So-called deradicalisation programs have failed to gain traction with Muslim groups, but community initiatives are promoting cohesion among the young

“It’s a park, free for all men,” announces Emad Elkheir.

“Free for all men,” the youth worker repeats. “Free ... men.”



The dozen or so schoolboys perched on bikes scrunch their faces.

It is a cool spring day in Bicentennial Park in western Sydney. The boys, from a nearby school, are assembled this Wednesday as part of a social cohesion project run by their school chaplain, sheikh Wesam Charkawi.

Today is a bicycle treasure hunt. A rare silence descends on the teenagers as they mull over this latest clue.

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“Cathy Freeman park!” one announces triumphantly. “It’s the park where she used to swim.”

The program is one of a number of under-the-radar social initiatives being run in Muslim communities by trusted figures, independently of government money.



Crucially, the program has no connection to counter-terrorism, and nothing to do with “deradicalisation”. “The underpinning of the program is about social cohesion. It’s about identity, showing these kids who they are,” Charkawi says.

“It’s about instilling a positive feeling within the youth. Engaging them and creating a rapport so we can impart positive messages.”

Popular and generated from within the community, this is the very kind of scheme the federal government has been looking to emulate with its “Living Safe Together” program, established in August 2014.

Over a year on and a litany of missteps later, the Turnbull government is mulling a revamp of the way it builds resilience to extremism in Australian communities.



Only a small proportion of the $13.4m allocated to the program has been spent. Most major Muslim organisations declined to apply for the $50,000 funding offered for community programs “to help radicalised individuals”.

Sources consulted on the policy also told Guardian Australia that few, if any, organisations had signed up to a directory of “countering violent extremism” services established earlier this year. (The attorney general’s department could not say how many services were listed on the directory.)



“The problem is, they were sold as deradicalisation programs,” says Hass Dellal, the executive director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation. “There’s only two actual deradicalisation programs that run in this country. And they’re in prisons.”

“These were meant to be about prevention and capacity-building. But because of the way they were sold and tagged, community groups shunned them,” he says.

Dellal is reluctant to blame the public servants involved. As well as being billed poorly, the programs suffered from association with the Abbott government’s sledgehammer approach to the problem of extremism.



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A recent example is instructive. News of the release of a resource, an “anti-radicalisation” kit for training teachers, was dropped to the Daily Telegraph, where it was reported as a “schoolyard terror blitz” — to the dismay of many experts involved.

Its use of the example of an environmental radical, “Karen”, set off a furore when it was conflated with Abbott’s crusade against green groups.

Deep distrust between the government and community groups, Muslim and otherwise, saw this delicate work hijacked, Dellal says. “It took on a life of its own in the public and media domain.”



Among the changes now being considered, according to the ABC, is moving the program out of the attorney general’s portfolio and into multicultural affairs, under a social cohesion banner.



Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the senator who has been consulting Muslim groups, has dropped Abbott’s Manichean rhetoric about “death cults”. This month she declared a reset in Muslim relations, likening the appeal of violent ideology to ordinary social problems, such as drug use or joining a gang.

Building resilience – what Asio boss Duncan Lewis has called the “silver bullet” – can be tackled uncontroversially, in a similar way to bullying, domestic violence or mental health issues among teenagers.

“It’s about social engagement, projects that help with integration, that help with giving people the capacity to demonstrate leadership in their communities,” Dellal says.

The approach is similar even for controversial figures such as preacher Junaid Thorne. When he faced sentencing in August for flying under a false name, Curtin University specialist Anne Aly offered to work with Thorne if he was kept out of jail.

Under the proposal, obtained by Guardian Australia, the 26-year-old would have been given regular counselling and paired with mentors. (Instead he was jailed for eight months in Goulburn’s Supermax prison.)

“When someone is in [Thorne’s] position, their social ties to other socialising agents, whether it’s family, teachers, their friends, they get broken down,” Aly says. “So you need to rebuild those ties by getting them involved in other social activities, rebuilding their family and friends’ connections, so they can rebuild their influence over that person.

“Some people think what you need is cult-busting. That doesn’t work ... This is exactly the same work that’s done with any other form of crime, of anti-social behaviour.”

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Back at Bicentennial Park, the treasure hunt has become predictably chaotic. Some of the boys have fallen behind, others lost over the last clue – “You have the Will to get to this point ... If you ask the right questions you will find a bloke named Tom.”

Here is where the real work begins. Boys are sharing water bottles, cracking jokes, collaborating. “Are there any AFL players called Tom?” asks one. “Who watches AFL?” another shrugs.

Later, at the nearby Tom Wills Oval, they gather over a round of chocolate milk. Like every session, this one ends with a discussion. Charkawi explains the small, easy ways someone can be a positive influence in their community.

“This is an Islamic principle and a universal principle,” he says. “When you’re walking on the street and you see somebody, there is no harm in saying hello, g’day, how are you going?

“That is the way of Prophet Muhammad. So offer peace greetings to whoever you see.

“Some in life may make you think you can’t achieve – like you can’t be the professor, you can’t be the doctor, you can’t get the degree, you can’t be the successful businessman.



“But you can be. I went a long time in my life thinking I would never have an education beyond high school. But I surrounded myself with the right people.

“Believe me when I tell you, the sky is the limit. At the end of the day, I really have a lot of belief in you guys.”