The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) has called on the clergy to dedicate their Jumuah Khutbahs on Friday to enlightening the community as to the dangers posed by the radical Islamic State (ISIS). This comes after the ulema body on Wednesday held a workshop with 80 imams, in the wake of the first reported recruitment of a South African national to ISIS. On Monday, a 15-year old Captonian girl was intercepted from a flight to Johannesburg, with plans to link up with the radical group in Syria.

The MJC has been consistent in its condemnation of ISIS since the group’s rise in early 2014, but have now sought to tackle the issue from a grassroots level amidst a rise in global recruitments via social media.

“We need to speak to our community about it, because IS has developed a very sophisticated recruiting methodology which puts them into contact with every single one of our youth, and every single person in our community,” said MJC spokesperson, Nabeweya Malick.

As the current generation of youth grow into extremely tech savvy individuals, this has made it particularly difficult for parents and elders to monitor their activity on social media, and the internet as a whole. Hence, Malick said it was imperative parents take the responsibility for the information being filtered to their children on a daily basis.

Malick said the meeting had sought to equip the ulema with information in preparation of the khubah’s on Friday, including the methodology of how ISIS operates and conducts its recruitment.

“It is unbelievable how it is put out there in such a way that any child who has problems with their family, who is disconnect from the social environment within their community, or is yearning for something will definitely be lured to this so called IS family,” she said, adding that this was very concerning for the ulema body.

She added that whilst the so-called ‘Islamic caliphate’ was glamourised by the radical group, the reality on the ground was that there were no records as to what happens to those who successfully got caught up in the ISIS web. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)