Institute for Security Studies expert’s anti-Muslim fearmongering is unacceptable

The Institute for Security Studies appears to be either staying aloof or is unmoved by the uproar in South Africa’s Muslim community over the provocative Islamophobic claims made by one of its analysts, Willem Els. 

The allegations attributed to Els cast a shadow of suspicion upon Muslims and the thousands of institutions they manage across the country, from mosques and madressahs to Islamic schools and universities. 

Take his Islamophobic comments about South African children as young as 11 being indoctrinated and groomed to commit acts of terrorism. 

These are attributed to Els in a News24 report by Amanda Khoza, where he is cited as an expert in international relations and Islamic State in Syria. His alarmist warnings implicated unnamed Muslim organisations. 

“We see that they have programmes where they are indoctrinating children from as young as 11 years old and that programme has been sustained and is ongoing,” he says.

He continues that unless this is dealt with in its early stages, “it might get out of hand”. 

In the current climate of xenophobia, sparked afresh by the tragic deaths of children arising from contaminated food being attributed to foreign-owned spaza shops, it is extremely disappointing that Els added fuel to fire. 

According to the report, he was addressing a Border Management Authority conference at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Tshwane. 

If indeed his presentation on the “threat of cross-border terrorism” in South Africa painted a “grim picture”, as Khoza says in her report, surely it requires evidence-based research that can be placed under the microscope? 

Instead, he went on a tirade about the “indoctrination of children” and “radical ideology”, without any disclaimers or attempt to conceal his targeting of Muslims. 

The stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists is clearly evident in his biased view: “Children are the most susceptible when they are young … if they start to embed this type of radical ideology within these children, by the time they grow up, they will be fully radicalised, and they will be ready to become a terrorist or an operative for these radical organisations.” 

Els’s bigoted rhetoric paints a picture of the danger posed by the “Islam[ic] community” and yet again, without any proof, he claims that “we see radical elements within the community hijack some of our mosques”. 

Despite his allegations, he bizarrely admits lacking “… intelligence capacity within our Islam[ic] community …” and unashamedly and brazenly implicates mosques in Mayfair, Hillbrow, Soweto and the West Rand. 

It is thus no surprise that Na’eem Jeenah, a senior researcher at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, has dismissed Els as a fearmonger. 

“In effect, Els paints all Muslim children with a terrorist brush, suggesting pre-teen Muslim children should be viewed with fear and suspicion by other children their age and by South African society at large,” he said. 

Jeenah warns that the views advanced by Els are not far removed from statements by Israeli politicians that Palestinian children are “snakes” and should be killed because they are already terrorists by virtue of being Palestinian. 

“For Els, it is the children’s religion that defines them, not their nationality,” said Jeenah. 

There is no doubt that divisive rhetoric of the type Els indulges in stigmatises Muslim children as terrorists. 

While anti-Muslim hate was inherent during the apartheid era, in South Africa today such conduct should neither be allowed nor tolerated. 

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network.