PST Warns Too Late and Casts Suspicion on an Entire Immigrant Group

When the security service uses broad and general terms, it easily creates the impression that Islamism as a whole is one single security threat. That is a dangerous oversimplification. There are people and circles with Islamist political and religious views who are not engaged in terror, violence or recruitment to extremism. When PST does not distinguish sharply enough between conservative, political, fundamentalist and directly violent circles, it helps to build suspicion against far more people than those who actually should be monitored. That is bad security policy.

A security service must be precise. It must identify concrete threats, document developments and direct its efforts at those who are actually moving towards violence, terror or organised extremism. It must not contribute to entire ideological or religious communities being left under a diffuse suspicion because the authorities themselves cannot explain the nuances.

At the same time, we must dare to ask an even more uncomfortable question: Why do these warnings only come now, when children as young as 12 are already being highlighted?

A child does not begin to be shaped ideologically on their twelfth birthday. Influence starts much earlier. It starts at home, in the family, in the circle of friends, in religious communities, in organisations and in digital communities. If a child grows up in an environment where democracy is spoken of with contempt, where religious rules are presented as more important than Norwegian law, where women and men are not regarded as equals, or where people with other beliefs are treated as enemies, the influence takes place long before PST discovers it.

That is why it becomes almost absurd when the authorities present the 12-year-old as the problem itself. The problem began long before.

And part of the responsibility lies with the Norwegian authorities themselves.

Over several decades, Norway has allowed heavy and in part very conservative Islamist circles to establish themselves and grow. Organisations have been given space, support, legitimacy and institutional access without always being held to the same demands for openness, democratic values and respect for individual freedom that they should have been. All too often, politicians have been more concerned with not offending anyone than with questioning what was actually being preached and organised.

This is not an argument against Muslims. Nor is it an argument for collective suspicion. Quite the opposite. Ordinary Muslim families should not be dragged into PST’s broad security language because the authorities cannot distinguish clearly between religion, conservatism, political Islam, extremism and terror.

This is precisely where PST fails in its communication.

When the service warns broadly about Islamist radicalisation, while being vague about whom it actually concerns, it creates fear and suspicion without necessarily making society safer. People begin to look suspiciously at their neighbour, the mosque or the religious association, while the truly dangerous networks can operate in a far more closed and targeted way.

That is the easy solution: broad warnings to the public.

The difficult solution is to do the job precisely.

Who finances these circles? Which preachers spread anti-democratic messages? Which organisations have links to foreign extremist networks? Where does recruitment take place? Which circles glorify religious violence? Where is the systematic social control? And why have Norwegian authorities, if so, allowed such circles to function for years without clear intervention?

These are the questions PST and the government should answer.

Instead, we once again get general warnings.

And when the warnings concern children, the authorities’ own failure becomes even clearer. If a 12-year-old is already expressing extremist attitudes, the first question should be what the child has been exposed to over the preceding years. Who influenced the child when it was eight, nine or ten? Which adults were around it? Were teachers concerned? Was the municipality notified? Were there signs of strong social control? Were problems overlooked because no one wanted to be accused of being intolerant?

For far too many years, Norway has had a political culture in which certain problems linked to religious and cultural communities could hardly be discussed without the debate immediately being reduced to a question of racism or xenophobia. The result may have been that authorities, schools and municipalities alike became more cautious than they should have been. Now the bill is arriving.

But PST must not make the opposite mistake and go from complacency to general suspicion. Security is not created by making broad groups suspect. It is created by identifying those who actually represent a threat, documenting it and acting.

Norwegian authorities must therefore dare to acknowledge two things at once. We have been too naive about certain extremist circles, and we must be far more precise when we talk about them.

If PST only discovers the problem when the child is twelve, it is fair to ask where the security system, the municipality and the state were during the eleven years before.

And if PST at the same time casts suspicion over Islamist circles in general, it is also fair to ask whether the security service has learned the most important lesson of all: Extremism is best fought with precision, not with obfuscation and collective suspicion.