Okay, so I'll give you my view of why we're so prone to extremism. You have to understand, it's one thing to have a community with very vulnerable people in it who are easy targets to criminal activities, gangs, extremists ideology etc.
As such there are vulnerability factors to be considered. But the way we see it as Muslims, these vulnerability factors as something we as Muslims need to deal with in the very first instance that they arise. This is because it is one thing to be prone/vulnerable to these sort of things, another to adopt in principle and then a whole other level is to act on it.
Now what causes us to bridge the gap? Conflicts, and the response to those conflicts by extremists, and the response of the far-right in turn, and so on, every action cases an equal and opposite reaction (Newton was right after all), and it's a downward spiral. I don#t need to tell you that after 9/11, whether Muslims did anything or not, they were going to be hated and targeted by some people, it was an inevitability. I don't need to tell you that Muslims in their thousands have been deeply angered by the action of their governments in Afghanistan, before the Iraq war Muslims and non Muslim Brits marched side by side in their hundreds of thousands, you know in London we had
1 million people march against the war? It broke a few records if I remember correctly. Then there's the Israel Palestine conflict, the usual meddling in the middle east, Pakistan and so on.
Now me and you, we're contributors to the democratic way of life here in our countries, we march, we make our voice heard in the media, we blog, we tweet, we sign petitions, we vote. We exercise the ultimate power granted to us by law. Others, they skip and go straight to opposing the state itself, the vulnerability plays a key role where someone does make that huge leap from nothing to full blown extremist.
Now, what are these vulnerability factors?
For one, the Muslim community and the British Pakistani community in many areas has completely failed to integrate with others, some areas there's almost like an unofficial segregation in order. Where we moved to back in the 60's and 70's, we set up communities, along with other immigrants, the property value of those places ''fell'' (it didn't fall but it didn't rise as sharply, White British families moved out, we set up our communities along with Hindu/Sikh Indians, sometimes with Afro-Caribbean communities too. In these communities, we lives among ourselves and people like us, we spoke our language most often in the streets, we worked among ourselves, and our children were raised there too. Now you and I know that back when Pakistanis were brought over here, who they were, and what they were here for. They were unskilled and uneducated laborers most of them, many of whom couldn't adjust in Pakistan, let alone being thrown in the middle of England.
Another problem with this was that many Pakistanis still today if you ask them in Pakistan, they will expect people here in England to all live the high life, live the easy life and not have to work for it. The help that the government provides for it's citizens Pakistanis take for granted and don't like to understand who pays for it and how. Free-loading, living on benefits and handouts. Not bothering to work outside of their communities (which means lower pay), not bothering to work at all, having women stay in homes and not work, having their daughters not focus on education, raising them to be housewives, have you any idea how much a mother affects what her child becomes? If she's got a sub-standard 10th grade education in a country like the UK, her children will most likely be left way behind. I've met mothers here who have no idea what their children do, they teach them how to recite the Qur'an, have large families, but when you ask them what their child is doing in school, they won't have a clue, you ask them what their kid is doing out on the streets so late, they won't know. You ask them what they wan't for their daughter, husband and children will be on their lips, and not school/college/university or job.
All this means we have people who can barely speak a word of English, who refuse to work, who raise their children in a very bad way, and those children then go on to do more or less the same, entire generations of socially vulnerable families being raised, all it takes is a few radicals in the mix to spoil and already dead bunch.
One of the problems I've witnessed with many Muslims, whether they're educated or not, successful or not, if they are religious, I'd bet a few things on them right off the bat. They have a terrible superiority complex and the ones that don't show it, most certainly have it in their subconscious. Only a few are free of this. They feel that their religion is supreme, and that all their affairs inside the home or outside should revolve around their religion. All of it should revolve around THEIR own religion, little do they know that this sorta shit doesn't fly well in most secular societies. They are also deeply mistakes in the sense that they view their own UNDERSTANDING of their religion as supreme, 'I know my religion better than you and you'd better believe, the Qur'an says this..., hadith says that..., this a sunnah, and that my brother is haram!'.
Little do they know that they know nothing.
They don't half as much as they think they know about their religion, but their confidence in themselves is vile.
And then to top it all off, they think that because their religion is their way of life, they don't have to abide by social norms and laws of their host country. You have so many people who disobey little rules here and there, only kept from crime because the threat the police and law carries. Now, if you consider what I've just told you above you arrive at another damning fact about British Pakistanis and some Muslims, they
hold not loyalty to their host country. You tell me now, will a man who isn't loyal to his country do anything to benefit anyone but himself and his foolish pride?
Then we have the age old, centuries old problem of a broken community of Muslims, different mosques in my same areas can't get along, we have an Afghan mosque where some Indian Muslims go too, and a Pakistani mosque a larger one, in a rude way I heard one Indian Muslim who said that the mosque I go to is a '**** msoque' so he goes to the Afghan one. If Muslims can't sort out petty differences, how do you expect them to set them aside at a national level, make a unified voice heard and make a unified effort to combat extremism. The only thing that has EVER united the Muslim community is solidarity for Gaza, charity to some extent and that is just about it.
What is needed in my opinion is a big effort by educated, successful young people in the UK. I tried this a while ago and got no response from anyone, I tried contacting my local university Islamic society, that worked, they were interested, I had less resources at hand back then and the society was in shambles, no leadership, no structure, just a bunch of badge wearing people, I tried to pressure them into contacting other societies, raise some sort of effort even in their local areas to combat extremism, go to their local mosques, prayer rooms even, do something, let the relevant social media and general media know what you're doing, raise awareness. It amounted to a bit of work by myself and a few friends and allegedly some people up in Nottingham and Birmingham, but nothing worth mentioning.
We need to stop abusing the system here and start using it in a productive and positive way to ruthlessly stamp out extremists from our own ranks, make a clear division for all to see between us and those types and support causes loyal to our nation, change the image of Muslims, or at the very least reverse, stop or even slow down the trend of hate. Huge individual effort is the first step and then organization and unity where it is needed must be employed effectively. And we CANNOT have local mosques leaders starting this, they are not right for this effort, well adjusted, educated, well integrated young professional Muslims and students need to lead the effort and it is a dire need, ideally, we should have started this years ago.
