Sofia Mahmood: No '˜one size fits all' for violent extremists

A young girl leaves a message on the first anniversary of the London Bridge terror attack.

FROM the entrance hall of the Manchester Arena to London Bridge and the streets of Finsbury Park, the UK has seen its fair share of horrific terror attacks in the past year.

Radicalisation is a complex process, but that hasn’t stopped people – from psychiatrists to politicians – putting across their own theories of why certain individuals are driven to commit such heinous crimes,

Today I work with people at risk of or affected by extremism. I’ve found that stereotyping is all too common, and extremely dangerous. For example, some have recently argued that we should look at the gender of violent extremists more closely, pointing to the “fact” that a significant proportion are young men. Such theories are interesting, but fail to tell the whole story.

The truth is that there is no “one size fits all” as Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, launches a new counter-extremism strategy.

At Empowering Minds, we deliver free workshops, mentoring and training to the public, to help deal with the root causes of radicalisation and extremism. The people we work with have different fears, different desires and different backgrounds. However, one thing is true. Whatever their gender, their age, or their religion, they can still be vulnerable to extremist messages.

That’s the problem with placing such a big emphasis on gender. Like our race or religion, it’s only part of who we are. In this case, it’s socially ingrained within us. It informs how we are raised and who we become: from the new-born’s pink or blue balloons to who gets down on one knee.