Why do people become Islamic Extremist ? or Extremist in general? great video

[Guest]

 

 

Your thoughts?

[Koi]

Nice, but I think that poverty and uneducation do have more to do with extremism than this guy is letting on.

[Guest]

I think lack of religious-spiritual education is single most factor in uprising in religious extremism as most of them are stuck in first layer of shariat- can't see things in stages or have multi dimension thought process and get high on empty dry shariat. 

On a lighter note: Nihangs should give put bhangs in pakoras and throw a party - give it to all religious extremist to loosen up a bit as obviously they are not moving beyond dogmatic shariat to see higher reality in tariqat, marfat and hakikat.

Anyway its all maharaj leela.

[amardeep]

For the past 7 years i've been working with counter-radicalization and extremism as a living and what he says is only partially true. The highly educated are often the leaders and forerunners of the groups - they always make up a small minority overall - whereas the majority of people are the uneducated coming from broken homes, have mental issues, lack of education and job experience etc.

98% of all cases i've been involved in relate to the above mentioned. Very few are middle class people - these only make up the recruiters who find the easy victims and sent them to Syria and else where.

 

[Mekhane'ch Jannat]

I agree that all fundamentalists are stuck at the "Sharia" level, but instead of sharia we could use the word Opinion. We all form opinions about life, these are built upon a desire to believe in something, in some ideal. This is natural if it passes onto the next stage of Experiment, whereby in the laboratory of life, the opinions are tested with the implements of critical thought. This takes some courage as the 'opinions' may upon closer inspection be seen to be not what they were originally thought to have been. Faith in some ideal, belief or religion may be shaken, doubts may creep in but a person must proceed. This stage is one of reason and intellectual understanding, opinions are refined and made clearer through empirical observation. The final stage is Direct cognition - the result of mental analysis and testing in life becomes self-knowledge, a self truth that cannot be shaken - indestructible - as Self-knowledge is identical with Guruji. The extremist does not progress beyond step 1. At this step nothing is certain or fixed, it can become so only through long hard work on oneself, at step 3, this journey can be unpleasant and scary. The child mind refuses to undergo this initiation and clings onto opinions, beliefs and ideals. Even if these opinions are correct it doesn't matter as they do not belong to the person. So this person is always fearful that his opinions/ideals will be destroyed thus engages in destructive actions to prevent this perceived loss. The person at step 3 has no fear as his self-truth won through hard work cannot be lost.