>> i also wanted to renew dialogue between all of the villages, communities, and all -- all of the religious communities and all of the secular associations. >> [speaking in french] >> on march 12, i will convene all of these leaders at city hall in order to work together towards concrete proposals. >> [speaking in french] >> we must focus on the youth. >> [speaking in french] >> we must help young people find their own way, their own path in life as they leave school. >> [speaking in french] >> because, behind each pathway towards radicalization, prior to

that is always some school point in time, some school failure. >> [speaking in french] >> that is why, following the pact, i propose that all schools in paris be opened on saturday mornings. . >> [speaking in french] >> to help children succeed in school. >> [speaking in french] >> from the american experience, i also see how important it is to have very strong citizen volunteership and engagement. >> [speaking in french] >> akin to community service in the united states. >> [speaking in french] >> dear friends, i do know that,

paris bears a very specific responsibility. >> [speaking in french] >> a very famous french playwright once said -- >> [speaking in french] >> "to be a parisian is not to have been born in paris, it is to have been reborn in paris." >> [speaking in french] >> many people have come to paris to be born a second time. paris is a city of opportunities. >> [speaking in french] >> it is a progressive and humanistic city. >> [speaking in french] >> i am fully aware of our very specific responsibility in facing this scourge that affects all of our democracies. thank you very much.

[applause] >> thank you very much. mayor, it is reported that more people from belgium have traveled to syria to fight than any other country in europe. a quite alarming statistic. what do you think about the root of that phenomenon? what kind of programs have you instituted at the local level to address this problem? >> good morning. let me begin by thanking you for the invitation. i tried to formulate an answer to the difficult questions. i will do it in three parts. i will tell you about my town and its problems. then i will be happy to share with you our definition of

radicalization and our approach to the problem. finally, i will try to offer some conclusions or considerations which i feel are relevant for all the cities. my town is a very nice, small town. it is near vessels at the heart of europe. it is in a very prosperous region. it has 42,000 inhabitants. you can get to the center of brussels in 10 minutes. it takes one hour to get to paris. one hour and a half to get to london and amsterdam. you are really at the heart of europe. you can get everywhere and anywhere in the world.

that explains something when we talk about syrian fighters. it is estimated that my country l belgium saw 380 fighters leaving for iraq and syria. 380 of the population of 10 million inhabitants. 101 have returned in the meantime. we are as good as sure that 50 have been killed there. as mayor, it is a hard thing to say, but 28 people of my city, mostly young people, mostly boys, some girls, some minors also, have gone to iraq and syria. we are sure that five of them have been killed already. eight have returned. two are now in prison. but we have another 40 young

people, including a number of underage girls, who are preparing to leave or who are marked as potential leavers. it is important to know that nobody has left for syria or iraq since summer of 2014. knock on wood, to keep that that way. because of these huge numbers it made my city a laboratory for cpe. due to the limited size of our town and due to the fact that i, myself, know nearly every family confronted with radicalism. we have good oversight, a good

overview of the problem. we have seen young people leave from virtually every secondary school in my city. or from every neighborhood. the first ones left the city at the end of 2012. usually, on the run from justice. the first people leaving are actually people who had lots of confrontation with police but never went to jail. now they are on the head of the foreign militaries of isis. they are seen in awful pictures video movies and awful pictures and they were successful in recruiting other young people from my city and from the region and from belgium. they were very well-organized to recruit by the internet, to recruit by facebook.

that is the reason why a lot of young people from belgium followed the first group, which were the very hard-core militants of is. the last few months we have , needed to be vigilant to make sure that under age in young people do not get away drawn away from our democratic society. it made us a little laboratory. as we have seen it and heard the stories of the mothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, we see that the radicalization process is a process of a doctrine is asian and -- in doctrine

station and isolation. the young people have ideas forced upon them that this person has a special part to play in history. that he has a special part in bringing about the caliphate. that she can and must become a real hero in the history of creation of the islamic state. that is the message they are always receiving. the second component is isolation. isolation usually starts with the instruction to convert to islam. most of the and people -- of the and people who have left the country had a problematic history with their families, with the mosque. there was consistent arguing between fathers and sons about

what it was to be a good muslim in europe. they didn't frequently visit the mosque. it is thought that mostly the isolation process involves instruction to convert to islam. but soon the demand follows. they are trying to get them to the point where people feel they have been chosen to take part in the fight in syria and iraq. both processes, indoctrination and isolation, are taking place in a context in which the conflict in syria and iraq that has gone on for years due to the mass media. they are feeling the international community as a coward. a coward community, not reacting

firmly enough against the brutality of the war there. this process of indoctrination and isolation is much more successful among people with a weak position in society or who are struggling with their identity. as i told you youngsters minors also. it is striking that recruitment works best among people carrying lots of frustration from the past and who may have no chance of achieving anything in the society where they grew up. when you asked me what is the reaction of it. we tried to turn it around. we tried to reform the isolation process by a process of rebuilding social networks around the youngsters.

we are trying to mobilize civil society. we are going to schools. we are trying to motivate schools and teachers. sports clubs. mosques and schools have to work together with the youngsters of my city and the public authorities to rebuild, restore social networks around the young people so that they can feel that they are belonging to our society, that they get a future here, they get opportunities. for young men, you always have to give them new opportunities. new opportunities and new opportunities. we have to restore, we have to motivate civil society to work together to restore that social network. the second thing is that instead of letting them be bombarded by messages, we have to inform them.

we have to inform them what it is to be a real muslim. what it is to be muslim in our town. therefore, we need the help of people knowing the koran and knowing the religion. so, these two things are being brought together on the table. the social networks and the people who are important in the lives of the youngsters with people who are very acquainted with the real islamic values. that brings me to three short conclusions. the first is that we are facing a global problem but we have to act locally. we have to see that we can't win the war against radicalism and extreme violence in minorities only by bombing in syria and

iraq. we also have to combat in our cities, the neighborhoods. we have to break down those who try to radicalize and recruit. that brings me to the second thing. we all have to do that, on all political levels, we all have to stop the ostrich policy i see everywhere. i see everywhere a kind of ostrich policy. there are countries in europe who say they don't have a problem. i see cities in my country which maybe are facing problems of radicalism also. they don't dare to talk about it. they don't dare to ask their civil society to become aware. that brings me to the third brief consideration i make.

i promise to talk about it iceberg's because radicalism grows where integration fails and there are a lot of frustrations. the people i talk about do have a history of a lot of frustration. it is like an iceberg. you only see the top but it is much huger under the water line. we have to work on these frustrations. that is social policy. that is labor market policy. that his education policy. -- that is education policy. we have to work on these huge frustrations under the water line. as anyone knows, you can only melt an iceberg with warmth. that is what our youth need. they need more warmth.

thank you very much. [applause] >> doctor, you do some very important work, will string scholars -- bolstering scholars. can you describe how you believe your programs have encountered countered recruitment in radicalization? >> thank you. it is an honor to be here today. what is going on on the field is and him and a tide of magma and frustrations in mind, psyches, in the internet fibers, so what we are witnessing is the tip of

the iceberg. we are witnessing a mutation in the extremist discourse. it is offering a dream. it is not just a pure terry purit arian discourse. a dream of dignity and unity. a dream of unity because the muslim world witnessed a clash in 1924. many countries in the muslim world felt like they were orphans. morocco is not in this frame. the majority of the countries felt orphanage because decisions

were taken in istanbul. people felt orphanage and were looking for a father. it is a sort of a panacea. a cure all pill. in morocco, we were aware that this is a dream being offered and we need to shape a political islamic theory that will respond to that. this, if you can follow in history, you would see that this has happened in many countries. in morocco, that was the case. but in 1979 in iran, this happened as well. it what bo boko haram is claiming. it is not a game.

the legitimacy is in question. the -- is the question. this discourse needs to be deconstructed. this is what we have been trying to do in morocco. we have been true to literature. extremist literature. audio, written, audiovisual, on the internet. we have discovered some repetitive items, such as that while the west has been conspiring against the muslim world, the west has flaunted israel. we need to do what needs to be done ourselves. they would highlight the fact

that there has been colonialism. in colonialism, millions were killed. this needs to be addressed. they're not doing something about that. they talk about humiliation, double standards, the fact that there is a cocktail of races. they will talk about ideology and the value system that is being challenged. we need to do something about this. for all that, they would come and use the vacuum, treated because of the fact that in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's, religion was not addressed as it should have been. we have armies of officials,

religious officials in the muslim world. take the example of egypt, you have 280,000 officials being paid by public money. in saudi arabia, you have 300,000. in morocco, you have 70,000. in tunisia, 35,000. those people need to be looked at again. they need to be icons. empowerment. this would require some curriculum and address and some work to reshape those people and enable them. they are already on the payroll. this is what they've been trained for. in morocco, we have been doing this. we have twice a month training for over 50,000 people. we are offering curricula that

would make them aware of those challenges. then, we have been going through the sections after deconstructing the discourse. it is offering the stream of unity and dignity. put yourself in the shoes and skin of an 18-year-old or 20-year-old guy, jobless, angry, frustrated, and reading on the internet that someone will marry them to the most beautiful woman in the world. come to me and i will make you the head of intelligence. come to me and i'll make of u.s. scholar. -- i will make of you a scholar. we need to offer alternative dreams. this work in the dreams arena is crucial. here comes the role of the various players. arts, social structures, academia, universities, and so on.

the fact that those traditional institutions need to be re-empowered is something that we have been working on. sections of perception, when we are talking to youth, we need them to be the ones who are doing for themselves. they do not need other faces on those actions. they need actions to be theirs. that is why we have launched peer education programs. we have launched cartoons and are trying to work on video games. this is not very easy. they are working on video games that need to be appealing. they need to be colorful and joyful as the south persia or those wonderful video games. last but not least, we need to be aware of the fact that there

has been a vacuum in the structures. like the extended family structures, this is a vacuum because extremism offers structure. in morocco, we have been working on this. we need to be aware of what is being offered in the arena of content. we need to work with the content. we need to mobilize our universities. we need to shape and integrate a strategy to work through all dimensions to tackle this issue. that is what we have been trying to do in morocco so far. thank you. [applause] >> our panel is being cut short so we are running on a tight ship here. thank you. the anti-defamation league, you study all kinds of violent extremism, especially as it

relates to anti-semitism. can you talk about the resources you created to empower communities? >> i have about 140 characters or less. let me just say, in the jewish community, the concept of violent extremism is not abstract. it is very real. at adl, we are trying to deal with mitigating the threat of violent extremism. we don't have the luxury to focus on one extremist movement over another. this discussion today and in the coming days, it is imperative for us, based on our research and the trends we are seeing and based on the threat not just to the jewish community but to the entire american community, that we look not just at one community. violent extremism is not a muslim community problem. it is an american problem. [applause]

it is also a problem that is international. we are looking at ways to try to mitigate that threat. we have to find partners to help us do that. at adl, we found multiple partners. i still believe that effective countermeasures and counternarratives come through work with law enforcement. that is important. we heard about it on the panel today. an informed law enforcement entity, the agencies, the more they know not just about the communities but about the actual threats, that is where adl steps in because of our research. if we take the threat of white supremacists and right-wing extremists and look at the amount of murders in this country in the past 10 years. 95% of murders against americans, including law enforcement, have been caused at the hands of right-wing extremists.

we have to remember that fact when we are coming up with strategies. that does not mean that we can deal with these various different movements at the same time. while we have to recognize the diversity of the threats, we also have to recognize that each threat requires a unique set of remedies and strategies to combat them. dealing with the sovereign citizen movement, which is likely to become a competition -- which is likely to get into a confrontation with a law enforcement officer, is a very different approach than dealing with american citizens who are motivated by radical interpretations of islam. we can't have the same remedies. we have to treat them separately. it is important to have a space to deal with isis and al qaeda to discuss that. it is also important to have a space to deal with white supremacists. we can learn what their commonalities are. obviously, they all hate jews.

but in other ways, there is also a commonality. we have to make sure that when we are looking at the specific threats, we need to identify them for what they are. when we look at american citizens who are trying to join isis and al qaeda, what do we notice? these are people of diverse backgrounds, religion, races. diverse religions as well. perhaps they are responding to the call of radical violent extremism that is motivated by radical interpretations of islam. these people are not muslims themselves in many cases. we have to understand that a christian who converted to islam just two days ago believes they are part of isis and al qaeda. does that make them part of the muslim community? so, the resources we put in to creating positive relationships with the muslim community are very important. we cannot forget all of those who are not within the muslim

community that are responding to these threats as well. profiling in this sense does not work. the more we are educated about the actual people who are getting radicalized, the better we are going to be at finding remedies. i will conclude on this. i know we are short on time. in addition to law enforcement we found a very willing partner in terms of the technology industry as a whole. i have read a lot about criticism, why don't we just have facebook and twitter and youtube remove all of this stuff so people won't have access to it and they won't get radicalized? besides the fact that is completely impractical, and we also have free speech, the reality is that these companies are doing something about it. they are at different levels. we have worked with them. they have endorsed our best practices.

they remind people who are trying to exploit their services that not only is there a legacy of technical innovations that have been created, but these companies take seriously the fact that people are trying to exploit them.they are trying to come up with creative solutions for those that would like to exploit them. that has been a critical partner as well. finally i have to say at the end of the day, what is the most effective way to walk somebody off that ledge? you can share information with law enforcement, you can share strategy with the tech industry. the when you have your own peers identifying a problem but having the courage to step up. that is part of this narrative as well educational programs were we going to schools to train them not to be innocent bystanders, that they have