EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Forensic detectives and sniffer dogs are tonight continuing to search properties targeted during dawn raids in Western Sydney connected with last week's fatal shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng outside Parramatta police station.

200 officers were this morning involved and they arrested four males aged between 16 and 22 in the raids in four suburbs.

Three of the four males arrested were also the target of last year's Operation Appleby, the country's biggest counter-terrorism raids.

Among those taken into custody was a 16-year-old boy who was in the same year at Arthur Phillip High School as Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad, the 15-year-old who shot Mr Cheng.

The high school in Sydney's west was also the scene of a dramatic arrest yesterday in relation to the Parramatta police shooting. A 17-year-old student who allegedly threatened a Sydney police station on his Facebook page was arrested on his way to the school attended by the teenager who shot dead Mr Cheng. Police said the student was detained and questioned and he then threatened and intimidated them. He was arrested and charged on several counts, including harassing and intimidating police.

New South Wales Police Force Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said officers were investigating whether any of the men arrested in today's raids were involved in supplying the gun used to kill Mr Cheng.

CATHERINE BURN, NSW DEPUTY POLICE COMMISSIONER: It's a very, very serious concern that in the heart of our community, there is attack planning that is under way and that may have led to what we saw on Friday.

EMMA ALBERICI: New South Wales Premier Mike Baird said it was clear to him that Sydney had a problem with Islamic radicalisation.

MIKE BAIRD, NSW PREMIER: We need to understand that we are in a new world. The risks that are emerging are new. We have to adapt to them. We have to respond and we will. But certainly, my strong assurance to the people of NSW is that our schools are safe.

EMMA ALBERICI: My guest tonight is Hussain Nadim, a counter-radicalisation academic. He's studied at Cambridge and Oxford and is adjunct fellow at International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College in London. He's in Australia pursuing a PhD in government and public policy at the University of Sydney.

Welcome to Lateline.

HUSSAIN NADIM, COUNTER-RADICALISATION RESEARCHER: Thank you for having me on.

EMMA ALBERICI: What is it that drives young people to become radicalised?

HUSSAIN NADIM: Radicalisation itself is a very vast subject. The problem starts when we try to simplify it for policy making or, for that matter, mass consumption. And to distinguish radicalisation is a very important thing which we haven't been able to do over here in Australia or for that matter in the UK and in the US as well. And radicalisation itself is not bad. This is one of the things that we need to understand.

EMMA ALBERICI: Is not bad?

HUSSAIN NADIM: Is not bad. The reason because, radicalisation itself is only a process, and that process is the one which triggers an individual to act in a particular way. Now that action could be positive or that action could be negative. So radicalisation really itself could be either positive radicalisation or negative radicalisation.

EMMA ALBERICI: Well let me rephrase the question and ask you: what drives people to get involved in violent extremism?

HUSSAIN NADIM: In violent extremism. That's important. The reason why I distinguish between positive and negative radicalisation is very important because when we talk about violent extremism, that's where we often slip into the radicalisation element where we somehow (inaudible) a lot of concepts, which tends to trigger the community into a defensive mode. And which is why we see a lot of Muslims who might not be radical enough, but they start feeling the us versus - against the other divide and which drives a lot of Muslims towards radicalisation. But radicalisation, really when we speak about in the context of today world, is more about how the Muslims are looking at the world itself. There are certain ideological underpinnings that a lot of Muslims go through during their childhood, especially when their parents teach them certain things when they're living in the Western world which kind of secludes them from the rest of the society. And once that thing starts happening and I've been an advocate of this idea that radicalisation has really nothing to do with religion. I mean, there has been a study by (inaudible) University in London which completely details that radicalisation has not much to do with religion. It doesn't have much to do either with poverty or social status. A lot of people tend to believe, specifically in the Muslim community, that it's social status that drives radicalisation. Well that's not true at all. Radicalisation is really about the identity crisis and how that triggers a lot of these kids into questioning why they are here, what they want to do.

EMMA ALBERICI: So you're saying they don't feel like they fit in to the Western society in which they live?

HUSSAIN NADIM: And it's very hard for them to fit in. I mean, look at what the basic problem with the Muslim community over here is. The parents want to teach their children to stay away from certain evils of what they see as the Western society - stay away from alcohol, stay away from dating. That's not what they see as a Muslim culture. So they - in order to attempt to that, the Muslim parents convert - teach these kids very ultra-conservative ideology of Islam. Now, when they grow up and they go to the universities or schools, that's where they see their ideology and their teachings coming head-on with the Australian culture. And then they question their parents, that they were taught about this certain thing, but this is not how it is. And then they look for answers and the way they find their answers is not through parents. They look for the answers on social media and that social media has a monopoly of the religious radicals as well.

EMMA ALBERICI: So, let me ask you - I mean, governments in Australia, in the US and the UK have poured millions of dollars over the past decade into counter-radicalisation programs. Do they work?

HUSSAIN NADIM: So far, the problem is: how do you measure radicalisation? The Government has been spending millions and billions of dollars on radicalisation without any monitoring or evaluations. If you ask the Government over here, what the results are, they don't know because they haven't done the monitoring and evaluation. And how do you gauge? For instance, the Government spends a lot of money on trying to moderate - modernise and moderate Muslims who are at risk. How do you define who is at risk?

EMMA ALBERICI: How do you define who's at risk?

HUSSAIN NADIM: I mean, it's impossible to define it. I mean, anybody could be harbouring any sort of support for ISIS in Iraq, but he hasn't been acting. How do you define that person as a threat to the national security of Australia so that it becomes problematic?

EMMA ALBERICI: You recently wrote in the Lowy Interpreter that Muslim community leaders are not experts on the subject of radicalisation. Yet aren't they in the main the people governments go to for advice, and if not them, who?

HUSSAIN NADIM: I've severely criticised openly and I've gotten a backlash on that as well. I don't think Muslim community leaders represent the Muslims over here, specifically the youth. They don't connect. The youth has changed, the technology has changed and a lot of times these Muslim community leaders, who the Government use to understand radicalisation, they're not subject experts. Now radicalisation itself is a huge subject. You can't understand that just because you represent - you think you represent a few people, you become the voice of those people. They could be the voice, but subject experts and representing them and understanding radicalisation, I don't think Muslim community (inaudible) ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Are you saying there's a generational gap there?

HUSSAIN NADIM: There is a generational gap. There is a huge technology gap, the generation gap. A lot of Muslim community leaders tend to think that radicalisation is occurring because somehow their issues are (inaudible) in the '70s, the economic - less opportunity and etc. as they (inaudible) the new class. If you look at the patterns of radicalisation all across Europe, US and also in Australia, it's not because these kids have any lack of opportunity. A 16-year-old kid who did what he did in Parramatta wasn't doing it because he thought, "I wouldn't get a job." He was just 16 years, still in school.

EMMA ALBERICI: So why did he do it yet?

HUSSAIN NADIM: That's because of ideology.

EMMA ALBERICI: I mean, we don't know yet, but is it attached to a religious belief?

HUSSAIN NADIM: No. I don't think religion - religious (inaudible), because frankly I don't think in a 16-year-old kid is that religiously inclined that he would act on behalf of religion.

EMMA ALBERICI: So what is the ideology that makes him commit such a heinous act?

HUSSAIN NADIM: The current project that I'm doing is specifically on this subject, on understanding the Muslim world view and that is at the centre of understanding radicalisation. There are certain themes that Muslims have grown up, in fact my own self, we were grown up believing certain things. One of the themes was that there would be a clash of civilisation eventually. There will be a resurgence of Islam, partly because of the entire colonisation period, Muslims have been mobilised by communities, there will come have a time when we will have our glory back. So that idea has kind of, like, travelled down to today where Muslims are looking at resurgence of Islam in a sort of global khilafah. The second idea is that Muslims generally feel that Islam is under attack. Now that has something which has very, very strong, not religiously, but politically and socially, that has a very strong value that somehow we are being under attack and the events globally might not be related to religion, but they are proving them to be right. I mean, 9/11 happened. After that there was Afghanistan. A lost Muslims said that that makes sense because 9/11 happened. But then when the US went into Iraq and then when Iran was being threatened, then Syria and all these places - I mean, look at - ask Muslims over here in Australia: who is sponsoring ISIS? And the answer you will get is that it's the US. Now that's something very disturbing because that's not really true. But the Muslims are looking at this problem as something which is driven by the US foreign policy and hence they are looking at this as a very political way which they want to counter.

EMMA ALBERICI: So, what role can families play in helping to counter radicalisation?

HUSSAIN NADIM: Families are at the core of this radicalisation issue. When we were dealing with deradicalisation projects in Pakistan, we realised that the first and the foremost focal point of deradicalisation strategy has to come from the family. Now problem is that a lot of times, parenting over here is a problem. And I've been to this - talking about this to the Australian Government for a while now, that you cannot deal with deradicalisation of the subject. For instance, if the kid is deradicalisised, you can't just focus on deradicalising that kid. What you need to also focus is on the parenting issue, what the parents are teaching their children. What sort of ideology they are filtering into their children. And that is what really defines whether the kids will fit into Australian society or whether they're gonna get seclude and then go online and realise that, "Oh, this is what really Islam is."

EMMA ALBERICI: So to an extent it's integrating the parents as much as the children into Western society?

HUSSAIN NADIM: I think parents have to be at the core of it, more so, parents need to be deradicalise themselves or teach - taught in ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Better integrated.

HUSSAIN NADIM: Better integrated.

EMMA ALBERICI: Well we've run out of time. Hussain Nadim, thank you very much for coming in.

HUSSAIN NADIM: Thank you so much.