There is no doubt that the legal and precise characterization of political extremism and terrorism is one of the areas of disagreement between many countries and regional and international human rights organizations since the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Hence the importance of the characterization produced by the international conference organized by Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in sisterly Egypt over the past week under the title “Al-Azhar in the face of terrorism and extremism”. The conference concluded its work yesterday by stressing “that all the armed groups and sectarian ‘militias’ that used violence and terrorism in the face of the nation, – falsely – claiming belonging to Islam, are sinful groups in thought and rebellious in behavior, and do not belong to true Islam at all.”
This conference, in which the United Arab Emirates participated through an official delegation headed by HE Dr. Mohammed Matar Salim Al Kaabi, Chairman of the General Authority for Islamic Affairs and Endowments, is one of the important positive steps to deal with this malignant phenomenon that is eating away the body of the Islamic nation, especially that the allocution of the Emirates explained the practical and operational mechanisms to confront extremism and terrorism, first and foremost to support the role of Al-Azhar in promoting moderation in the Muslim world. It has become incumbent on scientists and institutions involved in religious discourse to take the initiative and to “make great efforts to restore religious discourse and to free it from the hands of extremists and to highlight the authentic essence of Islam and to bring back its brilliant civilized image.”
There is no doubt that the United Arab Emirates is among the few countries in the Arab and Islamic worlds that took the lead in terms of crystallizing clear strategies to regain the initiative from terrorist and extremist groups and organizations through practical steps and a clear scientific vision to be strictly implemented and followed up scientifically, and based on realistic, applicable and measurable mechanisms, the reactions to which are identifiable. The first of these mechanisms is the enactment of laws necessary for the development of religious awareness and dissemination of Islamic culture in accordance with the approach of moderation, and the highlighting of the civilized image of mosques and the development of Quranic centers, and strengthening the reference of official Fatwa and the entrenching of the principles of coexistence, tolerance and the advancing of the march of the humanitarian action. These mechanisms are formally supported on the part of our wise leadership, led by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, may God protect him, and his Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, who puts a high priority on the consolidation of the centrist approach in religious discourse and on preserving the youth and new generations from intellectual and religious extremism and on ridding the educational curricula and youth activities from any ideology or extremist religious discourse hostile to humanity and moderation advocated by our religion.
When a scientific conference of this size concludes by naming things and behaviors and practices with their proper names without fear or equivocation, then we are in the beginning of the right track for a resolute confrontation with the extremist ideology. What doubles the importance of this confrontation is that the threat is pressing. These groups publish their destructive ideology in various areas of the Arab and Muslim body, and are about to kill it, so silence has become a luxury our communities cannot afford about this malignant phenomenon, which everyone is in a race with time for uprooting it and eradicating this deviant thought and discarding it completely out of history.
Al-Azhar is the spearhead of the efforts related to the right intellectual confrontation with extremism. Its scientists and symbols are the holders of intellectual enlightenment in this sensitive historic phase. If the efforts and plans to address terrorist and extremist organizations on the military level will take a long time, then we should not expect the confrontation and eradication of terrorism, and the fortifying of the body of the Arab and Muslim countries against this fatal intellectual epidemic to take a short time, as intellectual confrontation is the hardest battle in the long term. We should be convinced that these efforts are the only lifeline for our future generation. The goal is precious and the target is even more precious, which is the security and stability of our countries and the safeguard of the interests of the Arab and Muslim peoples.
