This house does not believe the west doing enough to

combat islamic extremism

7 minutes
1

- I want to start on a quote from Reza Azlan, although this does not address the motion it
is key i believe to addressing misconceptions of Religion in the middle east and its role
in violence.

- He states that : Religion is dependant on what you bring to it. If you are violent person
you will bring violence to the religion whether thats, christianity, Judaism islam even
buddhism He uses the very interesting example of buddhist monks in myanmar
slaughtering woman and children. We ask the question is buddhism a violent religion?..
of course not, its what people bring to the religion.

- To address the houses motion, we have to look at the question first. What is and what
-

are the roots of islamic extremism?

Islamic extremism is characterised by two key ideologies :
an extremely conservative view of Islam

and the use of extreme tactics such as bombing and assassinations to achieve
these perceived views

- So their ultimate goal is to spread their extremely conservative view of Islam through the
use of extreme tactics such as bombing and assassinations.

- So what are the extremely conservative views of Islam and where does it stem from?
- Islamic extremism stems from a form of islam called Wahhabi Islam. Wahhabi islam
was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the late 1700s.

- Wahhab made the central point of his reform movement, that absolutely every idea
added to Islam after the third century of the Muslim era (about 950 AD) was false and
should be eliminated.

- Therefore rejecting any reinterpretation of the Quran. Hence 19th and 20th century
reform movements which reinterpreted aspects of islamic law in order to bring it close to
standards set by the west, are rejected.

- This leads to two important points too which ill refer back to:
- So the rejection of reinterpretation of the Quran to evolve with time has ,This leads to
barbaric practices which seemed normal at the time back in 950 AD, beheadings etc,
being applied in current situations. (Society dictates the norm).

- Another key doctrine of Wahabi islam is the belief that they are not a school of thought
rather it is the only path of true islam. So every muslim, with differing schools of whether
shia, druze or non-sunni are considered as non-muslims.

- So how is Wahhabism linked to modern day islamic extremism?

- well the founder of Wahhabism made an alliance with the House of Saud, to cut a
long story short, it eventually lead to the founding of Saudi Arabia and its monarchy. To
this day all the wahhabism is deeply stemmed in its monarchy

- Saudi arabia armed with the increase in oil price and its leader position of OPEC began
accruing vast amounts of money which in then spent spreading this doctrine

- and funding jihad in its neighbour country Afghanistan against the soviet union. This
funding eventually lead to the radicalisation of many individuals, most notably Ossama
bin laden.

- I think people who believe that Ossama bin laden only became an islamic extremist due
to US foreign policy is very naive. Although this may have played a part his methodology
and practice stems and is deeply rooted in Wahhabism and this is the ultimate reason
for Islamic Extremism.

- This is the same Wahhabism that is rooted within the saudi monarchy, the same
wahhabism that is being funded by one of the richest states in the world, the same
wahhabism that has lead to the formation of ISIS. ISIS did not appear from anywhere it
is heavily funded by the saudi government, or atleast it was at the beginning as a way to
spread their true form of islam.

- In fact In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source
of global terrorism,

- My point is, to this day the west are still funding and allying with saudi governments and
providing them with arms , whilst proclaiming to be fighting islamic extremists in places
such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

- The west are attempting short sighted fixes of the symptoms rather than the existential
problem of the root cause of islamist extremism.

- This shows the clear misunderstanding of the general region, or the complete naivety
that the west do not intervene to prevent islamist extremism rather , they intervene to
address their geostrategic goals.

- If we look at the current evidence of how the west has combated islamic extremism it
has often been through military intervention, i.e. deploying troops on the ground, or
funding/endorsing totalitarian regimes.

- The problem with military intervention, is that it assumes islamic extremism is a simple
opponent that can be overthrown, rather than a deeply rooted and heavily funded
ideology. Empirics show a tendency, within sectarian conflicts like that in the middle
east, toward endorsing one side in order to combat the other. However, this in fact
further fuels the sectarian conflict, which results in islamist extremist aggression towards
the west.

- The west act as a further catalyst rather than an inhibiting factor to islamist extremism.
- Islamist extremism exists because of the desire of corrupt and oppressive rulers to
maintain themselves in power. Thus, we should support the democratization of the Arab
and Islamic countries. Democratization need not involve the West imposing its political
model on these societies. Rather, the Western role should be to sweep aside the
obstacles to modernization and democratization from within.

- Above all, the liberation of these societies will be a liberation of Islam from Saudi-style
corruption and oppression. An Islam liberated from the grip of Saudi Arabia could correct
itself and defeat extremism on its own terms.