The Extremism Dilemma

 Is our current counter-extremism policy effective enough to do what its supposed to do? 




Suppose you had to re-make the world order from scratch. After humans have discovered the rudimentary natural processes, they settle into loosely knit agricultural societies. They have the arrays of culture, of art, and of organized religion, which determines most aspects of people's lives, including political boundaries, law and socioeconomics. Soon, the scientific revolution hits, and there are drastic changes in the ways of life of people in terms of technology, heath and food. Science is starting to gain credibility and impact production and economics, but the political and social spheres are still largely dictated by Divine orders. On surface, the lives of people have changed, but they will still mercilessly execute anyone, who deviated from the orthodox route or who happened to be born in a household following a religion, different from that of the State's. Scientific revolution was not enough. What needed was a philosophical revolution, which could meticulously reflect upon the strands of culture, politics and theological teachings. What needed was an Enlightenment Movement, which could convincingly answer and argue questions such as "Why it is not right to execute people who happen to believe in a God, other than your own?" or that "why the State should be separate from Church?'

Today, many might take the liberal values of freedom and democracy for granted but back there it was a great challenge to convince someone about the sanctity of human life being more sacred than the Divine law, or that humans possess certain rights, which need to be respected. "Human rights" is a concept of modern thinking. It does not have a physical existence, you cannot touch or see rights, but it is a concept legitimated by a piece of paper called the constitution. One needs to put faith in the constitution to take human rights seriously. But the human rights are not only legitimated by the constitution, rather it is entrenched into the conscience of millions of people, who deeply believe in it with sincerity. The Enlightenment was not, then, the withdrawal of faith, rather replacement of faith from the Divine order to human capacity to do well and organize themselves. In other words, it was a shift from faith in faith to faith in reason. It was an announcement that some faiths are better than the others, and that some can genuinely improve human condition while others lead to hatred and dogmas. Even though faith in reason is faith but it is a very philosophically informed faith, which has a good argumentative basis.

Fast-forward to twenty first century in the Muslim world, which is plagued by fundamentalist ideologies and witnessing some of the horrendous examples of violence and hatred. A lot of literature has been expend on contemplating its causes and nature, and much confusion still surrounds the discussion. Some earnestly assert that it is political, concerned with land and wealth, while sweeping it aside that in puritanical forms of faith, politics is very much the business of religion. It is not facile to sketch a line on where politics starts and religion ends. As I mentioned earlier, people coming from a Western paradigm tend to take the separation between politics and religion for granted and therefore expect the same from the other side of the world.

Even though the Muslims are divided into modern nation states today, the tinges of democracy have seldom stepped in their national corridors, often frowned upon like some "uninvited guest". Although many had attempted to devise marriage between Islam and democracy, those 'many' were either seen largely with contempt, or their ideals conveniently molded to be digestible for the masses. But the groups harboring fanatical thinking, refuse to even stare at the exported ideas from "the land of the infidel" which indiscriminately puts the Christians, the atheists and the not-very-orthodox Muslims on the same plate. The Muslim liberals turn out to be largely ineffective in dealing with such out-of-hand ideologies. The West continues to mindlessly shell bombs on the 'whackos' and spend copiously on defense in the hopes that it will magically do something, while fulfilling the predictions of the fanatics and making them gain more support "Oh look! Were we not right? These crusaders will always remain the crusaders".

What the West is doing, is adopting an easy way out of the murk, more of a temporary fix, and while, comforting its own self that it has it under control. And the liberals just want the fanatics to simply "get it" as if, it was enough to convince them. The truth is, that the doors of discussions are mostly closed for the larger part of the Muslim world. It is easy to have a dialogue with the moderates, but nobody would want to 'sit and chat' with the puritans, for the fear of offending them, not even the moderates. How would you, for example, convince a Sunni supremacist who asks for the killing of those Muslims, who happen to differ from him theologically, given that he was raised since childhood to believe in his self-righteousness and a totalitarian view of Islam?

It presents as a great challenge to us, not only to the Westerners but more importantly to Muslim liberals and thinkers. It is not a political challenge, but a philosophical one. A trial, I would say, even tougher than that faced by the Enlightenment thinkers. How do you think the shift from faith in faith to faith in reason can happen? How do you convince someone, that dialogue is a better way than violence? How do you tell someone that his God's right cannot supersede the right of any human to live? It’s the hard problem, debating on such basic tenets which many deem as obvious. A person who is convinced that the Divine authority has ordained on him, the task of protecting His throne on earth, would not find it obvious to hold regard for the very life, whom his God warned against. Or a person who dismisses every argument on the grounds that it is a Judeo-Christian construct, would not be much fond of a civilized dialogue. One could start with challenging the fundamentals of the faith itself, but only if one remains alive to do that. How should we then, begin to address this problem? And how do we know that debating is a solution at all, why cannot we simply do away with military action? Because it is an ideological strife, a meme competing to take root, if one group gets defeated, another will rise.

This is not a 21th century, post-modern fundamentalism problem, this is history repeating itself, just with deadly weapons of modern origins and new organizational strategies, as if fanatical ideologies have found an outlet they were longing for. This is not to say, that fundamentalist faith was evenly prevalent throughout history, but that it is easier to politicize a religion and legitimize it using scripture than it is to de-politicize it. One such example, among many others is that of Zia’s reign in Pakistan, which successfully drummed puritanical fringes of faith using institutional means into masses, but decades forward, no one has been able to reverse the changes. The rule is not the same for both sides of the affairs. It is very easy to capitalize on the religious doctrines while turning the clocks back, but takes broken spines and slit tongues to overhaul it. 

Our current policy standing on counter extremism is based on fractured assumptions and bad theory. Even though the evidence is inconclusive, but the dilemma which lay before us require to make educated drafts on the thin films of evidence that we have. The enlightenment method might be humiliating, require oodles of patience and optimism or might not even work, but if you were to re-make the world, it is exactly how you make the philosophical jump.