Hard to reach or don’t want to reach? Understanding the significance of trust and respectful relationships in “countering violent extremism”

Contemporary research shows that programs developed specifically to counter violent extremism (CVE) in Muslim communities can worsen the underlying issues linked to offending. This can be destructive to the young individuals those programs target and undermine social cohesion. An impediment to CVE programs is that Muslim youth are often reluctant to participate in them. Through four years of ethnographic research with Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah Association of Australia (ASWJ), a so-called ‘hard-to-reach’ Salafi Muslim organization, this paper helps build greater awareness of factors leading to poor responsivity in CVE programs. I propose alternative approaches to CVE that begin by focusing on trust and relationship-building to better understand how to support communities dealing with youth at-risk of offending.