This Canadian Imam Specializes In Counselling Radicalized Muslim Youth

​
​
​Imam Yasin Dwyer. All photos via the author.
​
​The horrific and unexpected attacks that transpired in Ottawa and Quebec last month, which left two military servicemen dead, have brought a newfound amount of attention to the concept of radicalized individuals. Specifically, the media has focused on the issue of young Muslim men who have become radicalized by jihadist and ISIS propaganda.

So how does one become radicalized and what can be done about it? Imam Yasin Dwyer, a Jamaican-Canadian, has some answers. Dwyer was the first full-time Muslim chaplain in Canada's federal prison system. He pastored a range of inmates, including those convicted of terrorist-related offences. The Winnipeg-born imam, whose parents are Jamaican, converted in his early 20s after an intellectual search to learn more about African history led him to discover the historical traditions of Islam and the principles of Islam. After volunteering at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre with the Islam Care Centre, a non-profit organization based in Ottawa, he became a full-time chaplain in 2004 for the Ontario region, and played a pioneering role in determining the needs of imprisoned Muslims and the role of a Muslim chaplain, a job he left in September.

VICE caught up with Dwyer to chat about his methodology, the recent attacks in Canada, and how radicalization can be addressed.

VICE: What kind of background do you need to become a prison chaplain; do you need any kind of specific religious training?
Yasin Dwyer: For Muslim chaplaincy, it would be essential for you to have the basic knowledge, the basic rudiments, of being an Imam. Now in Islam we have two meanings for Imam: we have Imam with a big "I" and imam with a small "i." Imam with a small "i" is someone who can lead prayer, someone who has some basic knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, someone who can act as a religious leader for the Muslim community. A capital "I" Imam is someone who has the qualifications to interpret the primary text of the religion--you know someone who has been studying for years upon years in one of the more popular seminaries in the Muslim world. But for chaplaincy, we're looking for small "i" imam: someone who can function as a prayer leader, as a religious leader and along with that, a good understanding of the challenges of the whole correctional project.

Can you describe your work as a Muslim chaplain?
​My work revolved around facilitating worship, facilitating religious education, also making sure that correctional staff are aware of accommodation issues. Islam is not only a belief system, but it is also a religion of practice--you know, analogous to Judaism, perhaps. Things that we must know, but things that we do. So we have particular dietary habits, there are certain times of day where Muslims have to pray, the month of Ramadan is a month of fasting. So I was very much involved in educating staff about what Islam is, what the accommodation needs of Muslim offenders are, and I was also in connection with psychologists, with teachers in order to help them understand the unique accommodation needs of Muslim offenders.

You have first-hand experience working with counselling Muslim inmates who were charged with terrorism-related offences. Were these inmates open to counselling from you?
​They were very open to counselling from me. One of the difficulties in dealing with offenders is really earning trust, because the prison is a very polarizing environment and trust is very difficult to earn among offenders. However, I was able-immediately--to connect with, not only those offenders that were convicted of terrorist offences, but all Muslim offenders, non-Muslim offenders; I guess part of my success was just being an effective communicator with people. So that included many of these young men who were charged with terrorist offences.

Did they have a choice to talk to you?
​Yes, they had a choice. My role was not there to force anyone to do anything. I was made available for those who wished to take advantage of my pastoring. However, with the handful of men that were charged with terrorist-related offences, I pushed a little more and because their offences related with religion--with a misunderstanding of religion--I really had to be a bit more intentional to speak with them. However they were very receptive because they were, again, quite candid and open concerning their own mistakes and they were very anxious to understand how they could correct those mistakes. And we earned a great degree of trust and indeed they were very receptive.

This makes me very curious, because they're "anxious to understand their mistakes," so that means that there was a recognition that they had erred, that they did, in fact, make a mistake.
​[Not all of them.] I don't want to lump them all in the same category. They are all individuals, and some may have trouble navigating their way through all of the emotions that come with being incarcerated, being taken away from your family and dealing with the shame, the embarrassment of being incarcerated and actually making such a public and very dangerous mistake. I don't want to make it seem as though we immediately saw miracles from the first day that they saw my face. No. It came over time. Again, trust issues are very important in a correctional context. So over time, we were able to establish trust between us and then at least they were much more receptive to be able to accept my authority when it came to projecting the normative teachings of the religion.

Did they have a particular perception of Islam?
​The handful of offenders that I dealt with, again, were different and they came from different backgrounds. However there was one common thread that I found with many of the men that I worked with--they didn't necessarily grow up particularly religious. They were from families that were not particularly observant. Of course they identified with Islam, but their families were not particularly observant. And I think what happened is that they were, as young men, looking for ways to be observant and looking for ways to be faithful. Tragically they found themselves in the hands of those who projected themselves as religious authorities who led them down the wrong path. So there was a religious and spiritual vacuum in their lives that was filled by voices that, again, did not represent the spiritual traditions of Islam. So what happened, (was that) they had to go through a process of--you could say unlearning--because their background did not offer them an opportunity to really see Islam as an organic type of spirituality. But I mentioned the normative teachings of religion, if you study all religions including Islam, there are very few things that are actually black and white--most of it grey, most of it is very, very grey.

How do you go from wanting guidance to falling under the wrong type of guidance and not know the difference--that may not be a question that you can actually answer?
​ I don't think I can answer that question in a very authoritative way, but all I can say is that, if someone wants to have faith, if you want to have faith, you will either seek that faith in a functional way or a dysfunctional way. And if you're not given the proper resources to understand how to be a functional, faithful person, you will actually do a lot of harm and a lot of damage to yourself. Like there is a saying in Islam: if you don't have a teacher, or if don't have a sheikh, your teacher or your sheikh will be Satan. The desire to be faithful and to know what to do in the name of God, that's very powerful, that's very, very powerful. And if you don't have someone who is connected to the normative teachings of Islam, then you may do something that, in the name of religion, that is very dysfunctional, and this is what happened to these young men.

Does it all rest in the Imams and teachers, then, within the Muslim community?Much of it does. I think that we sometimes have difficulty in our Imams, and again, our Imams are like any other group. You have some Imams that are good at what they do and some Imams that perhaps are very dysfunctional and perhaps don't understand the relationship between text and context. You know we spoke earlier about issues of identity; sometimes what happens is that many of our traditional Imams from Muslim majority countries are not familiar with matters of context and sometimes they may feel that the Islam that they understand from Muslim majority countries is the default Islam. And they may come to this part of the world without sufficient training to understand what it means to have a different identity from the identity that they came from; that there are young people who are growing up with a completely different cultural identity.

Is there a solution to the problem of radicalization that we're not really confronting? Is there something that we're missing here in Canada?
The phenomenon of radicalization, the solutions are multi-layered, they are multi-faceted. It's not just one thing; it's a series of things. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of identity issues that a lot of young Muslims in Canada are struggling with. There is the problem of text vs. context: how to understand the Qur'an, how to understand the traditions of Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, and how to contextualize it in this society, there is that problem. There is also the issue of psychological and mental health issues that relate to that as well. There is the perception that Muslims have of being victims. There is the victimology that many young Muslims are plagued by, and that perhaps acts as a catalyst for very conservative reactionary understandings of the faith. So it's multi-faceted. I don't think any one particular approach is the solution but all of these factors play a part. And it has to be tackled from many different angles.

Is there success in this line of work--can you define it?
​There is success because of the trust that has been as established; because as chaplains, we are not inmates and we are not security staff. We're in the middle, we're neutral. The safest space that they find in the prison is usually the chapel. Because as chaplains, we are not there to judge, we are not there to condemn, but rather we're there to give offenders options. And we're there to help offenders understand in a very natural and safe space what it is that they need to do in order to transform themselves and become complete human beings.

What are your thoughts on how to deal with events, the Ottawa shooting?
​Well first of all, it is very tragic and my thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. Also, I am somewhat hesitant to completely attribute the events to ideology because there seem to be some factors related to mental health involved in those who are seen as the perpetrators. So I would be very, very hesitant to say anything definitive, because as I mentioned to you before, that when it comes to these events that are seen as perpetrated by radicalized individuals, the factors are multi-layered and multi-faceted.

But what I would say to speak to the fear that people are having today is that, Islam is a religion that promotes peace and reconciliation. And if someone has converted to Islam and committed actions, like we saw last week, then perhaps they had a profound misunderstanding of Islam or perhaps the way Islam was projected to them was projected to them in a wrong way. Because I, myself, am one of these converts to Islam and I have never had thoughts of indiscriminate violence like these individuals are accused of having. So quite clearly there is either a serious mental health issue happening or a mental health issue that can explain what happened or we need to investigate where exactly these individuals understood that somehow these particular actions were a way to be faithful to this religion that they recently converted to. That has to be clarified.  
​
​
​​@jaffershelina