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10.6 Conclusion
If we take a quick sweeping look at our world today—wars in Iraq
and Syria, a genuine fear of growing violent extremism in the world,
racial and religious hatred, immigration affecting the lives of thousands
of ordinary men and women from the middle east, the media reporting
often bellowing the flames of Islamophobia leading, for instance, to 41
racial attack in the US alone. There is, indeed, a big shift in how the
world is today. The questions we must ask are: if this violence and mis-
understanding are destroying our world then what am I doing about it? If
the social scientists previously argued that societies shift from less to
more progressive, then why is our society becoming less progressive? Is
violence something new to this century or is it an innate part of our hu-
man nature? After all was not the first man on earth, after Adam,
Cane—the killer of Able—the first to begin the avalanche of violent
extremism?
If extremism is defined by promoting one idea and one way of living
(e.g. you must wear your clothes like this, you must eat like this, you
must do this in this particular way, you must believe in one way and
only this way, even if it is literal interpretation of religion—the Prophet
(PBUH) did this and therefore we must do this in this particular way (to
follow not with reason but blindly), all else is defined by this group of
thought as leaning towards kuffar/ kufr and therefore wajib ul qatal.
People on the opposite side of this spectrum would then naturally
promote not one way but multiple ways, i.e. the answer for those oppo-
site to the extremists would be diversity and variety (celebrated again
and again in Islam and especially in the Quran and the way of the
Prophet of Islam (PBUH) who embraced all different people with com-
passion and mercy, reflecting God’s own attributes of being Rehman and
Rahim). This school of thought would, of course, see Islam in its univer-
sal embrace, accepting all differences—therefore, allowing for expres-