How Online Jihadists Radicalized an American Teen

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]What's interesting is we had set up security features online cuz he's a kid.

[00:00:05]Um and we would do sweeps.

[00:00:08]But again, like we're looking for things that have to do with cyberbullying and drugs and and predators. Like we weren't looking for terrorist.

[00:00:18]No one is talking about the fact that ISIS and Al-Qaeda [music] are targeting our kids.

[00:00:24]These are the parents of a 16-year-old boy we'll call Caleb. Two years ago, his home was raided [music] by the FBI and he was later arrested and charged for making terrorist threats. Threats he made on Discord influenced by Islamic extremist [music] he encountered online.

[00:00:38]We recently spent time with Caleb who was autistic and his family to understand what happened.

[00:00:43]>> [music] >> This is the first time they're speaking to the press.

[00:00:47]Hi.

[00:00:52]So, let's maybe even rewind before you kind of find these alarming messages.

[00:00:58]What was happening the weeks and months before [music] this? You know, our our son is is autistic.

[00:01:05]And has always been a deep thinker and deep learner. [music] So, when he started becoming very interested in religion, you know, at first as a parent, you know, parents of faith, you're like, "Yay."

[00:01:20]You know, uh you're feeling pretty good about it. But by age 13, >> [music] >> Caleb surprised his devout Catholic parents when he told them he was converting to Islam. We were like, "Okay." We didn't know what to do with that. Um but you know, children uh they've got to come to their faith like on their own. Um but we noticed changes in him.

[00:01:38]All of a sudden, he stopped talking to all of his friends at school who weren't Muslim.

[00:01:46]And when we asked him about it, he's like, "I'm not allowed. I can only talk to other Muslim >> [music] >> kids." Then in May 2024, during a routine sweep of their son's phone, Caleb's parents found a series of alarming messages he had sent on Discord, a social platform popular with gamers that in recent years has also gained a reputation as a breeding ground for extremism.

[00:02:09]I'm looking at screenshots that you had sent me.

[00:02:12]>> [music] >> Um of your between your son and someone else on Discord.

[00:02:17]What is your plan for them, akhi brother? To shoot. But only if you can get me the rifle or pistol. If you can't, no worries. I would then stab. I think any parent reading that about their kid, like first of all, you start to wonder like who's Who is this?

[00:02:32]the child that we raised. That's not our son. They also found videos of Caleb reading and interpreting the Quran in Arabic, which he taught himself without his parents' knowledge. It was about um jihad. It was about um you know, when it was acceptable to hurt people. The tone of his voice changed.

[00:02:54]Um the speed at which he spoke changed.

[00:02:59]His hand gesturing was different. He spoke with an accent. We're like, you know, where did the accent come from, right?

[00:03:08]It was like someone was wearing our son's face. [music] Caleb had been living a double life.

[00:03:14]There was the boy who loved to read and play family games after dinner. And then there was Abdullah al-Muhajir al-Muslim on Discord who spent hours in his room in the middle of the night talking to extremists online.

[00:03:25]>> [music] >> Panicked, his parents rushed Caleb to a hospital for evaluation.

[00:03:29]The hospital was they were very honest with us. They're like, "We do not have a protocol, nor do we have the skills or doctors who can de-radicalize a 14-year-old kid." His parents also decided to contact a lawyer terrified of the threats they had seen Caleb making online. We had just paid a just-in-case retainer to an attorney Monday morning.

[00:03:52]And uh I did that sitting in the car >> [music] >> of the hospital.

[00:03:58]Uh sitting in the parking lot.

[00:04:01]Um [music] got out of the car, got on the elevator, and my phone rang.

[00:04:06]>> [music] >> And it was uh my oldest son.

[00:04:10]And he was at home and he said, "Um we're we've just been raided [music] by the FBI and the police.

[00:04:16]And they're like, "We're here to arrest your son."

[00:04:19]Like on suspicion of terrorism. After a hearing, a judge ruled that once discharged, Caleb could return home under house arrest while the investigation continued.

[00:04:27]>> [music] >> He was strictly forbidden from going online, cut off from the internet, and stripped of all of his devices.

[00:04:32]>> [music] >> And we thought certainly this is, you know, uh um >> [music] >> a turning point. Right?

[00:04:42]Um but it wasn't because it >> [music] >> what they had ingrained in him was so embedded that um what he would [music] say to us is, "Well, all of the great scholars spend [music] time in jail. So, if I get incarcerated, that's how I know I'm on the right path."

[00:05:05]That's what we're dealing with. And so, you start to question everything.

[00:05:08]Everything. Caleb's parents contacted Parents for Peace, a DHS-funded nonprofit focused on de-radicalization.

[00:05:15]It was founded by a gentleman whose [music] son had been radicalized.

[00:05:21]Um and he had went so far as to commit an act of terrorism.

[00:05:26]>> [music] >> I remember the first conversation I had with them.

[00:05:30]Uh I was shocked. They said, "In the vast [music] majority of the cases uh where young people are radicalized, um those young people tend to be >> [music] >> male.

[00:05:44]They tend to be teens.

[00:05:46]They tend to be African-American.

[00:05:48]Um and they tend to have autism."

[00:05:52]Caleb's case was given to Mubin Shaikh, a peer exit specialist with Parents for Peace, who has his own history of involvement in Islamic extremism. I I kind of grew up with an identity conflict. Um I had a house party as a teenager. I got caught I by my uncle. I got into a lot of trouble. I decided to {quote} get religious to salvage my reputation with my family in the community.

[00:06:17]I ended up going to India and Pakistan where I would have a chance encounter with the Taliban. [music] I became enamored by them. I became radicalized.

[00:06:26]It would take years for Shaikh to reconsider what he called his commitment to the cause. It was through the study, the deep study, [music] systematic study uh of Islam and the Islamic scriptures that I came to realize that my extremist interpretations were wrong.

[00:06:41]>> [music] >> And I felt particularly guilty that I had been falsifying the interpretations of the religion for so long. Shaikh understood how Caleb had been co-opted by bad actors far better than his parents possibly could.

[00:06:53]>> [music] >> It's not always ideological. Um so a one way to kind of think about it is um at times ideology is a driver of violent extremism, but other times is [music] just a passenger with other psychosocial factors at the wheel. If you imagine a kid who is again isolated, alone, doesn't have any friends, >> [music] >> now you connect to something much bigger.

[00:07:15]Now you're part of a a family, not just if if you think about the gang mentality. Young kids who join gangs, it's like they give them a sense of belonging, meaning, identity, comaraderie, brotherhood, right? Things [music] that they're not getting elsewhere. And it started during the pandemic.

[00:07:34]Like we had this kid that was in football and in sports and it was and then the pandemic and everything stopped. And he got incredibly overwhelmed and depressed [music] and sad and he started to try to find answers. Now a kid who's isolated and alone like that, in order to justify why he's isolated, put on the costume.

[00:07:54]Um Friday the 13th, I'm Jason. I'm Michael Myers. It's scary. I'm ISIS.

[00:08:01]It's scary [music] to other people. So now it's a justification and a validation is that they're not isolating me and authorizing me because of my condition. They're doing it because of my religion.

[00:08:14]And it gives a sense of righteousness to the suffering [music] that that he's experiencing. And as Caleb's parents discovered during his house arrest, his indoctrination went deep. It was Father's Day morning.

[00:08:25]And we were in the kitchen making breakfast for my husband. At that point, uh we [music] have a safe with the the knives in.

[00:08:33]And I went to pull the safe out to open it.

[00:08:36]And I realized that it had been broken [music] into.

[00:08:40]And he said, "Three nights before, he had been visited >> [music] >> in a dream by the prophet who was disappointed in him that he that he had not continued [music] down his original path."

[00:08:54]So, he he got up. He couldn't sleep.

[00:08:56]He's very upset. He went down in the basement and [music] found was able to find an old game system.

[00:09:04]Reprogrammed it somehow. It didn't work, but he was able to to use it to get back online [music] and he sent a message to his friends on Discord saying, "Hey, like the um I was picked up by the police. You won't hear from me for a while. Hope everybody's okay." [music] There was nothing alarming about the message. He just wasn't supposed to be online, right?

[00:09:23]It's a violation.

[00:09:24]Um and then he went to the kitchen and he took three knives out of the safe. It took him a while to [music] break into it. He and he put the knives under his bed. And I asked him what he planned on doing with the knives. And he's like, "Well, I don't know. I don't know yet. He's like, I I just I guess I kind of changed my [music] mind." he said. And so, as a parent, the situation we're in is we have made a commitment to the court that we will notify them >> [music] >> of any violations of his probation.

[00:09:56]Um [music] and so, you know, you're confronted with turning in your own kid. [music] Caleb's parents took him back to the hospital and his medication was adjusted. But when he came out that day, uh, we had to take him back to court and he was arrested and he was sent to the detention center for parole violation. I don't think we've ever had a darker moment as parents. [music] Um, we were worried. We were worried, um, Did he understand, as all this is unfolding, what was really going on? No.

[00:10:26]No. He doesn't want to do bad things, but he has to. Like this [music] is what's required of him.

[00:10:33]And he can prove it. He's like, I can show you my scholars. I can show you the, you know, this is what I have to do. It's part of his condition. He's very black and white.

[00:10:42]There's no gray.

[00:10:43]Um, and again, you know, he was becoming a martyr.

[00:10:48]Why is it it keeps coming up as being Islamism and like extreme forms of Islam? Why is that the thing that kids are going towards? And I think my my theory is that because it's [music] it's seen as the anti-hero narrative. All right? Uh, and so, you know, people who uh, you know, [music] people who are terrorists are are then rebranded as freedom fighters. It's resistance.

[00:11:14]It makes it okay. Makes it righteous.

[00:11:16]Not just okay. Something preferred.

[00:11:18]After 8 months of house arrest and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and security fees, Caleb received news that his charges had been lowered to a misdemeanor. It's unclear whether the FBI had been involved in drawing out violent comments from Caleb, something that could be considered entrapment. We can only assume that the people he was talking to in some instances were the FBI. Uh, some of the behavior profiles of who he was talking to seems to match that. That some of the questions they were asking to probe locations and times were more about collecting information from him than anything else. I mean, look, [music] the the FBI has a very difficult job. Like you, if a kid is inclining towards that direction, >> [music] >> what do you do now? What are you going to say that up, sorry, he's a kid, we're not going to touch it? Well, then, what are you going to do? Wait for him to actually have a predator find him and then and then you read about him in the newspaper?

[00:12:15]Like they're they're stuck in what they can do, right? If I were you, I'd be angry at a lot of people. I'd be angry at the FBI.

[00:12:22]Anger is a very strong word and it'll take you places >> [music] >> that you wouldn't want to go. So, try not to be angry. Uh, I do have a bone to pick with the FBI cuz at the end of the day, actually when it started, he was 13 >> [music] >> when they looked at messages and stuff. So, a 13-year-old who's never been in trouble, if you're the FBI, you should have all the background on the family and parents. So, you like you know like they're clean. Like there's no problem, no traffic tickets, anything like why can't you just come say, "Hey, you know?"

[00:12:55]That's That's simple. That's simple as that.

[00:12:58]Yeah, I think >> [music] >> the the prioritization is is frustrating.

[00:13:03]You know, and we're biased, he's our son, but you would think that the prioritization [music] would be protecting a child above making a point, above building a case.

[00:13:14]>> [music] >> Are we angry at Discord?

[00:13:18]Um, may- maybe a little because I think that they are doing more harm than good and that harm jeopardizes families' lives in our community. At the time, we didn't know anything about [music] Discord and be honest with you, like we still don't know everything about Discord cuz we're not on it.

[00:13:37]You know, [snorts] like why be on it?

[00:13:39]So, it's enough social media sites and all, but we had no idea that it went to this mainstream with the stuff you just said and all the things that they do on there. It's just like it's insane. It should not exist. It should not exist. Yeah, it's a huge concern. And it's not just Discord, it's Roblox. It's It's all the games that the kids are playing. Back in the day, you had to like get on a bus. You had to go and spend time and physically meet with people. You don't know who you're talking to online now.

[00:14:09]It's really really important for parents, >> [music] >> um, you know, to they need to realize like there are predators out there looking to target their children. [music] I see this all the time. These kids, they get caught up. They go to prison.

[00:14:24]Young kids. [music] 16, 17, 18.

[00:14:27]One day you're you're just coming home from work and your door is off the hinges because the FBI raided the house >> [music] >> and they knocked your door in.

[00:14:36]And and that's how a lot of parents, unfortunately, end up finding out.

[00:14:40]Caleb continued to work with Shake, who eventually convinced him to denounce ISIS.

[00:14:44]What happened between him drawing ISIS flags and and Jubian in his room to denouncing [music] them altogether, do you think?

[00:14:52]It wasn't anybody sitting there going, "No, you're wrong." It wasn't even the risk of going to jail. I told you, for him it was like, "Well, now I'm a martyr."

[00:14:59]>> [music] >> Um, it was actually reading in black and white the Quran and starting to understand better uh, the Quran and the Muslim faith and then be able to look and see this isn't right.

[00:15:14]Like it's it is a violation of the Islamic faith and belief system. And he was emphatic about it. He's like, "They're deviants." And he was able to show us why. [music] And that was I mean, it was a we were like, "Oh, thank god." The challenge and what took actually the most time and frankly in some ways that he and Mubeen are still working on it. Once you tear down their framework, you have to replace it with something.

[00:15:41]And so, what Mubeen, um, worked on was how to replace it with a centralist [music] view of the Islamic faith uh, that teaches, you know, um, honoring your parents, uh, being good to your neighbors and to your community and and things that uh, frankly are more in line with what we believe as Christians as well.

[00:16:07]We've been asked quite a bit as Christian parents, how do we feel about having a Muslim son?

[00:16:13]Um, and probably about how you would think in some ways. We want him to be Christian, right?

[00:16:18]Uh, if we got to choose, but I've told my son on multiple occasions we've had this conversation.

[00:16:28]He has free will [music] to make his own choices about faith.

[00:16:31]And it is not easy.

[00:16:34]And it doesn't mean that we don't go every to bed every night praying.

[00:16:39]But [music] we have, um, given him the ability to choose.

[00:16:45]So, we are going to continue to play family games at night >> [music] >> and we're going to continue to take vacations together and have dinner and if it means that he's eating halal chicken and we're eating steak, that's fine. We're not willing to allow there to be a barrier between us.