NOTE: As with all guest posts, the opinions expressed below are those of the guest author and they do not necessarily represent the views of this blogs administrator and does not at all represent his employer at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Jihadology.net aims to not only provide primary sources for researchers and occasional analysis of them, but also to allow other young and upcoming students as well as established academics or policy wonks to contribute original analysis on issues related to jihadism. If you would like to contribute a piece, please email your idea/post to azelin [at] jihadology [dot] net.
Click here to see an archive of all guest posts.
—
By Juha Saarinen
Radical Islam in Finland
In August 2012, the first rumors of Finnish fighters in Syria appeared in Finnish media. Allegedly, young Finnish converts to Islam had traveled to northern Syria to support opposition forces. A year later, an Interior Ministry report stated that more than 20 foreign fighters from Finland had travelled to Syria, a majority with the intent to join radical Islamist groups.
With very little information publicly available about the Finnish foreign fighter contingent in Syria, it is difficult to examine what domestic factors that have contributed to this unprecedented development; prior to Syria there was very little evidence of Finnish foreign fighters, although few had been rumored to fight in and near Somalia. However, it cannot be separated from the evolution of Finland’s nascent radical Islamist scene. In the past two years, the number of radicalized Muslims has grown considerably and they are now more connected to like-minded individuals and organizations abroad.
This article will provide a brief introduction to radical Islam in Finland for a wider English-speaking audience as there currently exists no literature on the topic accessible to a non-Finnish speaking audience. It will focus on three themes: the radical Islamist scene in Finland, domestic terrorist activity by al-Shabab, and Muslim foreign fighters originating from Finland, particularly in Syria.
Note on research material
The material used in this article is gathered from various open sources available online, i.e. Finnish news media, various government reports and documents. Unfortunately, lack of data on the topic is a significant obstacle in researching radical Islam in Finland. While the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (FSIS, or Supo in Finnish) follows and analyzes domestic radicalization and terrorist activity constantly, vast majority of the information they collect is not publicly available for operational or legal reasons. For instance, FSIS’s files on Finnish foreign fighters in Syria will remain classified for at least 25 years, 60 at the most. Information that is made publicly available – via government documents and reports, official statements and comments– rarely offers anything more than general and ambiguous overviews.
While there is some academic literature on Muslim communities in Finland, radicalization and terrorism have been marginal topics. Of course, there has been very little to research. Radicalization is relatively recent and limited phenomenon in Finland, and there has been very little terrorist activity to research. To date there have been no terrorist attacks or failed plots in Finland by radical Islamists – despite two incidents (mis)attributed to al-Qaeda widely in Finnish media in June 2011. One notable exception to this is Suomi, Terrorismi, Supo, edited by Anssi Kullberg and published in 2011. It provides a history of terrorism and political violence in Finland, also including a chapter on radicalization and Islamist-motivated terrorist activity.
Muslim radicalization and the Radical Islamist scene in Finland
Although Finland has had Muslim minorities ever since the late 19th century, until the late 1980s only a few thousand Muslims lived in Finland. In the 1990s the Finnish Muslim population started to grow rapidly as refugees from conflict areas in the Middle East, North and East Africa arrived in Finland. By 2006, Finland had a Muslim population of approximately 40-45 000, and in 2011 it was estimated to be 50-60,000, 90% of whom were Somalis, Arabs, Kurds, Albanians, Turks, Persians, and Bosniaks. The Finnish Muslim community is predominantly Sunni, approximately only 10-15% of Finnish Muslims are Shia.
While the vast majority of Finland’s Muslim community is moderate and acts as a counterforce to radicalization, significant parts of it live in the margins of society and remain susceptible to it. 2nd generation Muslims from those ethnic groups that have had difficulties integrating and originate from conflict areas where jihadist or Islamist groups are active are particularly vulnerable. Only a small minority of those vulnerable to radicalization has actually become radicalized, and according to the latest estimate no individual ethnic group – including Finnish converts to Islam which number a little over a thousand – is particularly radicalized. This may well be because radicalization normally occurs individually or in small social groups. The Finnish Muslim community is small and moderate, which makes it unlikely that violent radicalization is a part of a normal activity in the community, or that radicalized individuals can openly share their views – although social media has all but certainly made it easier for radicalized people to share their views. Indeed, there are no well-known radical mosques, religious figures, or organizations which promote radicalization in Finland.
Whether various non-radical but ultraconservative gateway organizations (e.g. Da’wah groups and Islamist movements) operating in Finland affect radicalization is unclear as there have been no research conducted on Islamism in Finland. However, some non-radical organizations and mosques are known to occasionally invite controversial speakers to visit Finland, which may promote radicalization among local Muslims. Most recent such visit was in March 2013, when Anjem Choudary and Awat Karkury attended an event honoring Mullah Krekar in Helsinki. It is not known who organized the event, but Mullah Krekar still enjoys support among the Kurdish population in Finland, particularly in Turku. In an interview after his visit, Choudary stated the concept of Sharia4Finland was born during his visit, although it is not yet clear whether such an organization has been or will be formed.
It is not known exactly how many Muslims in Finland have adopted a radical ideology or worldview, but in the past decade, according to FSIS director Antti Pelttari, the number of people in Finland with links to terrorist organizations has multiplied. This increase has been particularly visible in the past three years: In 2011, there were only “few tens” of radicalized individuals with connections to terrorist organizations or networks. This grew to “more than a hundred” in 2012 and the most recent estimate is “a few hundred” – most likely close to two hundred. The majority of radicalized individuals in Finland are Muslim, but it is still a tiny minority of the overall Muslim population.
It is likely that the majority of radicalized Muslims in Finland are not linked to jihadism and jihadi groups – at least among first generation Muslims – but to various separatist, leftist and Islamist groups with local agendas. According to Anssi Kullberg, 14 groups linked to terrorist attacks abroad have had a presence in Finland in the last twenty years. Only five of these groups were identified as radical Islamist or jihadist in Kullberg,
