Politics, Society and Religion – Some things about Extremism

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6369251.stm#al
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6369529.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4802388.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4204820.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4204820.stm
The above articles tell us that most people believe that Islam is compatible with Western values of democracy and that the sides in the so-called “clash of civilizations” scenario are ultimately working towards integration, and not towards mutual annihilation. They also touch on the important issues concerning terrorism, and highlight the importance of knowledge, as opposed to political agendas and presuppositions, when dealing with terrorism.
However what these articles did best is to draw attention to extremists on both sides as the true proponents of terrorism, and that it is they that have helped create the “modern-day climate of mutual fear and suspicion" that has been so conductive to radicalism.
Islam has traditionally been a highly tolerant religion. Indeed, the earliest seventh-century Muslim communities in Arabia was well known as feminist, helpers of the poor and preachers of an open, liberal message. They filled in the gaps for a society, which the establishment, who were a powerful plutarchy of family clans continuously waging feudal wars against each other, could not fill.
Islam is also the world’s only large religion that recognizes the legitimacy of another religion. In fact, in the Koran Christians, Jews among others are referred to as ‘People of the Book’, who also knew the ‘God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’.
It is ironic that today most people would never attribute the above characteristics to the Muslims, due to the group of clerics that are commonly referred to as ‘hijackers’ of Islam. True ‘fundamentalist’ Islam is therefore not the extremism we see today.
As one person puts it—“Devoid of the necessary skills and tools to decipher the religious texts, minions of chaos have side-stepped over 1,000 years of scholasticism and Koranic exegesis to create their own deluded Sharia - a new law couched in Islamic terminology established solely to be the antithesis of the West. Under this law, there is only hatred and rejection. Under this law, Muslims and non-Muslims alike are its victims”

On the other side, there are the controversial, ‘super-liberal’ critics of Islam in the West, and also some of the governments and even communities that have taken actions against Muslims that can best be described as inappropriate. These parties’ opinions and actions, while carrying a seed of truth, are inflammatory to Muslims and do not contribute positively to the process, and their stand that Islam cannot be reconciled with the West are counterproductive. They only serve to prove the Islamic extremists right in their assertion that Islam is under siege.
In conflicts like the Iraq war and The Palestinian war, and in terrorist attacks, along with controversies such as the Danish cartoon conflict, it is ultimately these extremists that gain support for themselves, and it is they who get the most people and resources, to generate the next round of conflict.
Therefore the thing to do to counter extremism in both sides is thus to keep an open mind about the other, and thus broaden the “middle ground” of the conflict.


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