Excerpt:
Counterterrorism policies aiming to make America safe from homegrown Islamic radicalism may in fact do the exact opposite — sending some Muslim-Americans to seek out ISIS, researchers reported Wednesday.
They found that in communities where people express strong anti-Muslim sentiment, someone — it’s not clear who — is also making internet searches about how to join ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria).
The findings support arguments that cracking down on Muslim communities can backfire, stoking a vicious cycle of hatred, the team at Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley, argued.
“Although elected officials routinely promote counterterrorism policies that target Muslims more than other groups, our findings indicate that these policies may make communities more vulnerable to radicalization if they are interpreted as discriminatory or unfair,” sociologist Christopher Bail and colleagues wrote in their report published in Science Advances.