In response to the terrorist attack in #Christchurch, New Zealand, I can already hear in my mind the narrative our own extremists will present:
“The Unbelievers will never be pleased with you until you follow their ways! They hate you and want to destroy Islam! These terrorists could not have done what they did without the complicity of the Intelligence and police services, even if it was complicity by omission. The anti-Muslim extremists have become emboldened by Right-Wing governments, and the populations have been silent – that is complicity! They did today in New Zealand what they have been doing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Palestine; why do you think they will hunt you in your lands, but not hunt you in their own lands? There is no response but Jihad and Hijrah!”…and so on and so forth.
Oh yes, this is what they will say, and yes, they will have a receptive audience. And here is where we have to be honest. Radicalism begets radicalism.
The monsters in Christchurch were not solely the product of Right-Wing political movements, White nationalists, Trump, or what have you; they were spawned as much by Al-Qaeda and ISIS as they were by neo-Nazis. If we insist that non-Muslims need to understand why extremist groups have an appeal among certain segments of our community, we need to understand ourselves, why grotesque racist and hateful ideologies have an appeal among certain segments of the non-Muslim community as well.
I do not know the extent to which these warped ideologies (whether among Muslims or non-Muslims) turn people into raging psychopaths, or whether raging psychopaths just gravitate to these warped ideologies in order to rationalize their Satanic inclinations. But, what is clear to me is that extremisms feed off of each other.
All of this comes down to one thing for us as Muslims; we need to seriously address radicalism within the Ummah; as brothers and sisters, as leaders, as scholars, as activists. I am not suggesting by any means that the Muslim community in Christchurch was tolerant of extremism, nor that they provoked this horrific attack in any way. But the fact is, the hate of the radical Right is at least partially fuelled by the hate of radical Muslim extremists; and we cannot afford to shrug such extremists off as having “nothing to do with Islam”, because that does not solve the problem of their existence and their ability to influence impressionable, uninformed young people.
Al-Hamdulillah, the parameters in Islam are clear and identifiable as to what constitutes extremism. We need to intensify our efforts to reach out to our community and educate one another, to fortify our young people against misinterpretations and misunderstandings that will lead them astray.