Dealing with radical Islam in the West

I have read with interest the article of Taj Hashmi titled 'De-radicalising the Muslim diaspora in the West' published in TDS on 8th December. The article informs the readers about many alarming yet interesting statistics about the destructive, disruptive anti-people and also anti-Muslim role of terrorist elements in the name of Islam. Radicalisation of Islam started from the Hambali School which later on was adopted and fervently advanced by the Wahabbi School. The political Islam as opposed to the moderate Sufi School and other Schools of Sunnism has vitiated the global political and social atmosphere, strained the relationship of Muslims with many free thinking liberal secular progressive countries and communities. We strongly agree with the contentions in the article that a small number of misguided radicals can cause enormous harm, destruction, and thus tarnish the reputations of rest of the good meaning Muslims. An intense soul searching is required of the Muslims. While adherents of other religions do not come into conflict with the North American and European countries, why only some sections of the Muslims do?

The end of the article is quite abrupt. While the problems were described in full the solutions were not well-defined. We would request the writer to dwell upon the solutions in a following article.

Majority of the Muslims bask in the glory of the past golden years of Muslim Arab rules. They derive intense pleasure from the long past achievements of the Arab Muslims. The rulers were liberal, secular and promoted all religions in those times. A possible set of solution the writer mentioned is: imparting proper functional education, improvement of economic, financial and social conditions, preaching of non-violence, tolerance and love, encouragement to integrate with the mainstream of the societies, ending the discrimination and xenophobia in the host countries and continuous meaningful dialogues between all stakeholders.

Dr. SN Mamoon
Dhaka