 Good morning everybody. The hearty few who trekked through the wilds of the Washington winter welcome. My name is Nancy Lindbergh. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace and very happy to see you. I want to invite people to keep coming on down to the front and we hope that folks will continue to join us through the morning. Great to see so many friends and colleagues. And for those of you who are relatively new to USIP, just a note that we were founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent federal nonpartisan institution dedicated to the proposition that peace is a very practical undertaking and that it's very possible and absolutely essential for global and national security. And so USIP realizes our vision of a world without violent conflict by working globally with partners on the ground in conflict zones, equipping them with the kind of research tools and approaches that enable them to prevent violent conflict or to resolve it when it does become violent. So we are delighted to host this event this morning. I want to welcome an old friend and colleague, Alina Romanowski, who's the Acting Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism. And I'll introduce her more properly in a moment, but we're very grateful for the collaboration with Alina and her team, especially Oliver Wilcox who will be on the panel this morning, who's also an old friend and colleague. And he along with several wonderful colleagues, Robin Simcox, who's a Thatcher Fellow at Heritage, a terrific partner of ours, and one of our USIP fellows, Dr. Anne Wainscott. And they will be joined by Melissa Nozell, who is one of our specialists here at USIP, who co-authored the paper today that will be launched a special report on the role of religious actors in countering violent extremism. So together, our panel will consider how policymakers and practitioners can work better with people of faith to prevent and resolve and combat violent extremism. This is a critical issue, especially, you know, it has been for a number of years, but especially right now as we look at the near defeat of ISIS from holding territory in Iraq and increasingly Syria and recognize that ultimately these will not be military solutions. So what are the ways to most effectively engage with religious actors around the world? And the special report, and I urge you to pick up a copy, takes a look at that. And we will have a terrific discussion with this group exploring that about, and especially how do we translate this kind of research, these learnings, these policies into practice. USIP operates on the understanding that there will always be conflict in the world. And the question is, how do we better understand how conflict can be transformative as opposed to violent violence? And one of the keys to doing this is to really understand more deeply the underlying complex causes and drivers of violent extremism. And in this case, the critical role of religious actors is a very important part of this and part of an ongoing debate that we'll hear more about today. So we're looking forward to a very interesting and timely conversation. And it is my great pleasure now to introduce Alina Romanowski, who has been the principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism at state since November 2016. There she oversees the coordination and integration of State Department and US government's international efforts to advance specific counterterrorism policy objectives and develops and implements programs to counter violent extremism. She was previously at state as the coordinator for US assistance to Europe and Eurasia. I had the great pleasure of serving alongside Alina at USAID, where she was both the deputy assistant administrator at the Middle East Bureau and also the acting administrator. 13 years at the Department of Defense with a long roster of awards. And I just want to say that especially these days, Alina really exemplifies the kind of public service her entire career has been in public service. I know many of you here in this room have spent your lives in public service. And this is an extraordinarily important calling. So thank you to all of you and please join me in welcoming and thanking Alina. And I'm glad everybody's here or navigated the few inches of snow. I'm from Chicago. So whenever I see this, I think what is this again? Washington after being here almost 38 years, I'm thinking they still don't have the snow plow thing down, but I'm glad you were able to come because I think this is really an exciting, really exciting and very important event. Nancy, thank you for that really warm introduction and also for a great shout out for public service. I think many of you who have been in and out of government who are considering it, I strongly encourage you to do it because there's nothing better than being able to shape policy and recommendations and then most importantly, rely on all of you outside in the private sector and academia for helping us to shape really important issues of the day. And thanks, USIP also for working this event and for letting us be part of collaborating and thinking about how we can shape a conversation about this important topic. Thanks to Peter Mandeville and Melissa Nozel and Susie Hayward and other experts for their ongoing work on this important issue and and very much congratulate Peter and Melissa for the publication in August of the of the report on engaging religion and religious actors in countering violent extremism. I just want to leave you with a couple of thoughts as I helped to kick off this important conversation today. Religious leaders, communities and institutions really have a critical role to play in preventing and countering violent extremism. But I think you'll hear today that the role is pretty complex. We have been doing a lot of programming in this bureau. My experience at AID also, when we were working on these issues, you really do need community based engagement, very focused and working with all of the members and actors in a community to go after those who are recruiting, inspiring the younger generation and others in the community, but also to engage with the community to make sure that there's a different there's a different message. There are different alternative. There are different approaches to terrorism and to violent radicalization. So when you look at the religious leaders, we think they play a very critical role, but you can't just assume that just because of their theological or moral authority that such actors are automatically effective in CVE efforts. And I think this conversation will show how what the special role that religious leaders can play. Religious actors, like many others who are engaged in this, are going to face their own challenges in the CVE space. They include not only having the ability to influence or the media skills to connect with specific vulnerable populations. We always assume that they have an all knowing approach, but I think being able to help them in engaging with this unique population is also a very important opportunity and important role that we can help in part our best practices and our knowledge as well. We have found also that effective CVE work needs multiple community based actors, partnering and working together. And how do you collaborate with teachers, social workers and others and everybody comes at it with a very unique perspective with unique talents and how do you pull all that together? Very much we advocate a whole society approach to it and we've seen some pretty positive impact across the board over the last couple years that we've been doing a lot of this. It's also really imperative that the younger religious leaders are included in the CVE. As many of you know, if you have kids, they listen to their peers more than they listen to their parents. So the more you can find peers to talk to them about their life experiences or if they are not very many life experiences, at least to be able to help shape their understanding of it. But generationally and socially, the younger religious leaders are important to engage and I know we're not supposed to talk about age because that's not appropriate, but let's be honest, it really is an important, it can be a very important factor in engaging the community. Also for their part, let's not forget that women can hold informal religious positions or influence within their own social or community circles and how does that get brought into the conversation as well? So if we forget about these interesting dynamics and unique positions, I think sometimes we can limit our reach and our influence of a CVE engagement and what we're trying to do. And as I said, research I think has showed and also practical experience demonstrates that youth are often more influenced by their peers. So let's get their peers involved. I think USIP is a wonderful place where we can have this conversation because they have already been involved in a whole range of conflict prevention and post-conflict reconciliation context around the world. So I think this is a very good environment where not only can they bring like-minded people together, but they can bring their vast experience in conflict resolution and to the table in these conversations. The challenges I think for policymakers and practitioners is how do we learn from this? How do we leverage and adapt the areas of earlier work to the CVE objective? And you know it's changing all the time, because guess what? The terrorists are also, frankly, in many cases, one step ahead of us on the messaging and how they're engaging, particularly when you look at their use of the Internet. So that we certainly are looking forward to this dialogue today and to hear the feedback on the conclusions and the recommendations that all of you will come to, I'm sure, brilliantly by the end of the day, because we learn a lot from not just the publications that USIP puts out and others, frankly, in the community, but also just the conversation. It's a live, real conversation and a sense of the different views are really important, because as you know, when it comes to community-based engagement, it's very specific to the dynamics of a community sometimes, when people are being recruited and young people are being encouraged and inspired to go down a pretty wrong path. So I leave you with a couple of thoughts. Let you know that we are very interested in your feedback and your observations. Oliver is here to get into a little greater detail about sort of our approach and our policies. I sort of feel like I've come out of a couple of months of deep dives on reframing much of what we are doing on counterterrorism policy at the State Department and in the community. But I think it is very clear to us that working in the CVE space is a very important component of our policy. It's just a question of how do we do it, how do we bring the best practices, and how do we make sure that we are focusing in the right areas? Because this is, as many of you know, we're in for the long haul, and we're all working hard in this area. And we really need to spend a lot of time sharing our views and our thoughts on it. So I thank you for participating, and I thank you also for an active conversation and welcome very much hearing the feedback. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to you guys and launch the day. So thank you, and Nancy, again, thanks. Great seeing you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Ms. Romanowski. Thank you, Nancy, for your remarks. And thank you all for being here today. Thank you to those who are tuning in online through the webcast and for being here, all of you in the room for Bracing the Storm. Let me start by giving you a little background to the creation of this USIP report. Over the past few years, policymakers and peace-building practitioners have become increasingly interested in the role of religion and religious actors to prevent and counter violent extremism. Yet, as you've heard from my colleagues, there remain gaps in understanding how and when to most effectively work with religious ideas, actors and institutions. This is in part due to lack of understanding about precisely how religion intersects with extremism more broadly. There have been many recent efforts globally to address the intersection of religion and CVE, including several that have been convened by USIP. In 2014, in partnership with the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers, USIP convened religious actors. That is formal religious clerics and those not necessarily formally trained will operate in a religious framework, including women and youth who are working to counter and prevent violent extremism. We brought them here to D.C. to speak with US policymakers. We learned from them that among many challenges they face, many religious actors felt they could not trust their government or security officials, despite the fact that their goals to live in a peaceful society were often shared. The network and USIP subsequently convened religious actors and representatives from the government and security sectors from a dozen countries all working on issues of CVE. We wanted to create a safe space in which to build bridges and to create better cross-sectoral understanding and trust. At the same time, we wanted to increase our own understanding of some of the challenges and good practices to better implement CVE policy inclusively on the ground in partnership with religious actors. We sought to facilitate a frank and sometimes challenging dialogue between religious actors working locally and government representatives working at the federal or international level. In addition to these symposia convened by USIP, there have been many other events convened worldwide in Africa by the U.K. government or the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. Peter Randeville and I summarized the themes of these conversations in our report Engaging Religion and Religious Actors Encountering Violent Extremism. We sought to distill the emerging lessons from these conversations worldwide with the aim to offer recommendations for policymakers and practitioners seeking to engage religious actors effectively and sensitively to prevent and counter violent extremism. In a moment, Peter, joining us by video, will highlight some of the key recommendations from the report. His remarks will be followed by responses from my colleagues here. But first, a couple housekeeping notes. We're taking questions, your question cards that you should have received when you arrived at the entrance. And my colleagues who are standing in the aisles, Chelsea and Tonus, will be taking your cards when you're ready. So if you have a question that you've written down on your question card, just hold it in the air and they'll keep an eye out and they will collect your cards for you. And we encourage you to submit your questions sooner rather than later to ensure that we may be able to answer your questions. If you'd like to join the conversation online or if you're already participating virtually, we're using the hashtag religion CVE USIP. A quick side note. I won't be giving lengthy biographical details for each speaker. You have those in the bios that you should have received when you arrived. Turning back to Peter. Peter Mandeville is the Professor of International Affairs in the Shara School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as senior advisor in the Secretary of State's Office on Religion and Global Affairs at the U.S. State Department. And in 2011 to 2012 was a member of Secretary Hillary Clinton's policy planning staff where he helped to shape the U.S. response to the Arab Spring. He's also the lead author of this special report. Unfortunately, we could not have him here in person today because of his travels, but he sent his video remarks. Good morning everyone. I'm very sorry not to be there in person and particularly to miss so many good friends and former colleagues that I know are in the audience. I wanted to spend a few minutes in this brief video talking about some of the recommendations for practitioners and policymakers that are contained in the report that Melissa and I wrote together on engaging religion and religious actors in the context of countering violent extremism or CVE. We kind of started from the observation that almost everyone involved in CVE tends to operate with the assumption that religion is part of the picture, part of the equation if you will in some sense, but that we rarely drill down in any detail to kind of put some more granularity on that observation. So one of the starting points that comes out of our report is the idea that asking whether religion is present as a factor that contributes to violent extremism, the question of whether religion is there or how much, as if the goal should be to quantify how much religion is present, that's not always the most helpful way to begin and that we may more immediately get a better handle on the issue by rather paying attention to the question of what more specific role or function religion is playing in any given instance of violent extremism. So for example in a situation where religion is primarily providing a sense of identity or solidarity, a form of social bonding if you will, that that's one kind of function that religion might play and in a different kind of situation where for example specific religious teachings or religious law is being used to justify specific forms of behavior such as violent acts that might otherwise be considered beyond the pale, that's a rather different kind of function. And so the way that you think about religion and violent extremism and the way you think about responding to it, including responding with religion, will vary depending on what role or function religion is playing. Second recommendation that we have is to urge practitioners and policymakers to be careful about thinking about religious leaders and religious institutions as entities that should first and foremost provide something like theological antidotes to violent extremism or religious justifications of violent extremism. In our observation there's often a kind of tendency to assume that there is something like violent extremist groups out there that put bad religion out and so if you kind of try to respond to that by disseminating good religion or moderate religion as the vocabulary often goes, that somehow you'll negate the effect of the bad religion and you know it's our sense that the situation is just far more complex than that and that the reasons why appeals to young people, efforts to recruit them into violent extremist movements are often successful, is not just about whether or not a compelling or ideologically sound religious narrative has been provided, there are a whole host of other factors and kind of thinking that you can effectively counter or negate this and you know thinking that that you're going to put on to religious leaders the responsibility of doing so through theological discourse it's not always the best way to proceed so in that regard what we would encourage CVE practitioners and policymakers to think about instead is rather the idea that religious leaders, religious institutions may be relevant partners for addressing many different contributing factors to violent extremism so for example we know that you know an individual's personal experience of violence, certain kinds of personalized corruption in some instances, socioeconomic deprivation, alienation from society these are all relevant contributing factors to violent extremism and so our argument would be that there is a role for religious leaders in these kinds of programs and approaches as well even when and where religion is not necessarily explicitly present in the CVE contributing factor that you're trying to address another recommendation we have is to make sure that one's engagement with religion is broad and inclusive it's been our observation that there is a tendency to think of the relevant religious leaders as being people who hold formal religious roles and this this produces you know what we often term the the old men and funny hats effect that the assumption is that the people who carry certain kinds of titles or who sit on top of certain kinds of formalized religious hierarchies are the most relevant and important and effective religious voices and leaders to engage in this this simply isn't the case so we would particularly urge CVE practitioners and policymakers to focus on the importance of engaging younger religious leaders and particularly engaging women as religious leaders it's certainly the case that in many religious traditions women don't always hold the formal roles and formal titles but as many sociologists and anthropologists of religion will tell you in many communities women do play very important roles as makers and shapers of religious knowledge and as thought leaders and shapers of opinion there's a caveat here however in that in that there is I think probably some risk of replacing I guess one stereotype with another because what we're not arguing is that women should be engaged in CVE because the religious discourse of women is always somehow peaceful and progressive that that's certainly not the case there are many women religious leaders in multiple traditions that that actually take a pretty hard line on many issues so you know this is just a kind of qualification to that which which kind of warrants against the assumption that the nature of of theology you know as as articulated by women religious leaders necessarily looks a certain way the the last couple of recommendations I want to touch on really are ones that that I guess are primarily aimed at governments and you know policymakers government officials one is that I think it's important to be careful that CVE does not become a form of top cover that governments might use to increase their authoritarian practices to regulate ever more sectors of life including religion you know that that governments don't use CVE as a pretext for for control and and to engage in certain forms of what are in effect human rights violations that they're kind of packaging and selling you know as as counter terrorism or countering of violent extremism and you know this extends also to the realm of religious freedom we we need to make sure that that religious freedom is not encroached upon in the name of CVE the final recommendation is one that relates to the way that governments themselves talk about religion you know particularly you know government such as that of the United States we feel need to avoid appearing to take positions on matters of theology for any number of reasons obviously the United States government is not recognized as a religious authority it has no standing in the eyes of many adherents to various world religions to put forward views about what is and is not a correct interpretation of religion case of the US government there's also very good legal reasons for not doing so of course you know we have in the US constitution in the first amendment you know the establishment clause which prohibits the federal government from effectively taking position on matters of theology taking normative positions with respect to religion and just generally speaking we think that there is at least as much risk of doing harm as there is likelihood of doing good when governments become entangled and insert themselves into complex and in many cases centuries long debates about particular theological concepts and and terms I think there's also a kind of corollary to this latter point which which kind of relates to the sorts of religious institutions and leaders that are regarded as what are often termed credible voices there are any number of governments around the world that have you know since the rise of cve put forward religious institutions and leaders in their country as potential partners for the united states and other governments with respect to cve activities the the problem here i think is that while many of the scholars associated with state-run religious institutions you know do have strong religious credentials and and you know the the the relevant formal credentials often these institutions are regarded by populations more broadly as little more than mouthpieces of the governments in question and so you know their their effectiveness i think needs to often be questioned and likewise just the idea that governments of any sort would be pointing to particular religious leaders because they happen to like the views that they're putting forward it's our concern that governments pointing to particular religious leaders will often have the likelihood or like will likely have the effect of if anything simply discrediting that person as a legitimate voice so you know the this is a you know brief overview of some of the key recommendation that have come out of our our report and very grateful to all of you for for coming out this morning sorry again not to be with you and i i hope you have a great discussion today thank you to peter for his video message and for distinctly summarizing some of the recommendations from the report i would now like to invite my colleagues here to offer some of their reflections and responses to those recommendations let's start with Robin Simcox he's the Margaret Thatcher fellow at the Heritage Foundation where he specializes in counter terrorism and national security policy Robin thank you for joining us thank you minister um thank you for all being here and and thanks to usip for inviting me to speak um i think it's a great paper and congratulations on it i think it's a really important uh contribution to the discussion um i'm going to go through some of the areas in which i agree and maybe a couple of the areas where i i either disagree or have some caution and hopefully will not be overly contrarian in doing so but but we'll perhaps kickstart a conversation um so i think when it comes to the role of religious leaders i i yeah for sure they definitely need to be involved in cve um i suppose the question is who and to what extent so um you may be able to tell i'm i'm not from the states my i i'm from the uk originally and uh a lot of my experiences is is shaped really by the experience we've had with that in the uk so some of my comments are going to be through that lens um my experience of this is at cve and the the question of religious engagement looks very different not only region by region but also even country by country um so one of the things that i am concerned about one of the things that happened in the uk when we looked at this subject initially um even going back to 1990s uh was how do you avoid the situation where self-appointed religious gatekeepers spring up so uh the example from the uk would be um there was uh the board of british deputies uh is a a Jewish organization that was created by the government that was meant to reflect Jewish opinion in the uk so uh the conservative government at the time thought well it would be quite useful if we had a muslim equivalent so they encouraged the creation of the muslim council of britain in the late 1990s what ended up happening with the muslim council of britain was that it was dominated by a very specific world view um it was a quite uh minority world view it was much of the leadership was associated with uh jamati islam in other south asian political islamist groups and so as a result the engage the the advice that government were getting back on on muslim issues for one of the better phrase was very much and through that specific lens and i think that's a kind of it's a real lesson as to what happens when government policymakers civil servants get lazy and they think well just tell me what muslims think i think that was the the mindset at the time and the result is you only get one specific viewpoint rather than the plurality which reflects the plurality of muslim opinion so that was a real issue we faced in the uk and one i think we're still working to on peg on the the credibility issue which the paper delves into and peter referred to there from from the paper it says uh too often credible voices end up being code for religious figures who articulate views aligned with official government policy or who refrain from directly criticizing political leaders i think that's one of those those situations which differ country by country because again from the uk perspective what ended up happening was that it was actually the real kind of liberal progressive wing so the quillian foundations of this world if we're familiar with them those who were who were vaguely supportive basically supportive of government policy they were the ones that actually ended up being dismissed as the least credible because they were seen as being if not working handing glove with the government and working closely with them so it may be that the most credible aren't always the ones that says they're critical of both government policy um and isis or al-qaeda i i also i'm i think a bit a bit to the the fringes on this on this debate on this issue but i i also think credibility isn't necessarily the be all and the end all at the moment um it's it's it's a kind of slippery phrase and i don't think we're always entirely sure what it it means or what we want from credible voices because the credible voice at the moment may be the one that um it may just mean giving government funding or patronage to the most well organized political islamist groups who may not share basic values but are willing to criticize isis and therefore be portrayed as the good guys and i don't think that's always a fair characterization i think when we when we obsess about credibility the bar can be ended up lowering uh too much to an extent i certainly i'm i'm not really comfortable with and i sort of feel the same about perception i think governments worry too much about perception um their involvement and you know when i speak to government officials certainly in the uk it's like it was so much focused on well if we can just get our adversaries to like us how does how do we fix how do we move cv policy so that our our adversaries and our ideological competitors will come to see our point of view my thought is is that that is that's essentially chasing a phantom their the the entire narrative in the way that some of these islamist narratives work in terms of recruitment is that there's always going to be some new grievance so i think that if governments are endlessly fixated on how they're perceived rather than just following the policy they think is the most uh the most useful then that they're constantly going to be disappointed um on the subject and again this is something that paper gets to which i think it's really important and uh once a government gives money to an organization what extent can it then dictate that organization's output or should it have ownership over the views of that organization i think that obviously you don't want government money shouldn't come attached to saying to all of all of a sudden organization should believe or push out abc d and e even if it doesn't believe it i what i would say though is that i think at the very least you should you should want there to be no harm done so the example i think of from the u k is there was an organization created called the radical middle way it was u k government funded but not specifically uh run by the u k government and one of the first things it did was set up a debate in east london um which was uh is democracy the best form of governance for the u k and it invited a member of the revolutionary islamist party here's what to hear onto the panel because it was you know want to broad church and want to engage all voices and what happens of course is the guy on ht from is what to hear invites all his mates into the audience the entire audience ends up being dominated by ht there's a big vote at the end is democracy the best form of governance for the uk and 95 percent of the people say no i mean doesn't strike me as a fantastic use of government money um and you know so we're moving onto the kind of moderate the use of moderate as a as a i mean i understand why the skepticism around that phrase it it doesn't necessarily mean that much it's not perfect but i do think we should um i'm not against the idea of establishing some some basic principles of around the terms of cv engagement um in the uk we've done this and with some controversy and i guess mixed success but the government has a policy now they won't fund organization that aren't supportive of british values can argue about the definition of british values but the ones that the uk government has used as democracy the rule of law individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs you there will be disagreement in that i don't think it's an especially unreasonable bar to set um but that and that's where i'd lead on to the area where i will conclude but one of the things that i think the report brings out especially well and i think is very important is um the downsides of dealing exclusively and kind of outsourcing cv um to uh quieter Salafism and other politicalismist groups um so this has been a this is a theory that is very common it comes up again and again certainly in the uk the idea that that those sorts of actors are a firewall from the really bad guys of al-qaeda and isis and i suppose the the perfect example of that from the uk would be when abu hamzara al-masri salafi jihadi clarek who was running finsry park mosque in the 1990s when the government was trying to kind of remove control remove his control from that mosque because it because he was he was producing a conveyor belt of people who were going off to fight in afghanistan and and plotting attacks and the rest of it there was an arrangement come come to that was um pioneered by bob lander who was a police officer within the muslim contact unit of the london metropolitan police where control of the mosque went from the salafi jihadist to a group of muslim brotherhood or hamas linked guys operating in the uk i'm i just i just feel as if that's not really the way forward i mean some people regard that as a great success i think that our policy a good cv policy has to be focused more on the counter terrorism of here and now and and ideally would help to create some more integrated cohesive societies based upon shared values that may not be possible if it isn't possible i at least want cv policies to do no harm and i think too often in the past some of them have so i'll stop there thank you robin for your thought provoking comments next i'd like to invite anwayne scott to speak an is the american academy of religion senior fellow at usip and she's also professor of political science at miami university her research has focused on state management of religion and cpe efforts which is also addressed in her recent book bureaucratizing islam morocco and the war on terror thank you an thank you melissa you unwittingly gave me a promotion i'm actually an assistant professor but someday we'll hopefully be a full professor it's such a pleasure to be here with you all to discuss this very important topic which peter and melissa have laid such a strong foundation for our conversation and i look forward to your comments i'd like to switch the focus from the topic of religious engagement to focus on the state and how states play a central role in the intersection of religion and cpe the u.s government's policy of a war on terror in response to 9 11 initiated perhaps unwittingly massive and unprecedented increase in religious regulation around the world almost exclusively focused on muslim communities whether islam was a majority or minority faith in a country doesn't seem to have mattered or doesn't seem to have limited the the ability of states to claim that they needed to regulate religion in a more comprehensive way in the name of national security from ethiopia to cameroon russia to chile states are using war on terror legislation to imprison journalists human rights activists and members of political and ethnic opposition movements but more specifically states are a central actor in the religion and cv e space they largely control the funds for cv efforts they control security institutions and security discourse and they can shape regulations for religious communities one common intersection of religion and cv e where states are playing the dominant role is the increased regulation of religion in the name of fighting terrorism in china in 2017 tremendous regulation of muslim communities was done in the name of state security the de-extremification regulation by local authorities banned burqas veils and quote-unquote abnormal beards as extremist behavior in april the state banned a list of muslim names parents who don't do not comply risk losing education and health benefits for their children these actions are defended as a way of protecting state security but are obviously about discriminating against an ethnic and religious minority who have serious political grievances many other states have followed suit though i think china has gone a bit far this behavior is as i'm sure you imagine the exact opposite of what the report recommends in mandaville and nozel's words quote do not let cv e become a pretense for proscribing religion the risk is real that some governments may use cv e policy discourse top cover for violations of religious freedom and other human rights or to crack down on religious groups or forms of religious expression that they perceive of as political opposition unquote now it's not just states around the world who are regulating religion in concerning ways i think there's a particular class of states that we ought to pay close attention to these are states with religious identities that give them a kind of unique position since they can shape religious discourse through the adoption of state-sponsored theologies given the focus on islam and cv e efforts states that identify as islamic states or muslim states and their founding documents are uniquely positioned to shape the confluence of religion and cv e states such as saudi arabia iran afghanistan pakistan other gulf monarchies morocco moretania etc one distinct manifestation of the concerted effort to control the religious field in the name of fighting terrorism has been the increasing sophistication of these state-sponsored theologies while morocco and jordan have been perhaps the most successful at branding themselves the moderate muslims or as our friend mahmood mamdani calls the good muslims states such as saudi arabia are now claiming that they are the bearers of tolerant and moderate islam yet again mandevil and nozel recommend the opposite course quote avoid endorsing particular interpretations of religion or using religious language symbols in official government documents state voices are generally not regarded as credible voices when it comes to religion referencing specific interpretations of religion or approved religious actors risks discrediting or even harming those cited unquote in the end my view is that moderate islam is a public relations campaign for the regime when i was researching my book bureaucratizing islam morocco in the war on tear which looks at how morocco has instrumentalized its own religious identity in the name of fighting terrorism i was even i was surprised at how blatant the pr nature of this initiative is so i'm sure many of you are familiar with morocco's efforts to train foreign imams in the country's moroccan moderate islam this imam training center has brought the country literally endless good pr if you google search for videos on the mohammed the sixth center for the training of imams and morsy the morsy that you will find a number of videos associated press france van katra trt world zaf Germany agents of press african pbs news hour it goes on and on so i was a little surprised that when i arrived i was denied entry repeatedly to this imam training center i was told i need a permit when i went to request the permit at the ministry of islamic affairs i was subject to Byzantine and constantly changing rules about when i would receive said permit including being handed a white sheet of blank paper and told to write my request it would be taken directly to the minister it did not take me long to realize that this initiative is more about projecting an image of morocco as a moderate country than it is about training moderate imams a few words to conclude though i personally view these legislative and institutional changes to be a concerning infringement on the freedom of religion and frequently a clumsy effort at managing the activities of opposition activists human rights activists and journalists in the name of preventing terrorism i think we better talk about the fact that increased regulation of the religious sphere is frequently what is being demanded by citizens and sometimes even religious leaders indeed this might be the most complicated aspect of the relationship between religion and cv e for those especially for those concerned with religious freedom as so many in washington are should organizations institutions and even governments oppose these regulations which are so blatantly meant to limit the freedom of speech association and religion even if states on citizens are demanding them the conversation quickly becomes one about the nature of democracy itself finally the real problem with state efforts to shape religion as a form of counterterrorism strategy is that it implies terrorism is a religious problem that requires a religious solution but that is not the case terrorism and violent extremism are manifestations of political grievance that require political not religious solutions if states truly want to counter violent extremism they will do well to address political grievances among their citizens and if this is the goal of states to understand and address political economic and social grievance i think religious actors have a truly radical role to play thank you thank you Ann finally Oliver Wilcox is deputy director of countering violent extremism in the bureau of counterterrorism at the U.S. department of state he previously served at USAID including a senior Tunisia country coordinator during the Arab Spring Revolution and a senior Yemen policy advisor during the rise of al-Qaeda and the Houthis thank you for being here Oliver thanks Melissa and thanks to everybody for braving the inch or two of snow what i'd like to do is make a couple of general comments about the paper and then to hopefully kind of move the conversation forward a little bit by getting a little more granular and a little bit more operational in terms of the conversation that i think the paper does a great job of laying the foundation for as has been said and then I would like to just offer a couple of additional thoughts and take the privilege of being the last respondent to what my colleagues have already offered the larger group so what i'd like to do is just make a couple of general points about countering violent extremism which i think are important for any kind of CVE work whether it involves religious actors or leaders or other community groups or frankly anyone for that matter because i think that we need to bear them in mind the first is that analysis and assessment are critical and i know on the the face of it it's kind of an obvious statement to say well you need to really understand the country and frankly not just the country but the communities that you want to work with work in and find ways to support and that's particularly critical here because i think in the field of CVE we've come to understand that working at the community level is really critical and having a sort of national level understanding of the dynamics and the drivers of terrorist radicalization and recruitment is necessary but hardly sufficient and there are basically three things that you have to unpack and understand at the local level the first is what are the drivers of radicalization and recruitment in a particular community you've heard Peter and other reference the range of drivers that can be at play the other is you have to have an understanding of the geography of radicalization and recruitment and again this gets back to which particular communities you know are these dynamics happening in in some ways more importantly where's the potential for the problem to must to mustastasize and then the final thing is which demographic groups or segments of the local population are being radicalized and recruited or are the most vulnerable and it's very easy to say well we're concerned about youth and youth susceptibility to radicalization when you look at many countries around the world and you take the 14 to 24 demographic we know that that is one half or two thirds of the entire population so just talking about youth broad brush is not very helpful so we need to unpack these things before we can even get to talking about in a particular country or in a particular community what is the role of religious actors in countering violent extremism the second thing is that I mean context is obviously very key we've talked a little bit about the UK context we touched on the US context in terms of the establishment clause and then you know and talked a little bit about the Moroccan case Morocco is obviously very different because the state has a ministry of religious affairs religious life is highly and over time or historically increasingly regulated not just there but in many other Muslim majority countries that's a very different situation than Western Europe North America etc so we have to think about that when we talk about exchanging good practices or lessons learned even here in the United States we have a federal system you go to certain countries in Western Europe and they have very centralized systems that operate in a more top down as opposed to you know local and state levels kind of percolating up to the federal level which is more the model here and that has consequences for how we think about the role of religious actors or again any community actors when it comes to CVE the final sort of general thing I'll say is that ideology does play a role and we can talk about and recognize the range of factors and I would add to that prisons and mistreatment of the law enforcement we found anecdotally and I think in a couple of cases more statistically I don't know if it's statistically significant work that's been done that prison certainly is an incubator for radicalization and recruitment so more particular to the paper I think as I said that the paper does a very good job of framing the sort of big picture issues it sort of challenges and helps to clarify the kind of broad assumptions but what we need to move on to now is a sort of more granular more operational understanding of what works and what doesn't when you want to work with and support religious actors and incorporate religious actors into a broader sort of CVE initiative or program Alina touched on the point that CVE is really a whole of society or if we want to talk locally a whole of community approach and you know the thinking here on one levels rather straightforward that everybody if you're an educator if you're a social worker if your parents has something to contribute to this effort and that sort of it's fine to have unity of purpose but there does need to be unity of effort working at the local level and so if you take that broader view in many cases it may be more about how do you incorporate religious leaders into a broader CVE effort and how do they work with and partner and leverage other community actors in that space and that's somewhat of a different approach than looking at religious actors or religious leaders as sort of a standalone you know constituency or type of interlocutor to engage with and possibly support. The second thing is just a word on intrafaith and interfaith dialogue and the reason I mentioned this is because these are or this is a sort of field of work that is very well established and I think sometimes there's still a tendency to conflate interfaith and interfaith dialogue with preventing or countering violent extremism that's not to say that these kinds of approaches don't in certain contexts have a role to play but simply because you get a multi confessional or multi religious set of leaders together at a conference and they discuss relationships between the faiths and what can be done to improve that in a particular country and then they issue a statement afterwards that does not equal preventing or countering violent extremism. It's not to say that when you do that work at a local level that it can't be part of the response. I also want to emphasize support for religious actors in the CDE space is much more than just messaging and I think that there's a range of roles and approaches and types of work that religious actors or religious leaders can do particularly at a community level but unfortunately I think there is also a tendency to boil that down to well if we simply train religious leaders in how to be more social media savvy get them on Twitter get them on Facebook that that's sort of both a necessary and a sufficient effort here but I think that there is a broader range of skill sets if you will that religious leaders may need having an understanding of youth development and youth psychology having a localized understanding of what actually drives radicalization and recruitment in a community context we can make the assumption that local actors know best and that they don't have their own assumptions but in fact very often they do have their own assumptions and a very common assumption is that poverty drives or is the main driver of radicalization and recruitment in their particular country or in their community and we can talk a little bit more about the research maybe in the Q and A but we know that poverty is not a key driver of the problem set that we're dealing with just a word about sort of formal religious institutions they can be helpful in terms of securing buy-in and support for doing certain CVE initiatives and also taking a longer-term view they can be important to sort of institutionalizing and expanding these kinds of efforts because often these kinds of efforts start in a very local or in a very sort of pilot fashion and if you want to kind of do this work over a longer term you need or often need the religious leader buy-in The establishment clause was mentioned particularly with respect to sort of the U.S. government and what we can't do and I would just encourage us to think about what we can do within the confines of the establishment clause and there's a lot that different parts of the state department and I think our USAID colleagues have supported over the years that relate to this problem set that are good examples of working within the establishment clause and supporting religious actors in this space and not sort of running a fowl of the law or of legal guidance just to conclude I would say that I think CVE fortunately has progressed beyond the point that we're trying to get somebody to like us I think that we really at least outside of North America or Western Europe are really trying to recognize what the local dynamics and drivers are and working with foreign partner governments and civil society actors to recognize the problem respond to the problem not just with our assistance but also on their own so thank you thank you so much Oliver now let's turn to the Q&A Susan Hayward is our senior advisor for religion and inclusive societies at USIP and she will be joining us here on the stage to channel Peter Mandeville for us if you have any lingering questions please do pass them to Chelsea and Emily who are in the aisles and we'll do our best to address those in the few minutes that time allows so I will use my seat as moderator for a quick moment and ask one question I'm aware that we other than Susie now don't have any religious actors themselves represented here on the stage I'm going to like to ask a question that we will often hear in the field from religious actors so I'll direct this one at Oliver I know I cut you off a little bit at the end and wrapped you up early something we often hear is that many religious actors who are working on CVE will say they recognize they have shared goals with the government and the security sector on issues such as recruitment to extremist groups yet there's little consensus in terms of how they as religious actors can do so what would you suggest they do as a starting point well I think we recognize that when we come in to do CVE work again this really applies across the board not just with religious actors I'll take the example of prisons when you do CVE work our job is not to come in and work with prison staff to fix the prison top to bottom and make sure that it runs efficiently effectively so that we can then layer on you know whatever the CVE specific intervention or program is and I think you know the same thing holds true with the religious sector or religious actors that you basically take the context that you're given and you know there may be certain and this gets back to the sort of skill sets that may be lacking among particular religious actors and it's more than just they're not really present on social media or they don't have sort of savvy understanding of how to use social media to advance their message and their narrative it's about what actually Peter often calls the pastoral skill set so that's often a deficit here and it has tie into how you engage with women or youth in ways that can be helpful to prevention I think that also helping actors in a particular country or in a particular community sort of break down stovepipes or misperceptions about other actors that are operating parallel and so this may apply to the security sector or to law enforcement and getting the actors to sort of sit around the same table and understand have a shared understanding of what drives radicalization and recruitment in that particular part of the country and that what is each one doing and how can they partner or collaborate together so sometimes just that convening function and that sort of leveling the understanding of the players and making sure that they have that understanding and can think start thinking of ways to operate together you know can be can be something that you know our our assistance or other assistance can help to facilitate but I would emphasize we don't sort of and we're not dictating in that particular context we're simply helping to open doors and to sort of convene people usually at the front end of a particular program Thank you that's helpful so the next question I'd like to direct at Robin this question comes from Pina the dilemma between most credible and self-appointed representatives of religion comes from the fact that there is no single way a religion is practiced any effort to include religious input would end up alienating one or more subgroups how then can this process be made more inclusive yeah I mean I think that that kind of gets to the the heart of the the issue of the first first point I raised I think that well I mean the plurality of voices thing I think is is important I mean that first of all recognizing that there isn't just going to be one group you can reach out to one subset of the community or one religious leader that is going to be able to deliver the the Muslim opinion that there is a whole variety of opinions on any one subject which I don't think we always hear but but there isn't they that one group out there that can represent the entire opinion although you know I'm aware that also I I set myself up as as potentially somewhat hypocritical on this because I also think that as I referred to earlier there are while you should you need to would need to engage with a range of opinions I do think that there are some organizations that have been engaged with in the past that have not been helpful interlocutors and maybe shouldn't be part of the conversation so it's not easy it's not perfect I think that you are going to end up government policy is going to end up being inconsistent somewhat but I think that the the main the main thing and I think this is an area where we we have the CV conversation has developed I think in a good way is just to make sure that you carry on engaging with a plurality of voices and don't allow that gatekeeper situation to arise and that's that's just a I mean it's just making sure that you don't get lazy I think and and and also and that those communities the dynamics change so frequently and that what maybe a representative or useful group five years ago isn't necessarily now and so I think it just it lends itself to making sure that that engagement is very much proactive and and and always trying to take account of the of the local dynamics thank you so the next question is for Susie and Peter who's obviously not here so I'll send this to Susie the question is women youth and religious actors are often lumped together in one category in CVE do you find that Keter-Ghazishan useful in practice why or why not okay thank you and thanks to all of you for coming today so yes and no this is a classic case of the corrective comes with problems all in its own the the move to recognize the important role that women youth and religious actors play and to include them in peacemaking and peace building and in preventing and countering violent extremism came about because those groups had historically been marginalized so those who are primarily at the table those who are primarily getting the funds and the resources and the support for peace building activities writ large tended to be older men and so there was there were a lot of efforts in the peace building realm to draw more attention to the needs of these groups the activities that they were doing their priorities and peacemaking to ensure they got support and all of that gets mirrored and some of the CT and CVE work but I think that challenge that then arises is it oversimplifies things I mean look at me for example I fit at least two of those categories I would argue three but not everyone would as a as a woman and a religious leader at the very least so many people have these intersecting identities they don't fit perfectly within one or another of those categories and then two in trying to divide out groups in that way it creates fragmentation that can also lead to competition so I often hear from some of those within the youth peace and security realm or within the women peace and security realm some concern about religious actor engagement that if we engage more with religious actors then it's a zero sum that means less opportunities for youth or women to be participating in it so it sort of creates that classic competition between peace building and CVE initiatives so I do think it's useful and that it draws the attention to groups that have historically been marginalized and who have different priorities and different influences that need to be taken into account to have a more holistic and effective CVE policy but I think it also needs to be approached carefully to ensure that the ways in which the the policy and the programming plays out doesn't create these false dichotomies and competition between groups thanks Sisi and a question for you in a country in which the government is over regulating religious institutions and ideas as part of its counter extremism measures in what ways sorry in ways that can restrict religious freedom what would you suggest religious actors do to work more effectively with the governments I think they should take a two pronged approach I think and I think this applies more broadly than religious actors actually I think anyone concerned with the over regulation of the religious space needs kind of balance to competing imperatives the first is the need to point out the really egregious actions done in the name of CVE counter terrorism to limit religious freedom but the the kind of counter action that needs to be held in tension with acknowledging when there are more acceptable appropriate or productive initiatives coming from the same institutions or the same government bodies so I think there needs to be this counterbalance between between kind of picking your battles with the state and really focusing your efforts on what is most problematic but also acknowledging that problematic actors sometimes also run really great programs simultaneously with enacting legislation that limits people's civil liberties thank you Oliver question here for you given the damaging missteps in the past how are policymakers and practitioners being educated about religious dynamics necessary to smartly engage religious actors on factors contributing to violent extremism and then specifically does the State Department provide such a training well I think that training is obviously important and the Foreign Service Institute does and has been sort of building its capacity and slowly expanding its offerings in this space broadly and then I think with respect to religious leaders in particular so from a sort of formal or informal training or capacity building perspective for ourselves internally I think that you know that's something that's in train and I would also just note that the sort of without speaking for Susie slash Peter over here the sort of broader outlines of this particular paper were developed when Peter Susie was in his last or her last iteration of government and that process putting together that particular paper and convening people to talk about it and to sort of get their input on it and to be able to sort of finalize it in a particular fashion internally was itself I think an educational experience for folks so I think that you know from a sort of policy development perspective over the last few years and also from a training perspective that internally were probably further along on the state side then maybe we get credit for great thank you I think we have time for probably just one more question and I'll give this one to Robin what role can religious actors play in terms of deradicalization in particular for example helping to reintegrate former members of extremist groups in here it's written in Iraq or Libya or if there are other examples that you can think of well yeah I mean the one Iraq and Libya I'm less familiar with but the the thing that we're trying to deal with at the moment in the European context is which religious leaders to use in terms of returnees from Syria and Iraq not just the not just the the adults but also how do we get religious leaders involved in trying to integrate back into society some of the children that were born there or of course taken there against their will and some of which have been forced to do carry out horrendous acts of violence but the prosecution either isn't going to be appropriate or or I mean some of these kids not even at the age of responsibility when they did these things so that's one of those areas where I think European governments are definitely really relying on religious leaders in trying to work with psychologists and others in trying to bridge that gap and and bring people back but trying to I mean the create citizens essentially and that's where and that's where I think it's really you know it's it's hard for religious leaders because no matter who you pick and which ones you engage with that's an extraordinary task and it's an extraordinary response extraordinary responsibility to put on them because there's only of course so much any one person can really do on that sort of thing and obviously I mean this is going to be some of it is is trial and error we're not always going to get it right but there has been examples of channel the the deradicalization program that exists in the UK has worked with imams with some success not always it's not going to be I don't think any of these sort of initiatives are going to have a hundred percent success ratio and even defining success is is a bit difficult because it's do you turn them away from be are you aiming to just prevent them from carrying out acts of violence or do you want to try and create us bring you know make them a more integrated citizen and I think we've not always fleshed that out very well but certainly there is there's an increasingly relevant role for them for religious leaders as we deal with this fallout from Syria and Iraq for sure yeah thank you so much and thank you to all of you for such interesting and start for broken comments for me to and everyone of you and thank you for joining us here today a reminder that you can continue this conversation online with hashtag religion CVE USIP and I look forward to continuing the conversation with all of you and all the panelists here today quick note for those who are staying for the invite only religion CVE workshop after this we'll have a short break and we will meet on the second floor so the same level that you exit at the top of the stairs here in a room just behind the staircase there B2203204 if you see anyone from USIP into your lost thank you again all so much and safe travels back to your destinations