Outline (Religious Extremes) - Research Paper Example

This work will try to understand the origins of violent religious extremism, and to analyze what tactics have been successful in checking it and pushing it back. A. Religious extremism is not, contrary to popular belief, an element of religion. The fact that Islam has Jihad is not the cause of Muslim extremism – there are similarly militant sections of most religious texts, including Christian ones. Furthermore, there are violent and peaceful Muslims, as there are violent and peaceful Christians, Jews, Hindus etc. B. Religious extremism is a symptom of broader social problems – 12th century Islam was incredibly peaceful and moderate due to having excellent living conditions, whereas 12th century Christians were quite violent.

Religious extremism is spawned and grows in areas that do not have adequate economic development and political freedom. A. The primary theoretical framework through which to view this issue is one of social development – like inner-city crime, drug use and other problems associated with underprivileged lifestyles, it is important to understand this as a consequence of other factors. One of the main issues associated with religious extremism is a lack of political freedom. A. Support political freedom over dictatorship regardless of the particulars of a case – religious extremism has never taken hold in politically free landscapes, so ignore the temptation to support a “stable” dictator in the face of an unstable democracy Although there is great political risk and political difficulty in enacting self-governance in foreign countries, this is the only realistic way to fight religious extremism.

The motivations for such change cannot come from the outside, but foreign entities can make it cleaer that they do not support dictators and will support popular movements against them. This process has been shown to work in the short term – the Muslim Brotherhood moved from an extremist group to a