good news for Muslims, world

from Coming soon to fight extremism in Britain: the Imam Roadshow and Islam Online:

After years of watching radical Muslim groups teach violence in town meetings and on the Internet, Muslim leaders announced plans on Thursday to fight back by taking the message of mainstream Islam onto the road and out into cyberspace.

A task force set up after July's suicide bomb attacks in London concluded that extremists have found recruits among young Muslims "fuelled by anger, alienation and disaffection from mainstream British society."
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Among its recommendations were a roadshow of Islamic scholars -- who could visit towns and cities and explain mainstream Muslim teachings -- and "Islam Online", a Web site for Muslims looking to understand their faith.
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"There is no doubt that the Internet has opened opportunities for all sorts of people and groups. And some are extremist groups who have used the Internet as a means of propaganda to spread their hate and division. There is a need to ensure that mainstream Islamic teachings are also disseminated."

The task force -- including prominent Muslim figures ranging from members of the House of Lords to Yusuf Islam, the former singer Cat Stevens -- also proposed new training for imams and better teaching of Islam in schools.

In writing this, I have struggled to find the words to talk about extremism. It seems to me that there are three factors at stake in conceptualizing "extremism": flexibility, treatment of others, and the social norm. That is, an extremist belief will have some mix of the following: being uncompromisingly rigid; engendering acts that violate another's rights (including the taking of life); and standing outside of what is considered normal or mainstream. [A caveat: Linking extremism to the social norm is always dangerous because if a society itself is extreme on a position, then what appears to be an extremist position may in fact be the most moral position. As an example, the abolitionist's position against slavery in the early 19th century United States comes to mind.]

Extremism is not limited to religous belief, although that certainly is where attention in the last few years seems to have focused. Political and economic positions and policies, for example, also can be marked by two or even all three of the characteristics I have described. In the end, except for the most extreme of extremists, making such judgment calls is a largely subjective endeavor. It is even more complicated in areas where belief or even action is separated many degrees from its result: an economic policy in one country that leads to starvation in another; a religious speech that stirs feelings which fester in a person for some time before he or she acts out on the meaning they derived from it.

In any case, as difficult as extremism is to name (except, again, in the most extreme cases), the conditions which can lead to such dangerous positions may be identifiable. In the case of religious extremists who claim to be faithful followers of Islam, it is good to see that Muslim leaders are standing up and effectively working to take away the (false) religious underpinnings of the extremists' beliefs. The best way to approach extremism may well be to deny the foundational principles. Once a person has bought into an extremist position they will be hard to sway from it. By denying the extremist's claim to faithfulness, however, and offering an appealing and legitimate alternative, it may be possible to stop extremism's spread.

We can hope. And we can work to make such strides against all extremism, of any faith or political philosophy.