted to interrupt the Skype conversations that his daughter was having with her lover-handler, YM. After YM proposed over Skype, Conley asked her father for his blessing to marry him. John said no.

His refusal made no difference.

When John found his daughter’s one-way ticket to Turkey, he notified the FBI, and her arrest was set in motion. In a similar fashion, the father of the Sudanese girl also helped the authorities to locate the girls and return them to their homes in Aurora. But Conley, given her age and multiple exchanges with FBI agents, would not go home.

Conley’s use of the Internet to “find” Islam is an all-too-familiar story. Instead of turning to a scholar or the mosque community, Conley used Google and found a plethora of articles and videos by self-professed scholars using the Internet to teach a perverted Islam. According to Conley’s arrest affidavit, “She conceded her knowledge of Islam was based solely on her own research that she conducted on the Internet.”

Before Conley’s arrest, local authorities had been watching. Between November 2013 and April 2014, federal agents called Conley in for questioning eight times. She had no misgivings about her plans. She told the agents that her weekend of military-style training would come in handy in a holy war. She received training at Young Explorers, an organization loosely affiliated with the US Army and the Boys Scouts of America, which Conley said would be useful when she was “to go overseas to wage jihad . . . and [pursue] legitimate targets of attack,” which included US military facilities, government employees, and public officials. She proclaimed that “it is acceptable to attack Westerners . . . in defense of jihad.” The agents asked Conley what she would do if innocents were harmed in the process of jihad. According to court documents, Conley said that if wives, children, and chaplains had the bad luck to be killed during an attack on a military base, so be it. They should not have been there in the first place. It seemed that collateral damage was inevitable.

If her candor was jaw-dropping to the agents, they didn’t show it. Looking back, it’s surprising how patient and understanding the authorities had been with Conley as they tried to persuade her to pursue progressive Islam and use her new religion to do good, humanitarian work. Authorities warned her repeatedly that her thoughts and actions could get her into trouble.

In an attempt to intervene, the agents asked Conley’s parents to help steer her toward more moderate mentors, but the ardent supporter of ISIS could not be dissuaded. She was determined, she told the FBI, to be “defending Muslims on the Muslim home-land against people who are trying to kill them . . . jihad is the only answer to correct the wrongs against the Muslim world.” When asked if she would engage in combat, Conley told authorities that it was the duty of men to fight, but “if it was absolutely necessary, then yes.”

Looking at her past and family life, can we explain Conley’s turning to Islam as she vocally denounced the Faith Bible Church? Can we understand the longing of an American girl whose need for affection and belonging led her into the fold of ISIS? Can we identify early problems that Conley may have exhibited, such as low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, relationship and family issues, difficulty at school, trouble with her faith, and questions about her identity? As with other women I have studied or spoken with, Conley’s desire to learn about Islam and eventually join ISIS was personal—she found her identity, belonging, and meaning through violent extremism.

To be fair, Conley’s parents tried to talk to their daughter about her online activities. According to John, Conley used her own laptop and refused to show her parents whom she was talking to and what she intended to do. All they knew was that their daughter had changed her name and accepted a new religion, of which they knew little about. John also knew that Conley was chatting with YM, a man she wanted to marry overseas and migrate to Syria with. Conley told her father that she wanted to marry a “soldier” and that if she could not fight, “she [would] still be supporting his cause.”

In 2014, on several occasions, John and his wife, Ana, tried to engage Conley in candid conversation about their daughter’s views on Islam. In March 2014, John called Special Agent (SA) Matthew J. Dahl and reported Shannon’s religious beliefs. “Conley explained to her father she felt conflicted with what she thought Islam required of her” and believed that a Muslim girl needed to marry young and be “confrontational in her support of Islam,” according to a US District Court criminal complaint report.² Conley also admitted to her father that her knowledge of Islam was based on her own research that she conducted on the Internet.³

Six days before Conley was going to head to Turkey, John reported to SA Dahl that he and his wife did not support their daughter’s marriage to an ISIS recruiter. But it was too late. Conley was convinced that being a good Muslim woman meant she had to marry into ISIS for the same reasons that other girls her age joined the group—to support a Caliphate and its men. No matter how they tried to dissuade their daughter, neither John nor Ana could stop their daughter from leaving for Syria.

On January 23, 2015, Conley appeared in court in hijab and a striped, blue-and-white prison jumpsuit. US District Judge Raymond Moore charged Conley with providing material support to a terrorist group; it carried a fifteen-year prison sentence. For the next hour, an intense back and forth between Judge Moore; Assistant US Attorney Gregory Holloway; and Conley’s attorney, public defender Robert Pepin, made it difficult to know which way the judge would lean with his sentence. Pepin wanted Conley’s sentence reduced to forty-eight months. Holloway demanded a longer jail time to send a message and discourage other young Americans from joining terrorist groups, online or offline. The assistant US attorney insisted to the court that Conley had to be the first and last extremist in the state.

Luckily for Conley, the judge allowed her testimony saying that she had no intentions of hurting anyone. Conley had no criminal history; Holloway reminded the court that Hayat Boumeddiene, a twenty-six-year-old woman wanted by French police in connection with several terror attacks in Paris in early 2015 at the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, who fled to Syria, also had no prior criminal history. The prosecutor suggested that leniency would send the wrong message to other would-be extremists like Conley and therefore insisted that the court punish her for her intention to plan a terrorist attack, for which there was no “hard” evidence of terrorist plotting.

Pepin mounted a strong defense. He told the court that Conley had suffered enough after spending almost a year in jail. She had lost her dream of being a certified nursing assistant and needed mental health care rather than a trip to prison. He also swore that Conley had changed her mind about violent jihad: she changed her name from Halima to Amatullah, “servant of God.”

But the judge was not impressed. “Don’t tell me that changing her name means she gets it. She changes her name like I change my socks,” he said. However, the defense argued that Conley deserved the right to integrate back into her home and society. “We’ve had enough swords,” Pepin said.

In the late afternoon, Conley was invited to speak. She faced the judge with the look of a woman beaten down. She admitted her guilt, her face marked with regret for joining ISIS. She cried while reading a written statement: “Even though I supported a jihad, it was never to hurt anyone. It was always in the defense of Muslims. . . . I do not believe I am a threat to society, and I hope you give me a chance to prove it.”⁴ Her emotions overpowered her; at one point, she had to sit down to compose herself. “I disavow these radical views,” she said, as she pleaded for mercy.

Conley told the court she was a changed woman. “I am sincerely grateful to the FBI for preventing me from going to Syria,” she said, because it had saved her life. She said she read the Quran with an open mind and understood that the people she met online had distorted Islam. But she had discovered the “true” Islam, a religion of peace.⁵

Conley asked the judge to grant her a new life. “This has been a life-altering experience,” she said, and she was ready to be a “catalyst for good.” Conley concluded her statement by telling the court that she was not the same person. She said she had changed after spending some time alone in prison: “I started my incarceration hateful. I have grown. I do not believe I am a threat to society and would appreciate the chance to prove it. I ask you to let me move forward and begin a positive chapter of my life.”⁶

I wish Conley would have been pardoned—forgiven because she had repented and realized her wrongs, and because she promised to correct her behavior. I wished for Judge Moore to be merciful to this new Muslim believer whose confusion and carelessness was a reflection of something deeper than a superficial desire to “be” Muslim. I had seen other American men and women come to Islam—each wanting to belong, to fill a void, a lingering emptiness that existed in their lives, and to find meaning in an existence bruised by past and present difficulties. A straggling few leave America for “a Muslim country”—a concept that I have argued does not exist. No country in the world as we know it is as compassionate and forgiving to its people as the Prophet of Islam was to the early followers.

In his closing remarks, Judge Moore acknowledged to the court that this was not an easy case, and he believed there were mental health issues that needed to be addressed. He recognized that Conley had no age-appropriate friendships—that she was isolated, young, naïve, and uncomfortable with herself. Then he began to scold her.

“You can’t moonwalk back from your admissions,” he said. “The public interest factors cut against you.” Judge Moore also questioned Conley’s “changed” self. He said, “I’m still not sure what’s been crystallized in your mind.” He reminded Conley that this was a very serious offense, a crime punishable by fifteen years of imprisonment and a lifetime of supervised release. But because of her cooperation with federal authorities, he said, Conley deserved a lesser sentence.

After his statement, the judge announced his decision. Conley received the minimum four years, or forty-eight months, with three years of supervised release, followed by one hundred hours of community service. He also waived the $250,000 fine.

For the next four years of her life, Conley would serve her sentence in federal prison in Golden, Colorado, a breathtaking city with miles of green hills along Clear Creek that lies at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The judge made it clear that Conley was to have no more communication with ISIS or al-Qaeda.

I remember feeling relieved that Conley had another opportunity at life. Perhaps in prison, she might study scripture and one day find a Muslim community in Denver to help her see what I have always known: that Islam is a religion of peace, mercy, and compassion; and the Islam preached and practiced by violent extremists is a distortion and a disgrace of the ancient religion.

In January 2015, Conley’s parents released a statement to the press. For the first time since their daughter’s hearing, John and Ana, who have now since separated, sent a letter to President Obama and the American people, hoping that the country would see Conley as an innocent victim of violent extremists:

An Open Letter to the President and the American People

Over the last several months my wife and I have received numerous requests for a statement about our daughter Shannon’s situation. Now that she has been sentenced we would offer these thoughts.

We were told at the time of the investigation the Department of Justice (FBI and Federal Prosecutor’s Office) was trying to formulate a better response to young people being radicalized by ISIS and other groups. In doing so the local personnel went to extraordinary lengths to navigate the turbulent waters caused by these events. In our dealings with them we have been treated with respect and compassion throughout this affair. It’s unfortunate the local efforts apparently weren’t viewed as more worthwhile by their superiors.

The strategy of the terrorist is to make the enemy change behavior through the use of fear and to subjugate the enemy by making them live in fear. A tactic of asymmetric warfare is to cause the enemy to expend large amounts of resources dealing with a situation that costs little to create. . . .

We’re told the government is afraid that, even if Shannon is not a threat to the public, others may make similar choices. Those people need to be sent a message that if they do they should fear capture and prosecution. Shannon’s continued punishment is to ensure that message is understood by the American people. Additionally the, perhaps unintended, message is the government is willing to sacrifice the future of a 19 year old American citizen to drive the point home. . . .

Everyone that has been directly involved with the case has told us they do NOT view Shannon as a threat to the public and that she isn’t a “terrorist.” They tell us that she was an incredibly naïve and idealistic young woman who trusted that others were telling her the truth about things happening in a distant land. This led her to make bad choices for which she continues to pay a very high price.

Almost all of ISIS’ barbaric actions were reported after Shannon’s arrest. She is appalled by them and realizes ISIS is trying to cover up their savagery with a religious veil which cannot be justified within the teachings of Islam. She acknowledges her poor judgment and is struggling to discover how she will be able to put her life back together as a “felon.” Thus, she also is not a flight risk.

We have been saddened not only by how the media has tried to sensationalize this situation but how quickly many have been willing to condemn our daughter without even reading the public legal record, much less having direct knowledge of the facts in her case or the law surrounding it. We know a very different person from the one that’s been portrayed in the “news” reports and have had our view of her confirmed over and over by others who have met her for the first time during the course of this ordeal.

The conditions that led to Shannon’s (and others’) choices to try to go to the Middle East are complex and we have no easy answers to address them. We certainly have no “sound bites” to offer on how to win the War on Terrorism. We do feel that a step in the right direction is to not give into fear. This choice bears a risk but taking that risk is a behavior America was built upon and, in our view, is worth taking.

The stories I found in Denver reinforced for me how vulnerable are girls and young women to being recruited by ISIS. The East African community had left indelible imprints on me. There were the girls outside the local mosque with knowing eyes, who I believed had so much to say but were afraid to speak in front of adults. The Sudanese mother who dared to speak the truth and took steps to empower her own girls was an inspiration. Most of all, I am grateful to the East African women who allowed me to see that I had an obligation to speak to my teenagers about terrorism.

Until that point, my only concern had been dropping my kids off at school, cooking for them, washing and folding their clothes, helping with homework, and answering their off-the-wall questions: Why do some Muslims hate dogs? Who is a Shia? Why do I have to read the Quran when I don’t understand it? Are we orthodox? Do I have to go to Sunday school?

A visit with the Somalis made me painfully aware of the times we live in. When I arrived home, I had “the” talk.

“I need to talk to you,” I said to my son and daughter.

“Did we do something wrong?” my son asked.

“Are we going to meditate together? Because I don’t have time today,” my daughter said, disgruntled.

“This is more serious than you think. Sit down, please.”

With bewildered eyes, they sat across from each other, holding on to their iPhones.

“Give me your phones.”

“I only play games,” the boy said.

“I need to read your text messages.”

“I’m going to delete my history before I give it to you,” they agreed.

Why would you do that? Your father can hack into any system. He’s an IT guru, if you hadn’t noticed, I thought.

“You can’t do this to us!” the girl exclaimed.

“Do you know your religion?” I asked. It was a simple question. An ordinary question about knowing right from wrong, respecting others, choosing love over hate, and being strong and disciplined enough to say no to drugs, sexual predators, and terrorists.

“Tell me,” I said, “what does Islam mean to you?” I wanted to know.

“Are you going to spy on us?”

“Not yet,” I said. We all laughed.

“What is Islam?” I waited for an answer.

“It’s one of those questions that you don’t know how to answer but you know the answer,” the youngest responded as her brother leaned back into the chair, laughing.

I have to make them understand. I can’t let my children be blinded by the fake Muslims of the world.

“Extremists are a threat,” I began. “They are very smart. They will talk to you on Facebook and Twitter. They know how to DM you. They will try to be your friend. They will tell you what Islam is and what you need to do to be a better Muslim. They will tell you to hate everything that is here. You cannot listen to anyone on the Internet about Islam. Not even people you think you know. No Muslim online is better than a Muslim offline. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“OK, we get it. Can we go now? I have homework,” my daughter said.

Conversations with the mothers of Colorado helped me understand the challenges of talking to children about a threat they could not yet perceive or did not believe was real. Parents understood that the threat to their community was real: their children could easily fall prey to ISIS after viewing hours of extremist propaganda behind closed doors, especially at home, increasing their chances of being radicalized. At the “Google Ideas” conference in Dublin, Ireland, in 2011, participants examined the role of the Internet— specifically chat rooms, video posts, and social networking—to explain recruitment to extremist groups. One of the attendees was a former radical from Canada, Mubin Shaikh, coauthor of Under-cover Jihadi: Inside the Toronto 18—Al Qaeda Inspired, Homegrown Terrorism in the West. On several occasions, I have listened to Shaikh tell his personal story about becoming a radical and then turning away from radical Islam with the help of a saint-scholar in Syria.

The father of four children, Shaikh alludes to the “nature versus nurture” argument: the influence of one’s physical environment, upbringing, family, and value systems. After twenty years of research on radicalization, Shaikh reaffirms what I have known to be true: it’s a process triggered by an individual’s conflict over meaning and identity. In his book and lectures, Shaikh describes his dual life: at the madrasa, where he learned a harsh-rules-only Islam, and at public school, which gave him freedom and friendship without judgment. “This laid the foundation of an identity crisis,” he explained once. To a lesser extent, I experienced the duality of growing up Muslim in Texas, often mistaken for Mexican-American, ignorant of Islamic history and principles; and like Shaikh, I found school to be a nurturing place.

Years later, when he traveled to Syria, Shaikh rediscovered the depth of the Quran by training under a Sufi saint. “I learned that jihad is not fighting, but that there’s a different word for this, which is qital,” he told me. This was the first time Shaikh realized that saving the Muslim world by violent jihad is not rooted in Islam—the blame belongs to radical groups who misinterpret and misuse the faith for personal and political gain. “In Syria, I had a theological framing,” Shaikh said. “I learned the Quran. I learned what the verses of the holy book meant. For example, the Quran uses the word ‘the polytheists’ to refer to a very specific group of people at a specific time; it does not refer to the Jews and Christians, who are the People of the Book.”

Returning to Canada, Shaikh described his journey back into Islam as an undercover agent for the Canadian intelligence service. He wanted to save his community from radicalizing. On his own time, Shaikh trolled the Internet helping to keep the Muslim youth, including girls, from being recruited by ISIS. If watching extremist videos for a prolonged period places an individual at severe risk of recruitment, then de-radicalization can take an equal amount of time and effort to save a potential recruit. The work takes hours of discussing the peaceful practice of Islam with Muslims looking for meaning, belonging, and identity. Sometimes, it can take up to a year.

Meeting Shaikh helped me understand how important it is to stay engaged with children at home. Keeping an eye on their online and offline activities allows parents to know they are safe from bullies, sexual predators, and extremists like ISIS. I thought about all the mothers who had lost their children to radical Islam and didn’t know it. There are numerous cases of mothers in European cities whose sons ran away from home to join ISIS. Sadly, the families did not notice the change in their children because “they just couldn’t perceive it. It was not until the sons were gone, only then they realized how they were changing. . . . They were just sort of radicalizing slowly, and a lot of the women just couldn’t understand that at that time,” said photographer-journalist Poulomi Basu, who interviewed three mothers whose children joined ISIS from the ethnically diverse town of Vilvoorde outside of Brussels.⁷

I attended meetings of a family-life initiative, created to address the needs of Muslim parents in America, held on Sundays at the Fawakih Manor in Herndon, Virginia. Beginning in April 2016, the six-week program used a business model to help Muslim families understand their role as parents, their relationship with the community, and their connection with God. With Imam Mohamed Magid, a Somali leader at the ADAMS center, the course was designed to strengthen the Muslim family with knowledge-based solutions. In groups, I listened to young and older parents express their views: there were few role models, information on Islam was event-driven, learning was an eternal exercise, and communication was essential. I had to believe that consistent and compassionate conversations with my children would help them practice true Islam and steer them away from anything extreme.

As a mother, I learned the important lesson of empowering children with the right information. Intervention has to start early and be consistent. With two teenagers, I know the limits of their hearing and the effect of short attention spans. In speaking with other Muslim parents, I understand that certain words must be repeated at random times to make the message feel continuous and livable: Islam is a religion of peace, compassion, and mercy had to be felt and heard like a steady womb-beat. I had to apply models that I use in my counterterrorism work to make it relevant at home: Educate. Engage. Empower.

First, I believe that Muslim children need daily affirmations and parental love. In Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, a child waits in bed for his mother to give him a goodnight kiss. In the story, the child becomes isolated and separated from his mother, with whom he longs to reunite. In Plato’s version of love, lovers are incomplete until found. In the same way, educating children about Islam involves focusing on God’s love for His creation, reminding the youth that the first oral tradition recorded by the Prophet of Islam had to do with God’s mercy, and the last sermon by the Prophet to his tribe emphasized equality and inclusion.

Second, Muslim parents can do more to engage their children: discuss real, taboo topics like sex, drugs, and ISIS. And they should encourage children to ask questions about Islam, which most Muslim cultures and countries forbid. Over the years, I have had to respond to the most mundane and surprising questions about Islam. A question is an insight into a child’s mind, and even when I don’t have the answer, I seek religious guidance and turn to my mentors, who are as transparent as water. They let the light of wisdom flow through them.

Third, identity crises and a feeling of perceived isolation explain why some children become radicalized. Numerous case studies, including the ones in this book, reveal a lack of belonging and a clash of cultures that the youth may feel when they are disempowered at home, ignorant of Islam, and/or compelled to reject mainstream values and the society in which they live. Paradoxically, it is in that moment of alienation that some are open to life, even when it is the wrong kind of empowerment that extremists allegedly promise—an eternal Paradise that they sell to win support.

Rather than restricting behavior and imposing rigid rules, Muslim parents in the West can offer opportunities for their children to spend time with non-Muslim friends, allowing them to form strong attachments with people of other faiths. Growing up, I observed my parents’ love for people of other religious traditions. My parents’ closest friends were Jewish, Christian, and Hindu, as well as other Muslims in their community. Before I had any Muslim friends, I had surrounded myself with classmates from different cultures and backgrounds.

Finally, as a mother, I have learned how important it is to stay in touch with a child’s everyday events and emotions. Child psychologists affirm that understanding your children is the most important thing parents should learn how to do: look for consistent traits; help them develop their self-esteem and social skills, according to the Child Development Institute. Raising balanced children also means less screen time. In her book Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen Time, child psychiatrist Victoria L. Dunckley, MD, describes a study she conducted with a group of five hundred children and adolescents.⁸ Her work confirms that screen time acts as a psycho-stimulant similar to caffeine and drugs like cocaine: excessive time online also overstimulates the nervous system and leads to a host of issues, from mood swings to concentration problems.

When their children are using the Internet, parents can feel clueless about what material they are reading, which websites they are visiting, and whom they are chatting with. Internet safety expert Nancy Willard offers parents practical strategies in her book Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly.⁹ Even with limited technical knowledge, parents can use the same teaching tools they once applied to younger children with their teenagers to help them make better choices online. Ultimately, experts and psychologists agree that remaining engaged with children is more valuable than using hacking or blocking software.

In today’s increasingly digital world, parents have the additional burden of monitoring their children’s online activities, such as their tweets, Facebook posts, and Snapchat messages, as well as becoming familiar with their offline friends. As a mother, I am duty-bound to raise loving, caring, and giving children. I hope that they will learn to love everyone and forgive me when I make mistakes. I have a responsibility to teach them that having a balanced life means embracing the beauty of the West while accepting the richness of Islamic history, culture, and civilization, and I pray that I will have the wisdom to know when to let them go.