The promise of a three course meal

I was invited to attend a talk/presentation recently.  Now I must admit I can’t really remember the exact title of the whole thing but it was related to ISIS and how they operate and recruit as well how they were created and how they expanded, you kind of get the gist of what it would have been about. It involved a number of speakers even more PowerPoint slides and my favourite thing a three course meal.  My invitee made it very clear to me that it starts at 6:30pm sharp and to arrive early as it would get busy near the entrance and I would struggle to get in and so on.  I rushed to the venue straight after work worried that my 6:20pm arrival would mean that I was already too late and would have to fight my way through a crushing mob to get to my allocated table.  When I got there it was quite orderly with everybody queueing up and waiting to be seated but I could sense that this event was in no way going to be starting at 6:30pm.  I got shown my seat after some initial confusion and I looked around and less than 20% of the people had arrived.  That’s when I set the timer to see when the event would start.  Honestly it started a lot quicker than thought it would we were only a mere 50 minutes late.      

Although I must admit at first my intention of attending was solely food related (note for anyone who wants to invite me anywhere if you have food that’s a guaranteed yes on the RSVP from me) listening to the actual speakers was quite interesting.  I’ll be completely honest here not all the speakers were very enlightening or even interesting and I suspect were used as filler to keep people interested until the food arrived.  A handful really caught my attention, one was a young Syrian lady with an American accent who was currently studying for her PhD.  She started off by mentioning how ISIS came about and how they managed to spread so far so quickly.  She drew military and economic links between them and Assad and how ISIS were selling oil etc. to the Assad regime and in return they were pre-warned about bombing raids.  She made a point to say that Assad was using ISIS as a method to bolster his standing on the world stage by telling the world “look at me I’m fighting the terrorists” whilst at the same time acting as an enabler for these very same terrorists.  All this was very fine and well.  Now for this next bit I might be completely wrong as I was tired and my legs were cramping up due to the way everyone was bunched together at the table.  She started talking about the Free Syrian Army and how they were the only ones fighting the good fight.  She wanted the UK government to arm/support them as they were the ones who could end ISIS/Assad.  Now the mistake a lot of people make here is that they think that the FSA is one group whereas in reality they are a loose conglomerate of smaller groups fighting together at one point and against each other at other points.  Now I’m no expert in geopolitical security but even I know it’s not a brilliant idea to arm a group of people who are one stray bullet away from fighting amongst themselves. You just need to look at Libya for a real world example of this.  The points the young lady made were very well made and she was extremely articulate and composed even after multiple mishaps with the mic.

Another person who caught my attention was a gentleman from an organisation which helps ISIS defectors return to normality back in their home countries.  He gave insight into how ISIS recruiters worked as he claimed to be in contact with a number of them and gave stats and figures as to how many people get recruited and motivations for recruitment.  It was informative, well-structured and he clearly came across as someone who knew what he talking about.  Then it all went wrong ever so slightly, he said he had done a brain scan on some people who had returned from ISIS to see if there was anything wrong with their brains that was causing them to join ISIS.  At this points alarm bells started ringing as this reminded me of scientific racism used to justify slavery and other atrocities in the past.  So the speaker put a slide on with 4 brain scans each with different parts highlighted and coloured in.  After giving everyone a moment to take in those slides he then announces that after painstaking research he has found that ISIS followers have the same brain as everyone else.  I’ll give you time to read that sentence again.  Would you look at that! One person has the same physical brain structure as another person, what a mind blowing discovery.  I can only imagine how many research dollars were wasted on such futile work.  The aspect that really got to me was that the slide with the brain scans was given no explanation whatsoever and just left up there on the main screen.  Anybody who had not heard the speaker’s fantastic revelation or had simply switched off would have come to a completely different conclusion just looking at those slides.  I guess pseudo-science is still well and truly alive.  The next speaker a jovial looking man named Janghir shared my sentiments when it came to the brain scans as he was quite clearly angry during his part of the talk.  After speaking to him at the event it turned out that he wasn’t a big fan of pseudo-science either and drew comparisons between the brain scan guy and how the Nazis were justifying what they were doing to other ethnicities using “science”.  Janghir thankfully kept his talk short and to the point because at this point we had been sitting in a warm dark hall for the best part of 100 minutes and I don’t think people had much stamina to endure any more presentations.  It also didn’t help that we could now smell the food and the waiters were looking like a bunch of greyhounds ready to be set loose at a race.

 A special mention to the final speaker Anjum Anwar who I can only describe as chilli in a sea of vanilla speakers.  She got up there and started off by threatening the master of ceremony with a beating as she didn’t have enough time to do her full presentation as they started late.  She unlike most of the other speakers put the burden of responsibility not on the state or a group but rather on the individual.  She made it very clear that if your child is caught up with ISIS then as a parent you have clearly not done your duty.  She gave an example of a mother whose son was in trouble with the police over this and when the mother was questioned about her son’s interaction online she simply said “every time I asked him what are you doing, he just replied he was doing homework”.  This is something that strongly resonated with me as I see this a lot.  No longer can parents use the excuse that they “don’t understand these computers” or “we don’t know because we never had this stuff when we were growing up” there are multiple resources to help people get to grips with modern technology ranging from community workshops to self-help magazines.  As parents it’s your responsibility to make sure you know what your child is doing online as well as offline.