Jake Bilardi: Why young Australian men are becoming radicalised - and how to spot it.

In light of the radicalisation of Australian teenager Jake Bilardi, we’ve asked an expert: what are the warning signs someone might be heading down that path?

It is very hard to understand how any young Australian could be attracted to joining a group as brutal and as at odds with modern life as the Islamic State movement. Even for those who have grown up feeling alienated and facing real difficulties choosing to make the leap from suburban Australia to fighting with one of the most brutal terrorist groups the world has seen beggars belief.

It is even more difficult to understand the many recent cases of young Australians from regular households with apparently promising futures who have quietly slipped away from their families to fight on the front line.

The sad case of Jake Bilardi, whose well written blog posts provide a unique insight into the mind of a young person who has made this journey, is especially confronting. How can a young man full of such potential would wind up on the battlefront in Iraq ‘chasing death’ – as he puts it – desperately seeking to become a martyr for a notorious group that he barely knows.

Read more: Melbourne teen Jake Bilardi has died in an Iraq suicide bombing: reports.

How do we explain these remarkable journeys from our world to the horrors of war?

The first thing to understand is they do not occur in one giant leap. People like Jake do not go from being regular Australian teenagers to suicide bombers simply through making a single mistake or one rash decision.

The circumstances and the details of the personal journeys vary but there are a number of common elements. In Jake’s case he was particularly driven by a long-standing desire to make sense of a world that is full of suffering and injustice. His struggle to find answers began with radical secular politics and only later, following the death of his mother and a conversion experience, led to him embracing the violent Islamist extremism of al-Qaeda and IS.

Most radicalised young men are a less intellectual than Jake and less self-directed. But it is important to understand they all share the view that they are fighting to change the world for the better and that the groups they have aligned themselves with are ‘freedom fighters’.

In almost all cases somebody, a recruiter, identifies a young person searching for answers and sets out to win them over. This recruitment can occur in ways that are very obvious in hindsight or in ways that are subtle and hidden. In Jake’s case we don’t know the details but it is almost certain that key individuals have played a part in directing him.

Read more: Disturbing news: The newest ISIS executioner may be a 10-year-old boy.

In the case of others like Adam Dahman from Northcote who, aged 17, slipped Melbourne for Syria in November 2013, without telling his parents, the connections are more obvious. Tragically Adam’s brother-in-law was a convicted terrorist and his ‘mentoring’ was instrumental in Adam’s radicalization.

The propaganda of IS is highly sophisticated. Its monthly e-magazine Dabiq brilliantly drives home a message of struggling for ‘global justice’. Even a cynical reader will find its cleaver graphics and slick prose strangely moving and convincing.

But the power of persuasion is not merely achieved through passive broadcasting. Propaganda material is but one element in a sophisticated strategy of persuasion. When young people – and almost all of those who are drawn to these movements are under the age of 30, and many are still in school – express interest, on line or off, they are targeted. Friendships are carefully nurtured and trust built up. In many cases this amounts to a deliberate form of predatory grooming not unlike that seen with sexual predation. In other cases, the friendship and mentoring comes in the context of extended family or friends in a way that appears benign.

Read more: Explain to me: Who is the Australian school boy who fled to Syria to fight with ISIS?

What can friends or family to the possible prevent this kind of seduction?

The first thing to understand is very difficult for outside parties like police and intelligence groups to see this happening from afar. Virtually the only people who are in a position to see the early stages of radicalization are family and close friends.

In all forms of radicalization there are three areas of observable behavioural changes to watch for:

The first thing to pay attention to is a change in social relationships. If somebody is breaking off established relationships and forming new ones this could prove significant.

Secondly, and perhaps even more obviously, is whether they express increasingly extremist ideas. Strong opinions in themselves do not necessarily indicate radicalization but, as with all these indicators, change over time is key.

The third thing to watch for is a change of attitude with respect to breaking laws. Typically when somebody has been radicalized they may go from level of no criminality or little willingness to break laws to be emboldened towards or openly transgressive behavior. This might mean that with somebody who is in trouble with the police for minor issues the behaviour speaks to more serious issues occurring below the surface.

Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University, based in the Politics program in the School of Political and Social Inquiry.

He is the Director, International, of the Global Terrorism Research Centre (GTReC), Director of the Centre for Islam and the Modern World (CIMOW), Deputy UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations – Asia Pacific, and Deputy Head of the school of Political and Social Inquiry (International). In 2011 he became the co-editor of the journal Islam and Christian Muslim Relations. Greg has been active for the past twenty year in inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society.