Of Extremism

We need to reflect on the proposed meaning of the terms that are susceptible to abuse in this dark age. There's no limit to the abuse of the term extremism, etc. The most rational, sound, compassionate and/or traditional/orthodox would be called religious extremist if they say something inconvenient about modern superstitions. At a mundane level, son of America and Islam, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf notes that in reality "extremism is as American as apple pie." He points to the fact that it's not the problem in the context of it's actual usage: violence is. I suppose he implicitly would agree to my adding important adjectives like indiscriminate, unjustifiable, "without right." Synonym of this kind of violence may well be "oppression/a-fitnah", which as per Qur'an is worse/greater than killing.

Similarly, calling such fascist-liberals or false-liberals, or even liberals [based on philosophy of liberalism] would be a disservice and abuse of the term extremism. Because it is about wrong thinking, as such.

Use of word extremism is only appropriate when things are view from the Centre and Origin, which is the Prophecy, or traditional, orthodox understanding of it. Anything that is away from First Principles or Centre or Revelation of Islam, is extreme. The 'radical middle way' from which we can keep check on extremism is very clear and pluralistic at once: the sunnah of final Prophet sent to humanity. What more need to be said on this than the fact that Prophet Muhammad warned against "ghulu" (translation as extremism) in religion.