Rehabilitation of extremists … Egypt as a model

Al-Azhar Observatory referred in a recent study to the formulation of programmes to rehabilitate and integrate extremists into society with the aim of rescuing them from the extremist ideology and preventing them from engaging in terrorist activities.

The programmes, the observatory says in the study, are based on awareness of the inherent dangers of the practices of extremists.

It adds that these efforts ensure that extremists would not run into barriers of hatred or social isolation.

These barriers, it notes in the study, may encourage these people to return to extremist groups.

It says thee programmes aim to rehabilitate extremists intellectually, and prepare them to be more aware of the false ideas they have embraced.

The same programmes work to enable these people to choose the correct ideology and reject the extremist one, the observatory says in the study.

They also work to integrate them into society on the road to making them good citizens once more.

Fragile references

It turns out that the intellectual references of extremists are fragile, which has made the majority of them foggy in their way and intellectual confusion.

This makes them easy prey to the intellectual guardianship imposed on them by the leaders of extremist organizations and their theorists, which enables these leaders to tighten intellectual control over them and seize their minds.

This facilitates the task of reformulating their personalities and making them more amenable to what is dictated to them.

In this context, the study concludes that rehabilitation programmes can make a tangible change, if they are applied in a scientific manner, based on realism in the subtraction and objectivity in application.

This confirms, it says, the possibility of changing extremists and preparing them to accept moderate thoughts by emphasizing that those adopting extremist thought are human beings.

International Experiences

When talking about the rehabilitation of extremists and their reintegration into society, the Egyptian experience comes at the forefront of experiments in this regard.

In the 1990s, some imprisoned leaders of extremist organizations launched intellectual reviews in which they announced their abandonment of violence.

At that time, the authorities welcomed these reviews, and held a series of seminars and meetings with thousands of prisoners with the aim of dissuading them from their extremist ideas and reintegrating them into society.

These intellectual revisions and the subsequent intellectual dialogues inside prisons contributed to stopping extremist attacks to a large extent for about ten years.

Under incumbent President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the authorities take many steps to develop prisons and formulate a new strategy for them, befitting the new republic.

One of the most important steps that Egypt has also taken in this context is to change the name of the 'Prison Sector' to 'Community Care'.

This honestly expresses what is happening behind the walls, including the efforts made to rehabilitate inmates.

Egyptian institutions have doubled their efforts to dry up the sources of extremism and prevent the spread of its virus in the veins young people.

The Presidency took care of young people, and held international forums for them that enjoy the patronage and presence of the president of the republic.