READER COMMENTS

Our Arab societies suffer from extremism in every time and place. This complicated problem has religious, political, economic, and social dimensions and even psychological frequently. When the country searches for a solution to this problem, it should take into account all these things together and not leave one thing in order to have balanced and effective solutions, and its effects appear to the community, so that its members feel secured and work in a social and psychological atmosphere which is safe and clean from intellectual and psychological pollution that extremism spreads. When we look at it from Islam's aspect, we will find that Islam rejects extremism in all its forms. Islam is the religion of mediation; middle things are the best. Islam also rejects violence resulting from this extremism; a Muslim is someone that people feel secured from his tongue and hand. Our prophet said that whoever deceives us is not from us and who raises a weapon at us is not from us and God said in His Holy book, call for the way of your God with wisdom and preach and talk to them in a good manner; God and His prophet had said the truth. It is worth mentioning that the security and police solutions to this hard problem are not enough that we suffer from it. It is an intellectual problem basically that we have at the first and the end should correct the concepts to recover our society from the ignorance that we live in and we should pay attention to the real national projects that accommodate all the sons of the homeland and mingle them to uproot extremism.

The manifestations of extremism and its requirements include the mistrust of others and viewing them from a dark perspective, hiding their good deeds while inflating their disadvantages. The origin of the extremist is indictment. There is no doubt that the main reasons for this exaggeration are the poor vision of the reality of religion and the lack of knowledge and insight to know and dig deeper in its secrets, to know its purposes, and discern its meanings. The solution is that we must disseminate the principles of peace and love, and spread our thoughts by accepting the others and not reject them. This is the task of the intellectual and not the duty of the abusers. However, if the thinkers resorted to speech and exclusion wars as well as spread the idea of eliminating the other, the failure will be the fate of everyone because this method that is not calculated, not estimating the results and concerns the terrorist method will not change the unbridled minds but rather it will increase their recalcitrance. When this is done, the elimination of such terrorist movements will give the States stability and more tranquility within the societies and the elimination of such movements. There will be stability among the States and there will be more trade exchange and tranquility in the oil in areas. Therefore, the eradication of the terrorist organizations is linked to the international peace and security.

Extremism is a tail of terrorism and if extremism includes exaggerating the ideas, then terrorism includes the exaggeration of violence. If extremism and terrorism lead to the same way, they both lead to violence, destruction and damage to humanity. However, Islam invites us in the jurisprudence of the law that there should be no harm or damage, you must think as you want and do as you like but do not hurt anyone, whether he has the same religion as you or has other religions. Although it stressed the sanctity of the Muslim blood, it also stressed the sanctity of the human blood in general. Do not claim the life of anyone under any circumstance but only through certain conditions that Islam sets in several issues.

Terrorism is prevalent in the Arab world under different slogans and diverse groups, but most of them embrace the ideology of terrorist al-Qaeda. In fact, most countries in the Arab world witnessed some terrorist attacks. Egypt was one of the first Arab countries that were targeted by terrorism. The second leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is Egyptian. The bombings and the Luxor attacks in the nineties marked the beginning of the public and organized presence of terrorist groups in Egypt. At that period, Egypt managed to eradicate terrorism. Unfortunately, this phenomenon reappeared in this period through bombings and the open fire on the border area in Rafah. Besides, it is noteworthy that terrorism in Yemen is widespread as a result of the tribal nature and the hostile environment where the people live. The former Government took advantage of the presence of terrorist groups in those regions to justify the deployment of the regime’s forces which prevented the opposition from claiming their rights. There were major bombings which still occur in Yemen, but the most famous bombing attack was on a U.S. naval fleet ship in the coast of Aden. The attack had an impact in the fight against the terrorist organizations in Yemen.

There is no doubt that terrorist groups are increasing considerably in the Arab world compared to the other countries given that they hide behind Islam to commit their crimes in what they call Jihad for the sake of Allah. Yet, this has nothing to do with pleasing Allah. In fact the aggression of the innocent is considered as one of the major sins which contradict with the laws of Islam. In addition, such crimes anger Allah the Almighty who will befall His anger and punishment on the perpetrators both in life and in the hereafter given that they are not mere murder, sabotage and destruction acts but they serve also to tarnish the image of Islam and increase people’s hatred of Islam and Muslims. Indeed, these people think that Islam is the religion that calls for violence, allows bloodshed and sabotage and spreads fear and terror in the hearts of the innocent.

Extremism and its spread in the society resulted in terrorism. The societies need development so that they can advance and there is no development for any society with terrorism, violence and extremism, and its persistence. Some groups in the society have drawn for themselves the road of extremism and terrorism. The confrontation of extremism will not take place only with science, culture, training, education, and raising the culture of the community. With science, we can confront extremism as the progress, civilization and development are the enemies of extremism. We will advance with science, technology and scientific progress as the modern world and the modern civility are based on moderation.

The ideological deviation has been suffered by many citizens; however, the terrorist movements were able to dominate everyone they want to recruit. They're also spreading their ideology in their minds because of the weak religious beliefs. There are many Muslims who do not know anything about their religion except that they are Muslims for the sake of Allah. They perform their worship but they don't know that terrorism and Jihad differ from each other. There are many people who believe that the spread of chaos is Jihad for Allah but the killing of the innocent citizens and their expiation of them is not Jihad. Jihad is the confrontation of those who want to work to sabotage our homelands or to fight us in our faith. It is terrorism that did all the things that lead to ruin, destruction, fear and panic among the people. However, the clergy had to use the holy month in which people come to the mosques to hear speeches and perform prayer. They spread the issue of the threats of terrorism and what their subversive acts can cause. They also explained about the duty of the person who knew something about them and the view of the religion regarding fighting them. They also taught how people can avoid their venom because many who join such movements do not understand their religion properly, that’s why they are easy prey in the hands of those movements who use the words of Allah to justify their actions. The truth is Allah is innocent of them and of what they claim. They are corrupt movements and it is forbidden to spread corruption on earth. May Allah punish them as they caused many victims and they ruined the homelands.