‘A national warning.’ How an American teen went from ISIS sympathizer to a convict in recovery

Ana and Andy Fischer didn’t know what else to do about their spiraling teenage son Daniel.

Their 16-year-old had gone from being a naive gamer to converting to an extreme vision of Islam in a matter of months – and began judging the world through that dark prism. If he wasn’t isolating in his room or on his phone, Daniel was arguing with them about religion.

“He would just debate on Mohammed, and why Mohammed is better, and why the Muslim religion is better,” Andy Fischer said. “He would just start spewing all this stuff.”

When their younger son told them Daniel was watching beheading videos online, the Fischers hit their breaking point. They confiscated his cell phone and PlayStation, and they brought him to church. Andy took off the door to Daniel’s room.

Nothing they did worked.

“He was completely brainwashed,” Ana said.

When the FBI and South Carolina State Law Enforcement showed up at the family’s front door in the small town of Conway two weeks after Daniel’s parents had taken his electronics, Ana said she thought they were there to help.

They weren’t. Agents had taken Daniel into custody at school, and were at the home to conduct a search, according to police records. In his room they seized two phones, two weapons, a laptop and a journal detailing Daniel’s plans to join the Islamic State and his desire to “kill anyone who dares harm a single muslim life,” an investigative report shows. He was later arrested on state charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction for an act of terrorism and conspiring to or making a bomb threat.

Daniel’s radicalization started when he was around 16 and watched extreme content online before abandoning his Christian upbringing for Islam. His arrest warrant detailed that during a five-month period he pledged allegiance to ISIS, chatted with other supporters about committing attacks, threatened violence at school and obtained “extensive Islamic extremist content” including bomb-making instructions.

Daniel later pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge connected to his threats, and in June of this year he was sentenced in state court to three years in prison and five years of probation, just weeks before his 19th birthday.

His case highlights an alarming trend in recent years of American teens radicalized online at breakneck speed, according to experts. Collectively, those teenagers have been driving a spike in ISIS-inspired plots across the United States: Since 2024, the majority of the 19 ISIS-inspired plots and attacks in America involved at least one teenage suspect, according to Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization.

The FBI made more than 700 counterterrorism arrests and disrupted roughly 640 planned attacks in 2025, but it has “fewer legal tools to use” when it comes to juveniles, FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia told CNN in a statement.

“The ages of those turning to extremism are getting younger every year, challenging our investigative methods, and complicating the ability for prosecutors to bring federal charges,” Raia said.

Nicole Ziege/The Post and Courier

The increase in juvenile radicalization – by both domestic and international terrorism ideologies – “underscores how violent extremist messaging may offer explanations for and solutions to personal issues and be used by juveniles to justify violence,” Raia said.

Experts agree teenagers like Daniel often succumb to extremism to cope with unmet personal needs and emotional distress, psychological gaps which make them susceptible to being emotionally hijacked by violent ideologies mainlined into their digital feeds.

“I realized I was having an identity crisis, and I found myself speaking to the wrong people,” Daniel told the court during his sentencing in June, the Post and Courier reported.

To reclaim their children, some families turn to organizations like Parents for Peace , a nonprofit specializing in de-radicalization programs. Under the direction of P4P’s Mubin Shaikh, a former jihadist turned counterterrorism operative turned intervention counselor, Daniel has worked with the organization’s program from prison for more than a year, shedding extremist ideology through intense emotional and ideological education.

“He was in a rut,” Shaikh said, adding that hooking up with ISIS gave Daniel “that purpose, that meaning, that belonging and that identity” based on “striking back at the society that is making (him) feel this malaise.”

Daniel’s journey from bullied student to ISIS sympathizer to convict in recovery, within two years, illustrates not just the speed at which modern extremism takes hold, but also the impact on families.

“The timeline for juveniles to act and carry out an attack is often faster – flash to bang,” Raia said. “It’s important for parents, teachers, and others close to young people to detect changes in their behavior that may indicate a mobilization to violence.”

Ana Fischer said her son’s case should serve as “a national warning.”

“All I know is I want to start terror, bro,” 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi told Emir Balat, 18, as the pair drove from the Philadelphia suburbs toward their target in New York City in April, federal prosecutors alleged.

They talked about how their homemade bombs would kill up to 60 people at an anti-Islam demonstration outside the mayor’s home, according to investigators.

Prosecutors say Balat, a high school senior, threw the first bomb and then another fed to him by Kayumi. The bombs didn’t detonate, and the two suburban teens were arrested almost instantly.

Their indictment alleges the teens didn’t hesitate in broadcasting their motivations: When someone from the crowd shouted and asked why he had done this, Kayumi, cuffed in the back of an NYPD vehicle, said “ISIS,” and later at the precinct, Balat wrote a note pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Both have pleaded not guilty to federal terrorism, conspiracy and weapons charges.

Although the terror group’s caliphate crumbled in 2019, ISIS has been gaining young American followers willing to take their violent direction.

ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE

Two weeks ago, federal authorities arrested another young man in Pennsylvania for allegedly planning a mass shooting on behalf of ISIS. Court records show Jonathan Kramer, 21, faces a terrorism-related gun charge just months after being released from a counseling facility where he’d been in custody following his arrest as a minor for a different mass shooting plot. Kramer has not yet entered a plea, his attorney told CNN.

In its quest to be seen as alive and relevant after losing its territory, ISIS works hard to connect with disenfranchised men who are online and outraged by the state of the world, according to John Horgan, an expert in terrorist psychology who leads the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University.

These young men “feel angry at the injustice and they come to the view that someone has to do something. And that something is violence because violence is the only language the enemy understands,” Horgan explained.

The uptick in ISIS-inspired activity began after the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October 2023. Since then, a wave of deaths and arrests has unfolded around the country, including the 2025 New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans which killed 15 people , which investigators say was an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism.

Previous jihadist violence serves as inspiration for future plots. The young men in Michigan arrested in an ISIS-inspired Halloween plot made cryptic references to the ISIS-linked Paris attack that killed 132 people in 2015. When law enforcement asked Balat if he was trying to accomplish something on the scale of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, he said, “No, even bigger. It was only three deaths.”

ISIS never really went away, multiple sources told CNN, and today it germinates not just in the internet’s darker corners and encrypted servers, but also across popular social media and gaming platforms.

“This isn’t as simple as there is an entity called ISIS that’s operating overseas that’s reaching into our homeland, recruiting and radicalizing people,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner told CNN’s John Miller after the FBI thwarted the Halloween plot.

“This is a much more nuanced dynamic, where people are finding each other online, doing that mutually reinforcing self-radicalization, finding like-minded people overseas, some of whom may have connections to the actual terrorist organization. So it’s much more muddy, but it is also much more dangerous than a simple model that we’ve dealt with before,” Weiner said.

Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images

Feds charge woman in ISIS-inspired bomb plot at NY State Capitol

Decentralized and technologically dynamic, ISIS today exists in a “digital ecosystem” capable of reaching and radicalizing anyone anywhere, from the American suburbs to sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

In its ecosystem, supporters link up through content engagement across platforms. Swirling around the ISIS media-verse are all forms of content, from the officially produced ISIS newsletter to Roblox-style clips of the propaganda film “Flames of War” to AI-generated content glorifying violence, said Moustafa Ayad, who studies ISIS’s online activity as ISD’s Global Islamism and Counterterrorism research chair.

“We see a lot more content in the Islamic State ecosystem that either appears to be produced by youth or are targeting youth,” Ayad said. “This is content that adds elements and aesthetics from other extremist groups across the spectrum, and uses troll-like language to describe what would be traditionally the ideology of the Islamic State. That sort of thing is really assisting and facilitating in the spread of this.”

As Daniel watched and interacted with that content he was fed more, his counselor Shaikh said, “like radicalization Uber Eats.”

J. Reuben Long County Detention Center Juvenile Facility in Horry County

According to an investigative report prepared by South Carolina State Law Enforcement, Daniel was communicating with Islamic extremist sympathizers, discussing attack plans and sharing beheading and training videos on multiple platforms, and he posted a photo of himself wearing what looked like an explosive vest.

Records illustrate how fast the propaganda sucked Daniel in. In just five months during 2024, Daniel “communicated his intent to join a foreign terrorist organization, conspired with multiple individuals, and threatened to cause harm by use of a destructive device,” and “obtained instructional videos and instructions for making an explosive device … and recipes for making explosive material,” according to his arrest warrant.

Daniel was no jihadist when he started exploring extremist content. But he was a bullied half-Latino with acne and ADHD struggling to fit in at a small-town school, his parents said.

The Fischers and Shaikh said Daniel struggled with identity issues and that the digital community he gravitated toward gave him answers to common, complex questions any teenager asks.

Shaikh knows the emotional lures of ISIS better than most. As a young Muslim, he supported Islamic extremism but abandoned the cause after the September 11 terror attacks. He then studied Arabic and Islamic Studies in Syria, returned home to Canada and became an undercover counterterrorism operative with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. With the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he helped bring down the “Toronto 18,” a group of teens and young adults who plotted a Canadian version of 9/11 in 2006. Since then, he has assisted the US military in counter-ISIS activities.

Today Shaikh serves as a certified interventionist for Parents for Peace, a nonpartisan organization funded in part by the US Department of Homeland Security.

To curb the allure of terror groups, experts agree it begins with learning their emotional drivers, the sometimes subtle tremors of terroristic behavior, and then acting on remedying them.

P4P, like other similar initiatives in New York and Boston, partners with local and federal law enforcement, schools and other institutions to intervene with teens showing signs of taking extremist action. They help walk these teens away from extremism by addressing the personal issues driving their belief that violence is the answer to their problems.

Bringing Daniel out of his extremist mindset required months of intense sessions where he and Shaikh reevaluated his beliefs and resolved his moral conflicts.

They met for dozens of video and phone sessions, slowly building a trusting relationship as they shared their experiences. From there, Shaikh began to challenge Daniel on his Islamist views and to guide him toward self-reflection and accountability.

The goal wasn’t to get Daniel to leave Islam, but to introduce him to a more compassionate faith he could adopt as he shed his ISIS-inspired extremism. Shaikh said he told Daniel that when it came to his faith, people should see he became a better person – rather than a radical.

Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

Terror plot arrests reveal ‘more dangerous’ online pathway to ISIS radicalization in America

“And that’s exactly what he did,” Shaikh said. “That’s why things went positive for him.”

As they explored the Quran, Daniel’s ISIS-inspired thinking would creep in, and Shaikh would give him alternate interpretations from an “older Muslim guy perspective,” an intellectual stimulant Daniel appreciated because he wanted to learn, Shaikh said.

“They need to engage with the subject matter,” Shaikh explained about the religious instruction. “They don’t really respond well when you’re just prescribing it.”

To illustrate Daniel’s progress, Shaikh recounted an altercation Daniel had while leading a Friday evening prayer service in jail. A prison guard came and told him he needed to hurry it up, which insulted Daniel to the point where he was going to file a complaint.

Shaikh told him he needed to do the opposite and apologize to the guard for taking up too much time, as well as to shorten his service. Daniel did exactly that, Shaikh said, proving he was shedding his rigid, radical thinking.

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan

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Shaikh described Daniel as one of the best cases he’s worked with. In a pre-sentencing memo, Shaikh wrote after a year of de-radicalization counseling Daniel had “disengaged from extremist ideology … and adopted a mainstream Islamic framework emphasizing mercy, restraint, and respect for other faiths.”

Daniel, Shaikh wrote, also showed he understood the harm he caused his family and accepted responsibility for his actions.

“He’s being more positive, no resistance, no revolutionary Muslim guy ideology,” Shaikh said.

As he helped Daniel, Shaikh and a P4P psychologist met with his parents for weekly sessions to work through their grief, guilt and pain. The P4P team taught them how to cope with the stress of his conviction, and how to better understand and communicate with their son, they told CNN.

“The pain that we were going through … it’s like a constant grieving,” his mother, Ana, said.

They admitted they could have done better by their son, and they fervently believe Daniel wasn’t capable of carrying out an attack.

Court overturns subway bomber’s conviction for giving ISIS ‘material support,’ raising questions about terrorism prosecutions

“He doesn’t know how this world works,” his father, Andy, a former Marine, said. “We’re talking about a kid.”

It hasn’t been easy for them. Ana said Daniel’s arrest took a “big emotional toll,” equating the pain to that of a mother whose child died. To cover legal fees, they said they had to sell Ana’s car and Andy’s business, and still had to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Daniel is projected to be released from prison in April 2027, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections, followed by five years of probation.

After his release, Ana said, Daniel wants to work with Shaikh and P4P and to help save kids like himself.

“He don’t want anybody else to go through what he has been going through,” his mother said.

安娜和安迪·费舍尔不知道该如何应对他们正处于叛逆期的青少年儿子丹尼尔。

他们16岁的儿子在短短几个月内，从一个天真的游戏玩家变成了极端伊斯兰教信徒，并开始用这种黑暗的视角看待世界。丹尼尔要么把自己关在房间里玩手机，要么就在和他们争论宗教问题。

安迪·费舍尔说：“他会滔滔不绝地谈论穆罕默德，说穆罕默德有多好，伊斯兰教有多好。他会突然冒出一大堆东西。”

当小儿子告诉他们丹尼尔在网上看斩首视频时，费舍尔夫妇终于忍无可忍。他们没收了丹尼尔的手机和游戏机，并把他带到教堂。安迪甚至把丹尼尔房间的门卸了下来。

他们所做的一切都无济于事。

“他完全被洗脑了，”安娜说。

在丹尼尔的父母拿走他的电子产品两周后，当联邦调查局和南卡罗来纳州执法部门出现在康威小镇丹尼尔家门口时，安娜说她以为他们是来帮忙的。

事实并非如此。根据警方记录，执法人员在学校逮捕了丹尼尔，并前往他家进行搜查。一份调查报告显示，执法人员在他的房间里查获了两部手机、两件武器、一台笔记本电脑和一本日记，日记详细记录了丹尼尔加入伊斯兰国的计划以及他“杀死任何胆敢伤害穆斯林生命的人”的愿望。他后来因涉嫌持有大规模杀伤性武器用于恐怖主义行为以及密谋或制造炸弹威胁而被捕。

丹尼尔的激进化始于16岁左右，他在网上观看极端内容，之后放弃了基督教信仰，转而信奉伊斯兰教。逮捕令详细记录了他五个月内宣誓效忠“伊斯兰国”，与其他支持者讨论发动袭击，威胁在学校实施暴力，并获取了大量“伊斯兰极端主义内容”，包括炸弹制造教程。

丹尼尔后来承认了一项与他的威胁有关的共谋罪指控，并在今年6月，也就是他19岁生日前几周，在州法院被判处三年监禁和五年缓刑。

他的案例凸显了近年来美国青少年在网络上迅速走向极端化的令人担忧的趋势，专家指出。总体而言，这些青少年推动了美国境内受“伊斯兰国”启发而策划的恐怖袭击事件激增：据非营利研究机构战略对话研究所（Institute for Strategic Dialogue）的数据显示，自2024年以来，美国发生的19起受“伊斯兰国”启发而策划的恐怖袭击事件中，大多数至少有一名青少年嫌疑人。

FBI副局长克里斯托弗·拉亚在一份声明中告诉CNN，FBI在2025年进行了700多次反恐逮捕，挫败了大约640起计划中的袭击，但在涉及未成年人时，FBI“可用的法律工具较少”。

“转向极端主义的人群年龄逐年下降，这给我们的调查方法带来了挑战，也使检察官提起联邦指控变得更加复杂，”拉亚说。

妮可·齐格/《邮报与信使报》

拉亚表示，青少年激进化现象的增加——无论是国内恐怖主义意识形态还是国际恐怖主义意识形态——“凸显了暴力极端主义信息如何为个人问题提供解释和解决方案，并被青少年用来为暴力行为辩护”。

专家一致认为，像丹尼尔这样的青少年常常会因为个人需求未得到满足和情绪困扰而走向极端主义，这些心理上的缺失使他们容易受到通过数字渠道传播的暴力意识形态的情感劫持。

据《邮报与信使报》报道，丹尼尔在6月份的量刑听证会上告​​诉法庭：“我意识到自己正经历身份认同危机，我发现自己一直在和错误的人说话。”

为了挽回孩子，一些家庭求助于像“和平父母”（Parents for Peace，简称P4P）这样的组织，这是一个专门从事去极端化项目的非营利组织。在P4P的穆宾·谢赫（Mubin Shaikh）的指导下，丹尼尔（Daniel）在狱中参与了该组织的项目一年多，通过深入的情感和思想教育，逐渐摆脱了极端主义思想。谢赫曾是一名圣战分子，后来成为反恐特工，如今又是一名干预顾问。

“他当时很沮丧，”谢赫说，并补充说，加入 ISIS 让丹尼尔找到了“目标、意义、归属感和身份认同”，这是基于“反击让（他）感到这种不适的社会”。

丹尼尔在短短两年内，从受欺凌的学生到 ISIS 同情者，再到正在戒毒的罪犯，他的转变不仅说明了现代极端主义蔓延的速度，也说明了它对家庭的影响。

“青少年发动袭击的行动时间往往更短——从闪现到爆炸，”拉亚说。“家长、老师以及其他与青少年关系密切的人，必须留意他们行为上的变化，这些变化可能预示着他们正在酝酿暴力行为。”

安娜·费舍尔表示，她儿子的遭遇应该起到“全国警示作用”。

据联邦检察官称，19 岁的易卜拉欣·卡尤米 (Ibrahim Kayumi) 在 4 月份与 18 岁的埃米尔·巴拉特 (Emir Balat) 开车从费城郊区前往纽约市的目标途中，对埃米尔·巴拉特说：“我只知道我想发动恐怖袭击，兄弟。”

据调查人员称，他们讨论了自制炸弹将如何在市长家门外的反伊斯兰示威活动中造成多达 60 人死亡。

检方称，高中生巴拉特投掷了第一枚炸弹，随后卡尤米又给他喂了另一枚。炸弹没有爆炸，这两名郊区少年几乎立即被捕。

起诉书指控这两名青少年毫不犹豫地公开了自己的动机：当人群中有人喊叫并询问他为何这样做时，被铐在纽约警察局警车后座的卡尤米回答说“ISIS”；之后在警局，巴拉特写了一张纸条，宣誓效忠伊斯兰国。两人均对联邦恐怖主义、共谋和武器指控拒不不认罪。

尽管该恐怖组织的哈里发国在 2019 年瓦解，但 ISIS 仍在吸引愿意接受其暴力路线的年轻美国追随者。

美联社/档案

两周前，联邦当局在宾夕法尼亚州逮捕了另一名年轻男子，他涉嫌代表“伊斯兰国”（ISIS）策划大规模枪击事件。法庭记录显示，21岁的乔纳森·克雷默（Jonathan Kramer）在因另一起大规模枪击阴谋被捕后，被送往一家心理咨询机构接受治疗，几个月后便面临与恐怖主义相关的枪支指控。克雷默的律师告诉CNN，克雷默尚未认罪。

据佐治亚州立大学暴力极端主义研究小组负责人、恐怖主义心理学专家约翰·霍根称，在失去领土后，ISIS 努力让自己看起来仍然活着并且具有影响力，因此它努力与那些在网上活动、对世界现状感到愤怒的失意男性建立联系。

霍根解释说：“这些年轻人对这种不公正感到愤怒，他们认为必须有人做点什么。而这种做点什么就是暴力，因为暴力是敌人唯一能听懂的语言。”

受 ISIS 启发的活动在 2023 年 10 月以色列与哈马斯战争爆发后开始增加。自那时以来，全国各地发生了一波死亡和逮捕事件，其中包括 2025 年元旦发生在新奥尔良的袭击事件，造成 15 人死亡，调查人员称这是一起受 ISIS 启发的恐怖主义行为。

以往的圣战暴力事件为未来的阴谋提供了灵感。在密歇根州，几名年轻人因涉嫌策划受“伊斯兰国”启发的万圣节恐怖袭击而被捕，他们曾隐晦地提及2015年造成132人死亡的、与“伊斯兰国”有关的巴黎恐怖袭击。当执法人员询问巴拉特是否试图策划类似2013年波士顿马拉松爆炸案的袭击时，他回答说：“不，规模更大。那次只有三人死亡。”

多位消息人士告诉 CNN，ISIS 从未真正消失，如今它不仅在互联网的阴暗角落和加密服务器上滋生，而且还在流行的社交媒体和游戏平台上蔓延。

“事情并非像ISIS这个组织在海外活动，然后渗透到我们的国土，招募人员并使民众激进化那么简单，”纽约市警察局情报与反恐副局长丽贝卡·韦纳在联邦调查局挫败万圣节阴谋后告诉CNN的约翰·米勒。

“这是一种更为微妙的动态，人们在网上相遇，相互强化，进行自我激进化，在海外找到志同道合的人，其中一些人可能与真正的恐怖组织有联系。所以情况更加复杂，也比我们以前处理过的简单模式危险得多，”韦纳说。

马修·卡瓦诺/盖蒂图片社

联邦政府指控一名女子策划在纽约州议会大厦制造受ISIS启发的炸弹袭击

据战略对话研究所称，ISIS 如今已发展成为一个去中心化且技术动态的“数字生态系统”，能够接触到任何地方的任何人，并使之激进化，从美国郊区到撒哈拉以南非洲。

在ISIS的生态系统中，支持者通过跨平台的内容互动进行联系。伊斯兰国战略研究所（ISD）全球伊斯兰主义与反恐研究主席、专门研究ISIS网络活动的穆斯塔法·阿亚德表示，ISIS的媒体宇宙充斥着各种形式的内容，从官方发布的ISIS新闻简报到类似Roblox风格的宣传片《战火纷飞》片段，再到美化暴力的AI生成内容，不一而足。

阿亚德说：“我们发现伊斯兰国生态系统中出现了大量内容，这些内容要么看似由年轻人制作，要么专门针对年轻人。这些内容融合了其他极端组织的元素和美学，并使用类似网络喷子的语言来描述伊斯兰国的传统意识形态。这类内容确实在助长和促进这种思想的传播。”

丹尼尔的辅导员谢赫说，丹尼尔在观看和接触这些内容时，被灌输了更多“激进化外卖”。

霍里县J. Reuben Long县拘留中心少年管教所

根据南卡罗来纳州执法部门准备的一份调查报告，丹尼尔与伊斯兰极端主义同情者进行交流，讨论袭击计划，并在多个平台上分享斩首和训练视频，他还发布了一张自己穿着看起来像是爆炸背心的照片。

记录显示，宣传是如何迅速地将丹尼尔拉入其中的。根据逮捕令，在2024年的短短五个月内，丹尼尔“表达了加入外国恐怖组织的意图，与多人合谋，并威胁要使用爆炸装置造成伤害”，而且“获得了制造爆炸装置的教学视频和说明……以及制造爆炸物的配方”。

丹尼尔开始接触极端主义内容时，他并非圣战分子。他的父母说，他是一个饱受欺凌的拉丁裔混血儿，脸上长满痤疮，患有注意力缺陷多动障碍，在一所小镇学校里很难融入集体。

费舍尔夫妇和谢赫表示，丹尼尔一直饱受身份认同问题的困扰，而他所融入的数字社区为他解答了任何青少年都会提出的常见而复杂的问题。

谢赫比大多数人都更了解“伊斯兰国”的情感诱惑。年轻时，他曾是一名穆斯林，支持伊斯兰极端主义，但在9·11恐怖袭击后放弃了这一理念。之后，他在叙利亚学习阿拉伯语和伊斯兰研究，返回加拿大后成为加拿大安全情报局的一名卧底反恐特工。他曾与加拿大皇家骑警合作，协助抓捕了“多伦多18人”——一群策划在2006年发动加拿大版“9·11”袭击的青少年和年轻人。此后，他一直协助美国军方开展打击“伊斯兰国”的行动。

如今，谢赫担任“和平父母”组织的认证干预专家，该组织是一个无党派组织，部分资金来自美国国土安全部。

专家们一致认为，要遏制恐怖组织的吸引力，首先要了解他们的情感驱动因素，以及恐怖主义行为有时微妙的迹象，然后采取行动加以纠正。

与纽约和波士顿的其他类似项目一样，P4P与地方和联邦执法部门、学校及其他机构合作，对有极端主义倾向的青少年进行干预。他们通过解决青少年认为暴力是解决问题之道背后的个人问题，帮助他们远离极端主义。

要让丹尼尔摆脱极端思想，需要数月的密集辅导，他和谢赫重新评估了他的信仰，并解决了他的道德冲突。

他们进行了数十次视频和电话交流，在分享彼此经历的过程中，逐渐建立起信任关系。之后，谢赫开始质疑丹尼尔的伊斯兰主义观点，引导他进行自我反思并承担责任。

他们的目标并非让丹尼尔放弃伊斯兰教，而是向他介绍一种更仁慈的信仰，让他能够逐渐摆脱受ISIS影响的极端主义思想。谢赫说，他告诉丹尼尔，就他的信仰而言，人们应该看到他变成了一个更好的人，而不是一个极端分子。

Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

恐怖袭击阴谋逮捕行动揭示了美国通往ISIS激进化的“更危险”的网络途径

“他正是这么做的，”谢赫说。“这就是为什么他的事情最终朝着好的方向发展。”

当他们一起研读《古兰经》时，丹尼尔受 ISIS 影响的想法会悄然出现，谢赫会从“年长的穆斯林”的角度给他提供不同的解释，谢赫说，这种智力上的刺激令丹尼尔很感激，因为他渴望学习。

“他们需要参与到宗教教义的学习中来，”谢赫解释说，“如果只是机械地灌输教义，他们很难接受。”

为了说明丹尼尔的进步，谢赫讲述了丹尼尔在监狱里主持周五晚间祈祷仪式时发生的一起争执。一名狱警走过来催促他快点，这让丹尼尔非常生气，以至于他打算投诉。

沙伊克告诉他，他应该反其道而行之，向警卫道歉，因为他耽误了太多时间，并且还要缩短服务时间。沙伊克说，丹尼尔照做了，这证明他正在摒弃僵化激进的思想。

美国密歇根州东区地方法院

电话、射击场训练和公园秘密会面如何促使联邦调查局指控涉嫌恐怖阴谋的嫌疑人

谢赫称丹尼尔是他经手过的最成功的案例之一。在量刑前的备忘录中，谢赫写道，经过一年的去极端化辅导，丹尼尔“已经脱离了极端主义意识形态……并接受了主流伊斯兰教义，强调仁慈、克制和尊重其他信仰”。

谢赫写道，丹尼尔也表现出他明白自己给家人造成的伤害，并承担了自己行为的责任。

“他变得更加积极，没有抵抗，没有革命穆斯林思想，”谢赫说。

在帮助丹尼尔的过程中，谢赫和一位P4P项目的心理学家每周都会与丹尼尔的父母会面，帮助他们克服悲伤、内疚和痛苦。他们告诉CNN，P4P团队教会了他们如何应对儿子被定罪带来的压力，以及如何更好地理解和与儿子沟通。

“我们所经历的痛苦……就像一直处于悲伤之中，”他的母亲安娜说。

他们承认自己本可以对儿子更好，并且坚信丹尼尔没有能力发动袭击。

法院推翻地铁爆炸案嫌犯向ISIS提供“物质支持”的定罪，引发对恐怖主义起诉的质疑

“他不懂这个世界的运作方式，”他的父亲安迪，一位前海军陆战队员说。“我们说的只是个孩子。”

对他们来说，这段日子并不好过。安娜说，丹尼尔被捕给她带来了“巨大的精神创伤”，她将这种痛苦比作失去孩子的母亲。为了支付诉讼费用，他们不得不卖掉安娜的车和安迪的生意，而且仍然背负着数万美元的债务。

根据南卡罗来纳州惩教部门的说法，丹尼尔预计将于 2027 年 4 月出狱，之后还将接受五年的缓刑。

安娜说，丹尼尔获释后，希望与谢赫和P4P合作，帮助拯救像他一样的孩子。

“他不想让其他人经历他所经历的一切，”他的母亲说。