In advance of a conference titled "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization," a report obtained by Reuters concludes that there are few differences between religious extremists "adhering" to the world's three major monotheistic religions. Let's take a closer look:
The lead for the story tells us pretty much what we already know: the best way to fight extremism is to solve the underlying problems. What might not have been obvious, however, is the similarity that exists between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim extremists:
Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil"...
[snip]
The authors compared ideologies, recruitment tactics and responses to violent religious extremists in three places -- Muslims in Britain, Jews in
Israel and Christians in the United States.
"What is striking ... is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence," the report said.
The American "Christian" groups studied were affiliated with white supremacists and abortion-clinic bombers. Although the conclusion of the report would probably not change significantly, it would have been valuable to study a group such as, say, Christians United For Israel (link is to Troutfishing's diary from two months ago) that has extremist views (in this case, all Jews must convert or die) that are not widely known. It speaks to the sad state of our society that such groups are considered mainstream.
Rants aside, it is notable that the Jewish extremists of the West Bank/Gaza settlements are fundamentally not different from the Muslim extremists who want Israel wiped off the map.
Speaking of Muslims, the report says that they are singled out above others:
It said that while Muslims were often perceived by the West as "the principal perpetrators of terrorist activity," there are violent extremists of other faiths. Always focusing on Muslim extremists alienates mainstream Muslims, it said.
[emphasis mine]
Interestingly, this sentiment is later seemingly contradicted in a statement by Jessica Stern, of Harvard, the keynote speaker at the conference:
"These are not equivalent," she said. "The problems arising from Christian or Jewish extremism are not threatening to the world in the same way as Muslim extremism is."
The best explanation I could see for this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that Muslim extremists seem more extensively organized worldwide than those belonging to the other religions. The problem here arises that in those countries where Christian and Jewish extremists are strongest (the USA and Israel, respectively), they are not often recognized as such. pinche tejano wrote about an attempted abortion clinic bombing in Texas, and the lack of subsequent media coverage, as an example of what we see in the US; the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 shows what Jewish extremists have done in Israel.
To her credit, Stern smacks down the Bush administration policy for dealing with them:
[Stern] said it was dangerous for U.S. President George W. Bush to use terms such as "crusade" or "ridding the world of evil."
"It really is falling into the same trap that these terrorists fall into, black and white thinking.... It's very exciting to extremists to hear an American president talking that way."
Well, aside from the fact that Bush (and the GOP as a whole) is affiliated with and supported by extremist Christians...
The report makes the same warning.
"Extremists should never be dismissed simply as evil.... Trying to engage in a competition with religious extremists over who can offer a simpler answer to complex problems will be a losing proposition every time."
Here is the crux of the argument. American "anti-extremism policy" (if it can even be called that) is doomed to fail because it attempts to treat the symptom, not the cause. As stated above, extremism arises due to social, economic, or political problems; failure to solve these problems allows extremism to flourish. In addition, as we have seen in Iraq, attempting to squash extremism by killing extremists simply adds to their ranks.
The message, to me, is clear: the key to peace in our time (to borrow a phrase that, admittedly, backfired) is only solving the problems that cause extremism -- of all stripes. I look forward to reading more when the report is published after the conference.