The world must say no to extremism

The estimated two million people who joined the “march of unity” in Paris on Sunday delivered a strong message against extremism. Joined by the leaders of more than 40 nations, they took to the streets of the French capital in solidarity with the victims of last week’s terror attacks in France. Another two million attended simultaneous rallies elsewhere in France.
The rallies were in response to three days of attacks that left 17 people dead. The violence began last Wednesday with a massacre at the Paris offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed. The next day a policewoman was shot dead in the Paris suburbs. Then on Friday a double hostage-taking led to four more deaths.
The gunmen responsible for the Paris attacks were described as Islamist militants with a history of extremism. Charlie Hebdo had published a slew of cartoons lampooning religions and spiritual leaders, including the Prophet Muhammad.
The millions who came out onto the streets in France demonstrated to the world that we do not need to respond to violence with violence. The demonstrators were adamant that they would never give in to fear or threats of violence. And they are convinced that extremism cannot hold sway in this world.
No one should kill or be killed in the name of religious or political ideology. But, sadly, it is often religious leaders themselves, using narrow-minded interpretations of their faith’s teachings, who incite their followers to use force against “unbelievers”.
Violence in the name of religious or political belief, however, only breeds more hatred and offers bigots an excuse to use further violence in seeking retribution. Mosques in France were targeted in suspected retaliatory attacks following the Charlie Hebdo killings.
Those who are confident in their beliefs should have no reason to resort to violence in response to criticism aimed at their faith.
Yes, there are plenty of people whose comments on symbols of religion or objects of worship are deemed disrespectful or worse by believers. But do they deserve to die for their criticism? Non-violent responses to “religious insult” abound, including rational debate, protest and boycott.
Ajahn Brahm, a senior British-born Buddhist monk in Australia with a large following throughout Asia, suggests that we make a distinction between religious teachings and religious symbols. He sees the former as “content” and the latter “container”. “When the Taleban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddha statues [in Afghanistan], Buddhists did not allow themselves to seek revenge, because that would, in fact, mean the Taleban had succeeded not only in destroying the containers, but also the contents,” the monk said.
In 2005 a report that American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet caused uproar in the Islamic world. Afterward an Australian journalist asked Ajahn Brahm what he would do if someone flushed a Buddhist holy book down the toilet. His answer: “Call the plumber.” For the monk, holy books are merely the wrapper, not the content.
Tolerance is the key to preventing more violence akin to that we saw in Paris last week, in which the perpetrators cited religious reasons for taking lives. To root out the scourge of militant ideologies, worshippers of all religions must unite with non-believers to condemn extremism.