A local task team has recently been established to tackle the growing threat that South Africans may be lured to take up ranks with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Reports recently emerged that nearly two dozen SA citizens have joined the radical group since 2014, with the country also witnessing several failed recruitment attempts in recent weeks.

In April reports surfaced that two Cape Town teens were intercepted trying to flee the country for Syria. That was followed by a similar incident in Roshnee, Gauteng where a group of people had also attempted to join the group.

The coalition’s spokesperson Ebrahim Patel said a number of South Africans had expressed some desire to either take up arms with the group, or live within ISIL territories. Of a population of 1.6 million Muslims in S.A, he said that a solitary recruitment could be deemed as one too many.

“There is no mass movement to join ISIS in South Africa, but we as a civil society movement have taken the proactive stance of getting together and discussing the problem in an open and transparent manner. We need to acknowledge that there are people who have the desire to go to the other side, and we need to clearly make a distinction that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, and people need to become aware of that,” he said.

Apart from organising a unified awareness Khutbah this past Friday, the coalition has also issued a media statement seeking to advice the community against getting within the ISIL-web. Patel also highlighted similar global initiatives, include a recent event in Abu Dhabi where top international scholars and civil society groups gathered to draft a 35-page letter to the ISIL leadership, stating that the group were in contravention of every major Islamic law.

He further suggested the blame of ISIL’s dramatic rise to power, as well as that of other radical groups post 9/11, could be attributed to the so called ‘war on terror’.

“The fact of the matter is these communities in Iraq and Syria existed in peace and harmony with their fellow Arab Christians and Jews for hundreds of years. Today they have been bombed into the Middle Ages. All of this has taken place post 9/11, and as a result Muslim communities have become displaced,” he said, suggesting this could have led to more of the youth feeling disillusioned, and buying into the views of such radical groups.

In a Sunday Times report yesterday, a 23 year old man from Roshnee was fingered as one of the first local ISIL recruits to have died in Syria. This follows claims that at least 23 South Africans have travelled to the country to join the group. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)