An increasing number of analysts in the United States are beginning to address the problem of home-grown Islamist terrorism in much greater depth than ever before. Unlike the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the attacks of 9/11 were, of course, perpetrated by foreign nationals.

In part, this has contributed to something of a consensus in the United States that home grown radicalisation was a problem which was largely confined to Europe and that the main threat to American national security was external.  "The feeling was we're a country of immigrants and people tend to come to the US and feel accepted, whereas in Europe they are caught between two worlds", observes Stephen Grand, director of US-Muslim relations at the Brookings Institution.

However, a number of events in recent weeks and months have led to a serious reappraisal of this view. The most dramatic of these was the Fort Hood shootings of 15 November 2009, which killed 13 people, and was allegedly perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army major who was serving as a psychiatrist. Hasan’s radicalisation has also been linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Islamist preacher of Yemeni dissent, who is a US citizen and has spent much of his life in the country.

There is worrying evidence that these events are indicative of a broader pattern. Al Qaeda has a history of trying to attract UK and American citizens to become active agents for its cause. Further, as the The Sunday Times has reported, during the past eight months alone, there have been 13 cases in which 30 American citizens allegedly plotted to carry out attacks or joined terrorist organisations in Pakistan or Somalia. Earlier this month, Sharif Mobley, a 26 year old New Jersey man of Somali heritage, was arrested in Yemen and charged with membership of Al Qaeda. Reports also claimed that Mobley had worked in power plants in the US before moving to Yemen.

Last week, in another dramatic development, news broke of the October arrest of Colleen LaRose ('Jihad Jane'). LaRose has been accused of actively trying to recruit others as part of a plot to assassinate the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who lives under a fatwa for cartoons he drew about the Prophet Mohammed. As part of the same investigation, it also emerged that another American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31 years old and originally from the town of Leadville in the Rocky Mountains, had been arrested in Ireland. Newspaper stories claim that both women had been discontented divorces, until finding Islam and becoming radicalised; it also seems that the internet played an important part in their radicalisation.

These incidents feed into another growing concern, which is the potential role of women in Islamist terrorism. In a prescient article for the Hudson Institute, published the very day that the 'Jihad Jane' story broke in the media, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens observed that Islamist teachings on the involvement of women in jihad have developed significantly in recent years, and seem to forecast an increasingly prominent role for female jihadist. As Meleagrou-Hitchens summarises:

As the United States and Europe have slowly come to terms with the grim reality of the Islamist terror threat, comment and analysis on how to deal with it have almost invariably concentrated on angry young males. What has frequently been overlooked is the role played by females on the peripheries of many terror plots in the West. Their involvement has ranged from encouraging their jihadi relatives, ensuring that their will to carry out the operation remains strong until the end, to withholding information from the authorities. Although the West has yet to see its first female suicide bomber, recent developments suggest that such an incident is likely, perhaps even inevitable.

In late 2009, the wife of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote "A letter to the Muslim sisters" in which she argued that Muslim women should "fulfill whatever they [the commanders of jihad] ask of us, may it be through monetary aid to them or any service or information or suggestion or participation in fighting or even through a martyrdom operation." Nor is this an unprecedented phenomenon. Between 1985 and 2006, there were an estimated 134 Islamist-inspired suicide attacks carried out by women across Russia and Chechnya, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.

On Wednesday 10 March, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a panel to discuss the issue of domestic radicalisation in the US. The contents of the discussion can be viewed here. The Center has also published a report, by Rick Nelson and Ben Bodurian, which contains two overriding pieces of advice for US policy makers in this area:

First, they must consider new ways to interdict the growing trend of "Internet radicalization." Many of last fall's suspects connected with transnational terrorist recruiters via the Internet; stopping this sort of activity is crucial to stemming domestic extremism in the United States.

Second, several of those arrested last fall seemed to harbor the belief that the United States is at war with Islam. This is a "narrative" that al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups actively promulgate; it holds that U.S. counterterrorism efforts signify a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. The United States must continue to work to puncture this narrative. White House officials already have discarded phrases like "war on radical Islam." But ultimately, the United States needs to go further than this, because al Qaeda seizes on more than just U.S. rhetoric to galvanize support for its agenda; the group also points to America's military presence in Muslim countries as evidence for its preferred narrative. The United States, then, should consider how to balance the need to combat global terrorism with the drawbacks of large-scale, direct military intervention. Doing so will require the United States to forge stronger partnerships with states plagued by extremist violence.

These conclusions provide a starting point for a range of discussions, particularly the connections between foreign policy and domestic radicalisation which have previously been identified in the UK. The report also makes a brief suggestion that ‘Europe’s experience with, and responses to, homegrown extremism have much to offer U.S. policymakers and officials’, arguing that small-scale initiatives such as the Quilliam Foundation illustrate the value of official engagement with Muslim communities.

Understandably, senior US policy makers have taken great interest in the fact that the UK has funnelled much time, money and effort into counter-terrorism policies, as part of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) strategies. But the emphasis on outreach and engagement leaves a number of questions unanswered. What does 'engagement' mean and, more importantly, just who should the state be engaging with?

There are some things the UK does very well in this field; other things it does less well. Approaches to domestic counter-terrorism have evolved significantly since 9/11 and 7/7.

Nonetheless, it is important for US policy makers to recognise that the sagacity of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) and the Prevent strategies continue to remain a great source of debate within the UK. In particular, the long-term wisdom of using non-violent extremists as a bulwark against those prepared to use violence has been questioned, alongside the precise criteria used for 'engagement' with various Muslim groups.

As Amm Samm's previous posts on FREERad!cals have made it clear, senior US policy makers should think long and hard before they transport the UK model to American soil. Further quality in the debate is needed.