In the midst of the war against the extremist religious thought, there have been a lot of articles about how to chase it away from the Arab and Islamic societies, and there are many strategies and plans to do so, and that is good and irreproachable. In the writings and discussions, I noticed that there were voices that opposed the religious radicalism represented in Islamist organizations and groups like the Muslim brotherhood, Daesh, al-Qaeda and others.
In a religious evening I recently attended, a well-known moderate religious jurist made a lecture. He and a well-educated person discussed many things about the Islamic legacy books and their relation to terrorism and violence Arabic and Islamic countries suffer from. The discussion revealed a gap that terrorism and extremist groups use. Some people tend to discredit all religious legacy books and opt for new contemporary thought, claiming these books help propagating extremism and spreading terrorism. The jurist’s answer was scientific and convincing and enlightened; but it was not well-received by the other party, because refusing a moderate opinion is also intellectual extremism. It is another face of religious extremism to refuse moderate opinion, and that in turn leads to terrorism.
The problem is that there are some people who do not make a difference between religion from one side and religious organizations from the other side, and who criticize Islam while accusing terrorist organizations, and this is indeed the problem; because offending religion gives many opportunities to the extremists to say whatever they want and claim that those who criticize their thoughts are enemies to the Islamic religion. They take lapses in some articles and use them to attack the critics of the extremist terrorist thought.
Everyone realizes the sensitivity of religion in the Arab and Islamic societies. Religion has a spiritual position that should be kept, so keeping religion in these societies is inevitable for those who want to reform these societies and free them from the wrong explanations of some rules of this religion. Keeping religion in one side and all worldly things in the other side should be done very carefully in societies which have such a problem, in order to prevent the extreme organizations from spreading this problem and from the idea of keeping religion away from the public. What we should do is stop extremist terrorist groups from kidnapping religion, and eliminate all things that offend religion and distort its mental image which has become extensively related to violence, murder, and killing, and go back with religion to its jurisprudential origins that were distorted by those organizations and groups.
Nowadays, there are a lot of troubles that hold many factors with many strategic risks. People with the destructive thought pretend that they are good people, and God says about these people “When it is said to them: Make not mischief on the earth, they say: Why, we only want to make peace! Of a surety, they are the ones who make mischief, but they realize (it) not.” A lot of people are guilty; despair and frustration almost control many people in our Arab and Islamic world.
The moderate discourse is almost absent in the middle of a lot of views on the social media and traditional TV stations, and we barely see moderation through all this disruption and noisiness about the original religious values. As a result, the efforts to keep moderation, tolerance, coexistence, and accepting difference in religion, thought, and ethnicity became challenged and this could hinder them, and everyone will be trapped between the extremism of religion and the extremism of thought, and extremism could become dominant and prevalent, leading to insanity and collective suicide of societies as the sociological literature is talking about.
Everyone should realize that extremism is the first step to murder, and overstating on enmity makes the extremist movement or the extremist thought spread and transform to terrorist plans. These facts apply on both the religious extremism and the thought extremism. Getting rid of terrorism thought requires an inclusive strategy through intellectual and educational actions aimed to revive the originality and the good values of the Islamic religion, and not cross the fine line between religion as a spiritual core for societies on one side and between its practices, application, and who uses its name and commits the ugliest crimes on the other side.
The separation steps between what is sacred and what is blasphemous should be done in a very careful way, because any mistakes in this sensitive operation will cost the security and the stability of many societies. When others say “word is responsibility”, it should translate into a collective commitment especially in moments of stress, nervousness, and the weakness of the community vision.
The Arabic mind nowadays is busy with looking for ways to exit from the prevalent vicious circle and its dangerous sectarian and security manifestations. Keeping religion from the religious and the thought spats is truly neutralizing the extreme thought. The rule of God that rules everyone is “Let him who will believe, and let him who will, reject (it)”’, otherwise, not making a difference between religion with its original values and its holy constants on one side and how terrorist organizations apply and practice it on the other side will lead to serious issues.
