The phenomenon of Islamist violence, which has already reached many parts of the globe, has now reached Nigeria.  (Nigerian Islamist Attacks Spread).  According to this article, this particular Islamist group is against Western education; the name of one of the groups involved in the attack means “Education is Prohibited”.

Now, I’m a pretty open minded person.  If someone wants to present arguments about why they are against “Western” education, and can explain why it is UnIslamic, I may not agree with them, but I respect their right to share their views.

However, when such a person or group decides to violently attack the police and civilians because of these views, it crosses a red line and becomes a violation of normal people’s rights.  This kind of behavior must immediately stop, and must be branded by everyone as unacceptable.

In particular Muslims themselves must recognize how negative this behavior is, and condemn it from inside the religion.  The effect of condemnation from other Muslims would be more significant.

I have noted before how violent activities by Islamist groups leads to serious rights violations in the context of repression of Ahmadiyya in Indonesia.  (Suppression of Ahmadiyya by Extreme Muslims Violates Freedom of Religion)

I may be totally unable to see clearly in this case, but it seems like Islam is going through a historical phase in which an increase in fundamentalism among some relatively small parts of the population is causing more violence and violation of the rights of minorities and ordinary people.  The world’s citizenry, both Muslim and non Muslim, must struggle to end these violations, as it will help to bring humanity to a greater degree of peace.

Hopefully, within 20 or 30 years, all this extremism will have faded away and Islamism will attract fewer followers.  This will result in less violence (at least from this source), and less intolerance of diversity and different choices of different people.  Until then, however, citizen activists need to struggle against these tendencies, just as fundamentalism in other religions, particularly in Christianity, must also be addressed.

A shortlist of countries with problems related to Islamism:

Nigeria

Indonesia- problems in various forms

Thailand- southern separatism

Somalia- the main rebel group for the last few years has been Islamist

Iran- ruled by an Islamist regime

Algeria

Afghanistan- Taliban insurgents

Pakistan- Taliban insurgents, Al Qaeda terror, repression of Ahmadiyya

Chechnya- Islamist involvement (among others) in the separatist struggle

Palestine- Hamas

Turkey- terrorist attacks (not all terrorist attacks in Turkey are from Islamists)

Saudi Arabia- terrorist attacks

Some readers may not condemn the Islamist role in all of these cases (a person may be symapthetic to the Algerian Islamists, for example, since they actually  previously won the elections.  Or a person may not feel critical of the Iranian regime, depending on one’s perspective.)  But looking at this list makes one realize the role that Islamism has played in so many different conflicts.  Just the blunt  numbers of problematic cases involving Islamism should lead one to be skeptical of this ideology.

Anyway, I’ll rest my case for now, and invite readers to leave their comments about whether they agree, disagree, hold some nuanced position in between, etc….