 Hello and welcome to this special debate from Davos, produced by France 24 and the World Economic Forum. The list of cities hit by bloody and brutal attacks in the past year is long. Ankara, Beirut, San Bernardino, Paris and many more have fallen victim. Just this week, gunmen stormed a university in northwest Pakistan, killing 20 people. The spread of the attacks serve as a reminder of the global threat posed by violent extremism. Thousands of people are killed every year and whole communities are left terrorized. Poverty and social injustice are seen as contributing factors, but the picture is a lot more complicated. In this debate, we're asking how well we understand the root causes of violent extremism and how to find solutions at local levels. Now our panel today is diverse. Its members have backgrounds in politics, culture, business, the clergy and law. Thank you very much, first of all, to all of you for being here. And I'm going to introduce our panel participants. Closest to me, I have Rosh Nur Shahrazi. He is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. Elif Shafak is a best-selling Turkish author. Sir Mohamed Jafar is a businessman from the Middle East, an industrial from the region. Justin Welby is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Last but certainly not least, we have Jean-Paul Laborde, Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN's Counterterrorism Executive Directorate. Now, we're going to start this session by talking about the current context in the Middle East, but also elsewhere. And I want to start with you, Mr. Shawiz, because we remember 2014 when the Islamic State Group swept across Iraq and it still holds significant territories in the country. Could you update us where we are at the moment and where we are with a fight against the Islamic State Group? Yes, indeed it is. We're asking about the military situation. So this situation now in Iraq in general is, in comparison with the situation a year before, is much better. And it indicates much more confident about the military future of the fight against Daesh. A year ago from now, Daesh occupied a lot of territories in Iraq, among them major towns, Sunni towns, like Mosul, Rumadi, Tikrit and others. Now the only remaining town which is awaiting also the last battle is the Mosul province and town itself. So we have made a lot of progress in the beginning with the help of the alliance we stopped. The attacks of Daesh. We showed our population that Daesh is not undefeatable. On the contrary, it is defeatable, military. And we have stopped them in a front line which is about 1,000 km long from Western Iraq until eastern east of Iraq. Now there's cooperation, a negotiation between all stakeholders, let's say Iraqi government, Kurdistan regional government, Peshmerga Iraqi army, population for Mosul and the alliance to prepare the last battle against Daesh. I wanted to ask you about that. You've already touched upon it there, but how has the way that Iraq deals with Daesh or Islamic State Group changed in the past two years? Have you changed strategy? Have you changed tactics? Well, to be honest, this matter needs much more consideration, analysis and consideration. First of all, Daesh emerged from Islamic countries, from our countries, so it has something to do with Islam. Secondly, it has something to do with the order of our system of our countries. I cannot say that we in Iraq have solved all these problems in a situation in such a way that we can say now we have a climate which is against emergence of Daesh or similar organizations. The only progress which has been done actually is in the military field, on the field. And this is primarily, also to be honest, was achievable because or through the help of the alliance. Sir Mohamed Jafar, I want to turn to you. You're also from this region. And I want to ask you what you think the root causes of violence extremism. What motivates young men to go out, go out, take up arms and join Islamic State Group or Daesh? I don't know that there's a precise answer to the question. To put your finger on it, people join ISIS, like people join gangs or drug dealers. It could be, I mean, what are ISIS selling? They're selling death. Who buys into that? You cannot be a normal person. It could be a psychopath or sociopath. It's been advanced that some people join them because they're not well to do because they feel left out. There could be percentage in that, but not necessarily. Some kids are joining them from university in the UK. They have good grades. Their families don't seem to know why they have joined. Some predict that this is possibly a generational issue. That these children who were born in the West to parents who are not originally from the West feel lost. They don't feel that they belong to their native culture and that they don't belong to the culture of the host country. They don't seem to understand their parents or their parents don't seem to understand them. They buy into this camelot that the fake caliphate is selling. I think that we have a duty to protect the vulnerable as a society. If some of our kids are at risk of being predated upon by child abusers, you protect them. Drug dealers, you protect them. Likewise, if they're being preyed upon by ISIS, we have a duty to protect them. They get preyed upon online. To my mind, we have lost this marketing battle and we shouldn't have lost the marketing battle. The brand ISIS shouldn't exist. It should be weakened and we must weaken it. They give us all the ammunition that we need. I address this to those present from the media today. Are we doing everything that we can with the stories that come to us? The other day, a member of Daesh told on his own mother who was asking him to leave Daesh. And either he killed her or she was killed by the network. These are people, they are mother killers at the end of the day. Why isn't that a story? Why doesn't the media just report this? Why doesn't it become big? Secretary Kerry earlier mentioned two examples, one in Norway where Muslims went and hugged a synagogue and another example from my country Kuwait after it was attacked, where the sunny population went in solidarity with the shared population and preyed in that mosque and is pledging to rebuild the mosque that was destroyed by suicide bomber. This is the ammunition that Daesh gave us. I don't think we are giving the traction that is needed and I don't think that we are doing enough online to kill the brand. Kill the brand, kill the demand. Jean-Paul Abort, I want to turn to you next because figures from the Institute of Economics and Peace show that 32,000 people died in terror attacks in 2014 which was a clear uptick from 2013 and 2014 by the way is the last year that we have figures from. Is this problem currently getting better or worse from your perspective when we look at these numbers? Well first of all since you spoke about victims let's also think about the victims have paid tribute to them, that's something I want to do here. The second point is that there are two main ways, avenues to work against terrorism. First of all the preventative side which is enormously important and the second of course not only the military side but the law enforcement side. Plus of course the diplomacy. So if you ask me the answers are already given by my two predecessors. We are first to defeat Daesh, that's for sure, but we cannot defeat Daesh if we are not convinced the people, the young people especially including the young women who go there, that is not an option. I think that this is a point, Daesh is not an option for them. So what they want to do is probably for them adventure, for them, for others, other things who knows exactly because there is not a single answer. This is a multi-faceted issue. So what can be the prospect? First of all we have to address the prospect in giving the right signals to all the communities. I think that's something which has been done by the Secretary General last week in issuing the plan against the plans for the prevention of violent extremism. That's uniting religions, speaking about all the elements like education etc. So I think that the human rights rule of law etc. So if we are, I would like to say, strong enough to promote all the aspects, this multi-faceted policy, my answer is yes, we can probably make a difference. If we are still doing only one thing or another one and if we are not united, both by the way the Shiites, the Sunnis, the countries and the churches, we will continue to face the same difficulties because Daesh is not, contrary with what I really felt when I saw some of their propaganda, Daesh is not a place in which you have welfare. Absolutely not. So we have really to look into the matter in this way and to have also a very good counter-propaganda. We are very bad at that. I think we are not good in terms of communication. That's something in common with Sir Mohamed and we're going to come back to that point. I just want to turn to Elif Shafak for a moment because, well, I want to turn to culture and that is one of your main messages. You say that culture is under attack by violent extremism and I want to show our audience and read our audience a quote from a piece that you wrote in The Guardian after the Paris attacks in November. You wrote that in the fight against extremism, political analysis dominates discussions while military solutions hover in the background. Culture, however, does not receive enough attention even though it is at the heart of today's conflicts. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that. Yes, I do believe it's at the heart of today's conflicts and if you want to develop a counter-propaganda or let's call it a counter-narrative perhaps, culture definitely needs to be part of it. The thing is, I mean, today, walk into any bookstore. You will come across dozens of books on Islam, Islamic extremism, particularly newspapers, magazines, you open it, dozens of articles. There's a lot of information about the subject but I'm afraid there's less understanding and even less wisdom about it. Now, for understanding, we need culture. In order to get to know better, a geography, a region, a country, we also have to understand its culture. One of the things that extremisms of all kinds can't stand is multiplicity, is pluralism. When you look at, when you dismantle the discourse of fundamentalism, basically they're saying, make your choice. Are you one of us? Are you one of them? Are you here? Are you there? Now, culture says, and people in the world of culture, we say the opposite. We say it's possible to be multiple. It's possible to have multiple belongings. So what extremism says, if you are a French Muslim, you can't be both, they say. Okay, choose your side. Be only a Muslim and forget your European identity. What we say is just the opposite. Yes, you can be a Muslim. You can be a secularist. You can be European. You can be a world citizen. And many things more. You can be multiple selves. So we have to understand this attack against multiplicity, against diversity, is a very integral part of this problem. And when we look at the practice of extremism, particularly in the Middle East, starting with Syria, how they attack historical sites, archaeological sites, but also beyond Syria, it is not a coincidence there's a systematic attack against things that we can call as our shared humanity, because those sites don't belong to the Syrian government. They don't belong to any group or any, you know, sectarian politics. They belong to humanity. It's part of our common history. So I think it's not a coincidence that they're deliberately attacking these sites and raising it down. When we look at the Paris attacks, again, they did not aim military sites or financial districts and financial sites. It was a lifestyle that was attacked. It was concerts, restaurants, you know, a certain way of living, but primarily culture. We need to understand that culture needs to be part of this discussion. I believe that people in the world of culture also need to start speaking up louder. Archbishop, I also want to show our audience a quote from an article that you wrote in Prospect Magazine back in 2014. You wrote that this struggle is not simply a religious conflict, but a terrible mix of ethnicity, economics, social unrest, injustice between rich and poor, limited access to resources, historic hatreds, post-colonial conflict and more. Often, though, in the media, this is described as a religious conflict. Why do you think that is? Why is that temptation to do that? Because it's an easy hook to hang things on. It simplifies things down. It means you can identify who's bad and who's good very quickly. You have a clear enemy. And the people who make the most of the identification in religious conflict are those who want to manipulate those within religious communities. Of course, it has very clear religious aspects. In fact, that's one of the things we completely forget very often in the way we analyze the problem. We look at and listening today to various things I've been at. You hear a lot about the sociology and the economics and many things like that, and those are absolutely crucial. I don't want to understate them at all. What you don't hear is what I'm hearing in this panel, which is very, very striking, is the narrative, and particularly the cultural, ideological, and theological narrative and how that presents something that is much more attractive than the extremism. We need to remember it's not just dash, that you can go to in almost all the major, well, I would say in all the major world faith traditions, including Christianity, there is a group which, as Misha Fak was just saying very eloquently, I'm very struck by what she said, that cannot tolerate diversity, cannot tolerate difference. And we have it in Christianity. You find it in every major world faith. What is it that is happening in our world at the moment that is bringing that out in restored violence and I would say that perhaps, arguably, we've not seen before, and certainly in Christianity, we've not seen since the end of the wars of the Reformation. And there is a theological narrative, and it seems to me that that's filling a vacuum left by an alternative narrative, and I think listening to the comments today I've been very struck by what's been said. All right, ladies and gentlemen, stay right there. We're going to take a quick break now, and we'll be back in just a few minutes with more on this very important debate and on this very important topic, how to counter violent extremism. Stay with us. This is our little break. This is the time to take a sip of water if you would like to. Okay, everyone ready? Let's do it. Welcome back to Davos and welcome back to this debate on how to counter violent extremism. And how we can respond to this problem, a global threat with local solutions. And we've talked about the current context. Now we're going to talk a little bit more about what we can do next, what we can do from now on. And I want to pick up on something that you pretty much all mentioned in the first part of the debate, and that is this changing of the narrative. You spoke about marketing, Sir Mohammed earlier, and I want to ask you about that. How do we market the right message, so to speak, to convince people not to join Daesh or not to join any other extremist violent group? I think there are a couple of objectives. One is about killing the brand in general. So it's an antibiotic that attacks everything and sort of prevents and works for the future, not just for the immediate term. It's to name and shame them, to show them for who they are. You speak that they are narrow and that they don't have a tolerance for others. Let's amplify that. So who would be Daesh's friends? Let's see. Non-Muslims, ex, within the Muslim community, they don't want the Sufis, they don't want the Shia. When it comes to the Sunnis, they only want a particular kind of Sunnis. So in a sense, this state will never be recognized by anybody. And in actual fact, if some have come to the conclusion that they do not pose an existential threat, I suppose it's because of that. I mean, if you look at the metrics, what are their numbers on the ground in Syria and in Europe? 30, 40,000? They are lethal because they control territory. They're not a typical terrorist organization. It's a hybrid sort of a monster that you have. They're into everything. They're into slavery. They're into rape. They're into extortion. They're into theft. They're into corruption. I mean, you can list all the sins that are there. And if you take one or two of them and amplify them to the would-be recruits, that would be enough. You can take someone who has been recruited by Daesh and who has tried to leave if they weren't killed trying to escape and who are disillusioned and use that story to amplify it. But I think you have to look at the audience. Who is it that you're trying to influence by this? If it is religion you're trying to protect or to display religion in its pure form, then you must allow that content to be dictated by those who are experts, by the clergy, by the Muslim clerics. But oftentimes people don't want to hear that. Daesh is not alluring them with sophisticated theologies. They're alluring them with promises. And you have to be clever in terms of marketing, in terms of how you go about it. For example, just a quick example, and then I will give the chance to others. Let us say the audience today, someone, it's very unlikely, wants to join Daesh. And they Google, where's the nearest Daesh recruiting station? You might get some links that might lead you to some terrorist organization. Now, what if you did that and the links took you to how to bake cakes or to change nappies or how to prune roses in a garden? I know that an attempt was made with a platform that will not be named, a search engine, and they were asked by companies, they said, we want to buy advertising. People that the minute someone enters how to make a bomb or we want them to be led to this sort of flings, and they refused. I think they're wrong. I think they have to businesses, platforms like search engines must think carefully about what it is that they are trying to do because sometimes they try to be protective of free speech and of liberties, but sometimes that can counter the public interest. A final thing, for example, this business of beheadings that we have seen, in my part of the world, every five-year-old has an iPhone. And these beheadings have been seen and watched by millions of children because that content is not prevented. There is no law that says you cannot have violent content in my part of the world. It's regulated in Europe and in America, but not everywhere because the legal system has not caught up with the technology yet. So there's that loophole. The effect that this has on children long-term is terrible. It's toxic. This must be stopped. There are a number of things that we can do to clean up the internet, the way we would clean up our streets. We have a number of things to pick up on there in your statement, Sir Mohamed. I want to turn to Archbishop Welby with one question and one thing that came out of what Sir Mohamed was just saying, and he was saying that perhaps sometimes religious leaders should take a step back to a certain extent, if I understood you correctly, Sir Mohamed. Yes, I mean, it's been said that, you know, the sunny clergy should come forth and defend the religion and said, but that's well known. Some of those who've been caught were caught with Islam for dummies in their raksak as they were heading to Syria. I do agree with his grace that we cannot hide away and say, no, the scriptures are sacrosanct and they don't. Maybe there are skeletons and we should face up to them, but you cannot take texts literally and apply them literally. Let's turn to the Archbishop. What do you think about that, this idea that perhaps it's best for religious leaders to not retreat completely, but take a step back perhaps? The answer to bad religion is not no religion but good religion. And I think the religious leaders, well, I can only speak as a Christian, but as a Christian, I would say that our role is to present the faith of Christ in a way that is so clearly full of the love and grace of God that it is an effective counter narrative in and of itself in the communities you see and how they welcome people. For instance, in the diocese and parishes we have in the Church of England where you have very significant Muslim majorities. One of my colleagues has been parish priest for 12 years in a parish like that. His relationships with local Muslims are absolutely wonderful. There is a constant exchange of friendship, of love, of welcome, of caring for each other when things are tough. It's quite a poor area. Now that is an effective antidote because it says don't pay attention to these people who say there is no purpose or call or hope for life in the West. In the example you're seeing, you see lives that are ultimately worthwhile because they're ultimately creative, not destructive. I want to turn to Mr Labarde as well. You're a judge, so Muhammad was also suggesting that there are some things that we can tighten up when it comes to the Internet to make sure that children, for instance, cannot access videos of atrocities online. Is that feasible from your perspective as a legal expert so to speak and from the international cooperation perspective? Well, first of all, the terrorist organization like Daesh uses so many means. So you can attach this one, okay, of course we can perhaps do something and probably it's not a question of a judge. I think that the transparent before will do it by itself, not to show all of that and the social medias also have to do that. What I want to say is that we have to face an organization which has means which are very fluid, flexible and adaptable. So each time you do something, they go to something else and in front of them you have states, governments, civil society and private sector. So probably here it's an occasion through which we should really link and by the way also in the civil society the representative of religions. So we have really to work, we have not to work anymore in silos. We have really to put this into the force together. What our colleagues said about the counter narrative is absolutely right, the culture, all of that. So that's the first issue. One answer will not be the right one. The second one, if we want really to do something through the media and when they want to do that, you know, this probably the words of the victims and the words of the former members of ISIL which these words which probably be the more efficient when they know that they have committed things which should not have been committed against human kind. That's where I see the real responses. Mr. Shafak, what do you say about that? Earlier you asked what would make things better. I think in order to understand that we should also ask ourselves what would make things worse, you know, and things can get worse. I'm afraid things are getting worse as we speak and in my opinion we need to analyse the practices that might make things even messier. One of that is stereotypes. Unfortunately, extremisms, they benefit enormously from the circulation of stereotypes. I travel a lot east and west and when I go to different parts of the western world I hear lots of women, particularly women, with all the good intentions in a way saying thank God I wasn't born over there and by there they mean the Middle East because they say, you know, they think had I been born there I would be suppressed and silenced so thank God I was born here. Then you go to the Middle East, different cities across the Muslim world and you come across women again with all the good intentions saying thank God I wasn't born over there because they think had they been born over there they would be reduced to their bodies. Now when you question these women how many Jewish friends do you have? How many Christian friends do you have? How many American friends have you got? It's usually zero, but they have an idea about what it means to be the other women, you know, what it means to be the other. Now all these information, all these stereotypes are making the situation worse. What I'm trying to say is I think we should refrain from generalizations. We make very, very easy generalizations about how Muslims live, how Christians are. There is no such thing as a single identity. Islam from the very beginning was multiple interpretations and today as well it is multiple voices. It is not a monolithic whole. Travel across the Middle East you will come across all kinds of different voices conflicting somehow coexisting but also clashing. One thing in my opinion that we urgently need to emphasize is how extremism in one place affects extremism elsewhere. Fear here triggers fear elsewhere. It is not a solution to say, okay let's close our doors, erect higher walls and let them deal with their own problems. I have come across people who say such things as well. That's not a solution because we're far too much interconnected. The Sufis always used to say, we are all of us interconnected, our stories are connected, our destinies are connected. So what I'm trying to say, Islamophobia in one place creates more anti-Western sentiments elsewhere and vice versa. We need to get out of this vicious circle and we need to stop generalizations. But how do we do that practically? How do we break the stereotypes? New answers, diversity. We have to understand most of the people who suffered in the hands of Islamic extremism and Muslims who are critical of that interpretation of Islam. There are multiple voices in the history, philosophy. When I read about Islamic mysticism it's incredibly similar to Jewish mysticism. When I read about Jewish mysticism it's amazingly similar to Christian mysticism. The heterodoxies, the mystics, those on the periphery of each Abrahamic religion were always saying the same things. The quest was so similar. But we have lost that. I hear a lot of talk about the Christian tradition. Of course there's a Judeo-Christian tradition. But do you hear anyone talking about Judeo-Christian Islamic tradition? Why don't we hear anyone talking about that? Is there no continuity? Are there no similarities? Of course there are differences. We can also talk about the differences but let's also talk about the similarities. So what we're losing is both the diversity within religions, the nuances, but also the emphasis on commonness, similarities from these mutually exclusive fake categories. It plays into their hands. Sir Mohamed, I saw that you wanted to come in there. I just want to read a statement that we have received via Twitter on the hashtag f24davosfromouraudience. Now this statement says that violent extremism can only be defeated by nonviolence, adding more policies, controls, etc. only feed violence and maintain fear. Mr. Shawiz, I want to ask you, do you think that perhaps there is too much of an emphasis on military solutions at this point in your country and also elsewhere in the region? Well first of all I just want to say I agree 100% with what Shafak said. And I see it's maybe the successful key for solving the problem outside the Middle East. Which is a way how to make a real climate between Muslim, non-Muslims immigrants population of the European countries and the Western countries. This will be the key, the way to think about multiplicity and multicultural and accepting the other and open-height to each other. But I want really to come back to the main problem. I still think that the main problem the origin of the main problem of extremism of Islamic extremism of Daesh is in our countries. It's in the Islamic world in the Arab countries specifically. This tendency in Islam was always there from the beginning of Islam. It wasn't strong. Sometimes it was strong, sometimes it was weak. But there were always people or a group in Islam which tried to gain power and control everything and impose their way of thinking or their way of life on the other people through violence. Let's say like that. Nowadays in our countries there is a certain climate which benefits the emergence of the strengthening of such thinking of such organization whether it is Daesh or another organization. There is sectarism. There is dictatorship. There is corruption. There is unjustice. There is no jobs. There is a lot of crisis which will remain as long as the shape of the governments will remain in these countries. So the solution in our countries maybe is useful to think in a way that the Western countries the people in our countries will try to find a form suitable to each country. Let's say Tunis in a way, Egypt in a way and Sweden somewhere else in Iraq but which has certain common conditions. Not to dictatorship not to sectarism yes to secularism yes to democracy yes to partnership and yes to constitutional institutions and then after reaching such solutions such political solutions these governments these good governments can only work and try to achieve justice and flourishing economy that create jobs and let the people live in a way that let them never think to hold a weapon or let them save, explore and kill other people. So Mohammed do you want to come in? I wanted to embrace wholeheartedly what Elif Shafak said that culture we are experiencing a vacuum in that there is no curiosity amongst neighbors to learn Turkish or Persian or Hebrew and when we are so weak in terms of culture then this allows others to come and divide us if you think of the vacuums that exist in Syria and to an extent in Iraq in Yemen and also in Libya and you reflect on the time when these vacuums didn't exist I'm not advertising the Qaddafi's or the Sadaf Hussein's or this world the ISIS's and ISIS did not flourish when there was a firm grip culture can be a firm grip to keep these people out and except if you look at Budapest the second largest synagogue I think in the world and the largest in Europe was built under the Ottomans hundreds of years ago in Turkish style so this business of embracing other cultures and learning from them existed is this happening still I don't think so I think that we need to go back to that we need to go back to embracing others because this also protects us from those who want us to be in silos like Marash Mr Shafak definitely not knowing history not knowing the past is part of the problem short memory a lot of culture collective in Turkey I see Istanbul as a city of urban as well had we been able to read history we would know how they were able to coexist but I honestly think we should criticize lots of things in the Middle East too lots of things need to change the problem is today we're very easily offended any word that is critical immediately we are you know enraged Rumi has a very nice line that he mentioned he said 800 years ago he said if you are irritated by every rub by every criticism how is your mirror going to be polished this is the way we grow this is the way societies grow we must emphasize freedom of speech press freedom and self-criticism and if I may add this I think patriarchy and sexism in component of the problem when you travel across the Middle East more and more streets belong to men public squares belong to men women are systematically being pushed into the private space and we are told our primary role is motherhood the domestic space we do not exist in politics in decision making very very little role that changes everything so the aggression the masculinity over masculinity a certain type of masculinity that's imposed from above I think it should be on the table and we should discuss that as well that's our culture that's our culture exactly I'm not sure that's our culture I mean the patriarchy it's a dominant culture it is a dominant culture but that doesn't mean it can't be changed there are moments it should be changed there are in history women who are very active again we have erased all information about those women Archbishop once again I agree I think all the main religious traditions have exhibited a history of patriarchy and that has created a culture in which a group of people in that case women were seen as somehow inferior once you've done that with one group of people it's very easy to do it you've created the atmosphere in which you can demonize or say that a group is dangerous and must be controlled eliminated whatever it happens to be I think that we have to be very conscious of that again speaking as a religious leader within many faith traditions and within the Christian tradition there is the idea of the essential dignity of every single human being regardless of who they are the reclaiming the proclamation of that the absolute standing on that in our political statements in our commercial actions in education in health treatment in all the key areas of life is essential in order to show an alternative way yes we had the Security Council of the Nations have perfectly identified the issue of the importance of the involvement of women first of all because also there are women in Daesh and particularly in France we have also to see that for example in August 40% of the foreign terrorist fighters were women but the point is that we had a debate in November in the Security Council on this issue about the involvement of women and I really feel that it is directly connected to the fact that we will never defeat a terrorist organization without the involvement of the civil society if we speak a bit about civil society how many women are in the civil society more than half of the civil society so it means that even in terms of numbers how we can work on these issues without involving women especially also I would like to say in the law enforcement forces in the law enforcement forces the number of women are so low so it means that for example of terrorist organizations I think about what happened to the Yazi especially I say who will take the statements of these women only men how it could be that's something which is not acceptable so being a society and fighting against a terrorist organization which really set its basis on the civil society how we can do that that's really something that I am pushing I am determined to continue to push in the civil society and this is essential in the fight against Daesh but also it's not only Daesh it's how the people join the Daesh when they are when they have enough even welfare around them this is outside of the Middle East in Tunisia yes after the Arab Spring in which Tunisia was a kind of first light of the Arab Spring how many people are going there now probably one of the highest number in the of the persons joining Daesh come from Tunisia etc what is that? it is because probably we have not taken into consideration enough certain elements the welfare the development defined as you said Mohammed there was no job for these people they are joining but also because they are frustration of not being considered as part of the civil society especially for the women at this stage we are going to turn to the audience here in Daesh from you what I would like you to do is well stretch up your arms and let yourself be known to me we have roving microphones in the room so I think we will yes gentlemen right there in the front row remember questions please keep them fairly brief no statements could I ask the panel how important they think a resolution in Syria is to the defeat of Daesh and are we making progress in that regard anybody feels the urge to answer that question so Mohammed I think it is essential to destroy them on the ground because they have built it this should have caliphate and it is a destination if that did not exist as it didn't when they were ruled by Saddam etc then they would lose a lot and also the revenues that they are getting out of corruption and selling oil so that is essential but that doesn't mean that that alone would defeat them I think it's like grass you have to keep cutting it you cannot just do it once and it disappears very much like the drug dealers and drug cartels they also kill our kids and you know you cannot just do one action and put them to an end I think it is essential but you have to address the other issues as well now we have another question from twitter once again the hashtag f24davos the question is how can and should social media be used to combat violent extremism is Shafiq yes I think the role of social media is not analysed enough because there was a time during the Arab Spring the early stages of Arab Spring we over romanticised the role of social media there was an expectation that Facebook was going to bring more freedom stories of children being named Facebook we should not over romanticise the social media is like the moon it has two sides it has a bright side and it has a dark side and we should see both of them on the dark side unfortunately it makes it easier to circulate information that serves to the hands of the extremists misinformation slander but hate speech particularly hate speech against minorities those who are in a more vulnerable position it makes it much more easier but on the bright side it really helps people to connect at a more egalitarian level and I think that is very important when you look at Facebook and Twitter users and the reason why I emphasise these twists for many of my friends in England for instance in France in Spain these platforms are mostly about the movies you watch the food you eat, the restaurants you visit but for people in Turkey for instance Twitter is also about politics what I'm trying to say is that social media has been very politicised in places where the mainstream media was curbed and there is more and more pressure on press freedoms you see an increase in the importance of social media so these are also political platforms if I may add this when you look at the statistics the number of people using social media we mentioned in the public space women are being pushed back but in social media half of Facebook users Twitter users are women and somehow they find it easier to express themselves there is a big potential there we have another question in the front row from the lady in blue thank you and thanks to the panel very much enjoyed that I wonder how important you think the word violent is in the title here do you think the target of counter radicalisation efforts should be on those who don't just have extreme thoughts but want to take actions or do you also think the target should be just thought so extreme thought any takers when it comes to that question Archbishop this is a big debate in the UK at the moment we have to there are certain slippery slopes that once you start believing a certain way it leads you inexorably to violence if we go back 20 or more years to the Rwanda genocide the moment you started seeing a group of people as cockroaches as they were called on the radio then that might just be a thought but it opens the way to violence but we cannot Queen Elizabeth I said if you would excuse the gender based language we cannot make windows into men's souls was the phrase she used we cannot look into the inner heart of a person and therefore I think we have to be very careful about thought control to educate yes to inspire even better to make things hard to think better still because they not just because they are unacceptable but because it's just contrary to the whole way we look at what a human being is but to control thought is taking on the values that we are trying to oppose and so yes if it's part of that cockroach thing the demeaning of people that leads it to be easy to kill and attack them that has to be dealt with but extremism in its own who's an extremist I mean Martin Luther King in one sense was an extremist and thank God he existed we have a gentleman in the front row in the blue tie it's on the political side I think shouldn't we be showing also tolerance like in Tunisia and in Arab Spring some governments came into power because people voted for them but the rest of the world didn't have the tolerance and they were removed like in Egypt and all so when we talk of democracy then we must believe in that what's your view because we want democracy and if we show tolerance then some of these religious parties can be spoken to and brought to the table if they get elected any thoughts on that I think the example of Tunisia they have made some very difficult choices the people the politicians in Tunisia from all parties they agreed to make painful compromises and perhaps they're the only place that painful compromises have been made on the part of the religious parties and the secular parties and they came to these compromises when they realized that the future would be very bleak if they didn't it was painful but it's possible now the irony in Tunisia is that they have not received the FDIs that allow the economy to have the oxygen to function so they've delivered on democracy but where is their economy I think the world has a lot to answer to in a place like Tunisia that has succeeded in establishing and bringing dissenting parties together if we don't make sure that that is a success what are we saying to the people of Yemen what are we saying to the people of Libya what are we saying to the people of Syria even to the people you know so I think we have to be very careful that those people are successful that we reward them and that by doing so there is hope that after you stood up to your dictators and removed them and formed a government that you rewarded I have a Tunisian friend who was in the World Bank and who was enrolled in finance they said at the time of Ben Ali the funds were coming when we got rid of him there were no investments and they said that with a lot of sadness we are quickly running out of time so at this stage I am going to ask our panellists to perhaps summarise your thoughts on this session and also what you think what we can do practically at this stage one step perhaps that we can take in order to start resolving this issue and to start countering violent extremism Jean Poulabard if I may ask ask you to start when it comes to this part of the debate peace and security will not work without inclusiveness and especially women that's my word that's a very concise message thank you very much indeed Archbishop I would say you can't do you can't create peace and security by doing things to them you have to be alongside doing things with people and that again brings us back to inclusion Sam Mohamed I say I'm optimistic I think that Daesh will be defeated because they don't have much to sell I think we have to improve our act and take back the internet from them and work better with the local communities so that they are better equipped to deal with the dilemmas that they are faced if a foreign fighter returns or if someone who is showing radical thoughts appears they need to be able to respond to that and governments are doing but they must do a bit more and a bit better to ensure that the local communities the schools the places of worship the vulnerable have access to either like an alcoholics anonymous phone line to help the families and those who might be vulnerable to seek some refuge we can do it and we can do it easily it just needs to set our minds to it I think there is a widespread tendency maybe also connected to a question to see stability you know because we are so in need of stability we have started to sacrifice democracy and I find that a very very dangerous trend democracy freedom of speech press freedom women's rights minority rights these are not postponable issues the urgent issues they need to be raised so my approach would be without abandoning democracy without abandoning our emphasis on democracy definitely but also acting as world citizens and multiplying our belongings would be my solution or my approach Mr. Shawis? Well I would like to say that it is a struggle between civilization and non-civilization it is very important to know the roots roots and origin of extremism and violence especially Daesh and Islamic extremism it is also important to gather every possible possibility force to tackle this monster on every level cultural economical political and so on Alright we unfortunately have run out of time this session has passed incredibly quickly and I want to thank you very much indeed for taking part in this session I was fascinated by the discussion about changing the message changing the narrative thinking about marketing the use of social media in basically making a positive message and not just the negative often provided by a Daesh or Islamic State group I want to thank our audience as well for being part in today's session and for coming up with all of your questions last but certainly not least I want to thank you at home for watching France 24 do stay with us goodbye from Davos