Muslim leaders here and elsewhere have already started organizing or expanding prevention programs and discussions on countering violent extremism, often with assistance from law enforcement officials and trained counter-recruiters who emphasize that the Internet’s dangers for young Muslims now go far beyond pornography.

With the Islamic State in particular deploying savvy online appeals to adolescents alongside videos of horrific executions, the sense of urgency has grown. Though some Muslim leaders still resist cooperating with the government, fearing that they would be contributing to religious profiling and anti-Muslim bigotry, many have been spurred to respond as they have come into contact with religiously ardent youths who feel alienated by life in the West and admit that they have been vulnerable to the Islamic State’s invitation to help build a puritanical utopia.

“The number is small, but one person who gets radicalized is one too many,” said Rizwan Jaka, a father of six and the board chairman of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, where Imam Magid is the spiritual leader. “It’s a balancing act: We have to make sure our youth are not stereotyped in any way, but we’re still dealing with the real issue of insulating them from any potential threat of radicalization.”

In practice, it often means one-on-one conversations with Muslims like Amir, a 22-year-old computer programmer in Virginia who said he was drawn to extremist videos from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, because he was a new convert struggling with how to live out his faith in the United States. He said he chafed at having to work in an office with Muslim women who covered their heads but wore clothing he considered too tight. He also did not like seeing photographs of people on the walls, or advertisements for credit cards, which he said Islam strictly forbids. “Every time I mentioned it, no one heard me out,” he said. “I definitely felt like a stranger.”

He said his disenchantment with the Islamic State began when the group beheaded Peter Kassig, who reports said was a Muslim convert, and later executed a Jordanian pilot. Amir then had some long talks with Imam Magid, who pointed him to passages in the Quran that forbid killing other Muslims, innocent women and children. Amir concluded that the Islamic State was only sowing chaos and hatred, which the Prophet Muhammad abhorred.