Fighting religious fundamentalism: How societies can tackle extremist ideologies

On Wednesday, one of UK's foremost Islamist preachers - Anjem Choudary - was charged with terrorism for inviting support for the Islamic State for a period ranging from June 2014 to March 2015.

There can be an entire essay dedicated to Anjem Choudary himself - a man who publicly praised the 9/11 attackers, whose banned terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun called them the Magnificent 19, and whose stated aim is to convert the world to (his version of) Sunni Islam. "We believe even the White House will fly the flag of Islam one day", he says.

Take a look at his Twitter handle - it propounds nothing but how his version of Islam is the perfect one, and every other value system (or even any other kind of Islam) is heretical. While Islamist preachers around the world typically circumvent or sidestep the questions of democracy or secularism while preaching their versions of the faith, Choudary harbours no such pretenses. He explicitly declares that all value systems (and religions) - individually and severally except his own - are heretical. He does so without a shred of circumspection, and without any sign of latent fury so often found in those religious persons who feel they have been wronged by western imperialism.

In other words, Choudary's beliefs require no antecedent. They exist by themselves in vacuum and to his mind, are simple, divine commandments that are unquestionable. The question of debate does not arise because of the absolute nature of Choudary's beliefs.

I would argue that Choudary is the most dangerous kind of extremist. While most other extremists use geopolitical grievances on which to base their (divinely sanctioned) thirst for revenge, Choudary does no such thing. He simply states that his version of Islam is not just true in itself, but the only cosmological truth - because God said so - and that the only goal of mankind must be to impose this faith upon itself, in its entirety. He is the most peaceful fundamentalist ever.

Those who would like to relate, closer to home, to the madness of this man, should be reminded that he once tried to put the Indian government under siege - by planning a public demonstration in Delhi that India must immediately implement Sharia law (and for everyone). Crazy as this may sound, Choudary has also explicitly called for committing serious hate crimes against Hinduism in India - many of which are so perverse they would rather not be described here.

ISIS' dream of a global caliphate and Chaudary's ideas are hardly different. Over the past decade, organisations such as Islam4UK, Sharia4Belgium, and indeed, Sharia4Hind, have enjoyed enormous patronage from the likes of preachers like Anjem Chaudary. Incredibly, it is the very same liberal, secular, progressive British law which Chaudary wants to abrogate, that gives him the freedom to call for its abrogation. Simply, Chaudary advocates destruction of free speech using the very guarantees of free expression that British law provides him. 

Broadly, this is a growing problem in the west - religious demagogues of all denominations are increasingly using the west's incredible tolerance of free speech as a means to preach exceedingly bigoted, medieval, unfree ideas. With the coming of ISIS and the age of social media, this problem has assumed enormous proportions, because information (or misinformation or disinformation) can now be disseminated openly, on a wide scale and without fear of the law. It has become a metastatic cancer. Extremist ideology has become decentralised. Extremism is no longer the preserve of a few radicalised people fighting for territorial sovereignity. It is a massive global market in itself.

Generally, as long as you do not give a call to actual violence, your bigotry is tolerated in the west. Worryingly, it could be considered unwise for the west - and particularly western Europe - to go down the slippery slope of reintroducing stringent hate speech laws and (with it) the concept of limited free speech. After centuries of terrible ignorance, for the last 500 years or so the west has moved towards becoming an increasingly liberal civilization. Reversing that would not just throw the west back in time - but also strengthen the hands of the Islamists, the Christian fundamentalists, the anti-Semites, the neo-Nazis and so on. Simply, it would once again allow them to dictate the terms of debate. It could also be argued that free speech ensures that people become aware of dangerous ideas, and hence can be mobilised to fight them.

What then, is the solution for this malady? One solution is called counter-messaging. The key is to build coherent counter-narratives to fundamentalism. It is to create spaces for debate and open discussion of religion in general and extremism in particular. Social space must also be created to encourage secular dialogue and exchange of ideas. People must chase shared goals, even on a daily basis. It is necessary to create social infrastructure which helps this transformation. The wide majority of innocent human beings merely watch the spectre of intolerance unfold, preferring to go about their daily lives even as the space for free expression gets ever smaller. Civil society has to be shaken into action.

Furthermore, those reformist minds which seek to reinterpret faith to fit modern concepts of life and liberty, must be encouraged to dominate public discourse. Countries must also not hesitate to fiercely protect the lives and personal liberty of such reformers, who continuously face death threats from religious fanatics. There are already organisations working with civil society against extremism - but such an effort is still in its infancy.  

Legally, the approach must be to hold sacrosanct the constitutions of secular democracies, while allowing bigoted elements to have their say in public discussions. Simply, the west (and the East) must never forget that secular law stands above religious considerations, and this precept must never be violated. 

Even more broadly, a counter-culture which promotes progressive values - or 'proactive liberalism' must be created (or recreated) in societies. Patriotism is a slippery slope when it devolves into nationalism, but it is inherently more secular than the concept of a divinely ordained super-state. Specifically, people must be brought to believe that allegiance to the survival and thrift of their country must come before the quest for a unified religious identity. Calling a man a 'Brit and a Muslim' for example, is obviously more constructive than calling him 'a Muslim who lives in Britain'. This principle can be applied cross-culturally and across countries, east or west.

Without effective counter-messaging, societies become reactionary. There is an identity awakening which then devolves into the unending circle of violence by communities against each other. This is one truly plausible answer to the question so often asked in India - how can we not support the calls for a Hindu identity awakening when we see the spread of Islamist extremism?

British PM David Cameron's speech on July 19 was a green signal to building counter-narratives in British society, and community engagement to tackle Islamist extremism. Britain has created a unique problem for itself by allowing multiculturalism to degenerate into cultural relativism. Simply put, multiculturalism has come to imply that people ignore horrific actions of others in the name of 'his culture is different from mine'. For example, forced marriage, a phenomenon increasingly visible among Asian communities in Britain (and broadly Europe) has been subjected to cultural relativism by some. This achieves nothing - it does not lead to racial or religious integration of communities into a country's ecosystem. Quite the contrary, it creates walls between communities, shutting them off from each other by virtue of emphasising their own unique traditions and beliefs over shared community values in a democratic society. 

Even in an Indian context, the need to appreciate diversity of beliefs has partly degenerated into ignorant tolerance of clearly harmful communal practices, which in turn has created a wall of separation between communities. Then, such practices attempt to obtain legitimacy by fighting state institutions and fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution. Liberalism, it seems, is slowly becoming the reason for its own downfall.

The west (and everyone else) also must learn that building counter-narratives and cultural counter-currents is a far more effective way of overcoming extremism, than continually dropping bombs on nameless countries in the name of the war on terror. There is no lasting military solution to fundamentalism.

Hostility if fought with hostility creates a vicious circle of misery, death and destruction, not everlasting peace. The solution to intolerant or violent expression is more and more constructive discourse, not more intolerance. And certainly not silence.