Date: 25th November 2006.

Time: After Isha.

Venue: Birmingham Central Mosque, 180 Belgrave Middleway, Highgate, Birmingham, B12 0XS.

Extremism is not restricted to Muslims but is equally prevalent today among Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Secularists. Among Muslims and others, extremism is a peripheral, albeit perilous phenomenon. Within all groups, it is represented by different camps. It takes on different forms of expression, diverse responses, and is neither internally nor externally monolithic. Nevertheless, some generalizations are possible regarding the phenomenon in today’s globalised world.

Muslim extremists and their Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Secular counterparts have several features in common. They identify strongly with charismatic leaders, are communalistic, and thrive on a strong “we-feeling” based around their leadership. Their worldviews are black-and-white and sharply dichotomous; they foster unquestioned allegiance to the group and antipathy toward the Other. “Globalised” religious extremists are generally anti-intellectual and anti-theological in a traditional sense. They are averse to the “higher” tradition of their faith, although they justify their innovations through selective retrieval from tradition and atypical interpretations of revelatory texts. The personal religiosity of religious extremists is primarily individualistic and experiential; it roots itself in a sectarian sense of solidarity with the group and the “we-versus-them-feeling” that it inspires. Today’s extremists adopt an idealistic (ahistorical) picture of the past and apocalyptic vision of the future, which lies at the base of their social and political strategies. They have a sharp sense of immediate crisis engendered by the modern world, yet utilize its most advanced technologies—generally with great sophistication—to execute their ends.

 “Islamic Extremism in the Context of Globalism” concludes with a search for solutions. All the three essential elements of extremism—grievances, ideology, and social psychology—must be effectively addressed. It is a grave mistake, however, to regard globalized religion as we know it as something unique to our age. Similar developments have happened before in the history of world religions when powerful political and economic realities—as in the Roman Empire—amalgamated vastly diverse ethnic and religious groups in a unified world system. Such precedents provide insight for the future. One of these is that the religious and secular extremisms we face today must be treated as essentially default positions in the absence of satisfactory alternatives.

As Muslims, we are required to restate Islam’s Middle Way as embodied in mainstream Islamic culture and civilization over the centuries. Our vision of the Middle Way must be authentic, articulate, and fully relevant to the pluralistic realities of the global age. But abstract formulations of worldviews are never effective in the abstract; they need human faces that embody them in the eyes of the people like the movements of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. Merely giving directions to the Middle Way is not enough; our communities must cultivate and bring to the forefront a generation of charismatic men and women who embody that path and are role models for others.