We can’t win the war on extremists by military might alone; we need to defeat them on ideological grounds as well
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: US President Barack Obama was spot on when he asked the world not to grant terrorists the legitimacy they are seeking by labelling them Islamic. He was addressing a summit titled Countering Violent Extremism. He acknowledged the fact al Qaeda, Daesh and other extremist groups recruit young, uninformed and vulnerable minds to run their campaign of violent hatred against anyone disagreeing with them. There is need for a counter-narrative to defeat these extremists on their own pitch. Everyone talks about confronting the ideologies that are radicalising Muslim youth across the globe, but no one comes up with a counter-account to prove them wrong. Instead, we see influential religio-political personalities and parties buying into the extremists’ propaganda and even declaring them ‘martyrs’. You will find some of them at the forefront of inventing conspiracy theories to portray extremists as proxies of the West, but when it comes to condemning their acts of terror in clear terms, they become their apologists.
We can’t win the war on extremists by military might alone; we need to defeat them on ideological grounds as well. Needless to say, this should be the top priority for governments, scholars, historians, sociologists, educationists and jurists to nullify the terrorists’ narrative with counter-texts and historical references.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2015.
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