For many decades, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Keighley, across the UK and the world has been urging governments to consider the risk of extremism or radicalisation very seriously.
Source/Credit: Keighley News
By Faheem Ahmad Rahman | November 26, 2015
OUR TV screens seem to be constantly ablaze with images of terror and barbarism.
When these evils hit close to home, as they have done recently with the Paris attacks, we all look around and question many things around us, from the security of our nation to tackling radicalisation of young people and to the perversion of Islam to justify evil.
As the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community here in Keighley, we, along with all right-minded fellow citizens, feel huge revulsion at recent events and consider how as a society we react and protect ourselves from such evil.
For many decades, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Keighley, across the UK and the world has been urging governments to consider the risk of extremism or radicalisation very seriously.
During the past decade, the worldwide head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has been calling for robust action to deal with the scourge of terrorism on many levels, including tackling the source of funding of evil groups such as ISIS, tackling the radicalisation of youngsters and putting a stop to hate preachers and those that divide society.
In tackling radicalisation and alienation from mainstream society, a lot has been said about citizenship and loyalty to our country.
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A pledge of loyalty in school assemblies in which children repeat a pledge of loyalty to their nation would be one way of ingraining loyalty across the board from childhood.
Already Ahmadi Muslim youth swear a pledge of loyalty to their country across the UK and across the world wherever they reside.
Youngsters need to feel a part of society. Both schools, parents and imams need to engender a sense of belonging to society, as well as a desire to serve society at large.
Serving society should entail activities such as helping the elderly, planting trees, cleaning the environment, donating blood and working for the betterment of localities.
Only yesterday, I was proud to welcome our youngsters back after spending their day planting trees in York along with others of many faiths.
If the energies of the youth are channelled into such productive activities, we can then hope they grow to be great citizens of this great nation.
His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad has said time and time again that imams and leaders should use their mosque sermons to categorically condemn the likes of ISIS, and make it clear that going to join them is totally wrong and against Islam.
The role of Muslim parents is also very important. They should answer the questions of their children openly, both about society and religion, so they do not fall into the snare of online extremists.
Extremist clerics manipulate disenfranchised youngsters by giving them a twisted and warped interpretation of the Islamic faith, so mosques must redouble their efforts to give the youth a true moral upbringing whereby they become upstanding citizens of society. That is what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has done since its inception in 1889.
We support our Government’s efforts to curb extremism, and we pray these efforts are successful so the evil of extremism and terrorism is finished.
At the same time, my hope is we can deal with this with mutual respect for people’s faiths. Questioning faith on the one hand is healthy, but creating a sense of fear about its adherents leads to enmity and division.
FAHEEM AHMAD RAHMAN
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Faheem Ahmad Rahman is a youth leader with Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association in Keighley
Read original post here: Perspective: Tackling extremism | Faheem Ahmad Rahman
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