Recommended link: Stopping the Hatred that Leads to Terror

Myrha Street is part of the Arab/African immigrant quarter of Paris and is barricaded on Fridays to allow Muslims to pray in the street

For another perspective on the recent events in Paris and the issue of religious extremism, an article by Sima Mobini looks at it from the perspective of a Bahá’í with a personal background in two cultures – Iran and America. Below is a short extract: for the full post see link.

In the aftermath of the French terror attacks, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the amount of attention the news media has paid to “freedom of speech” and “the dangers of religious extremism.”

While both of these important angles of this sad story strike me as worthy of deep discussion, I would like to visit this tragedy from a somewhat related, yet different angle: what caused individuals who were French citizens, who grew up in that country, who, based on news accounts, had girlfriends, rapped and smoked pot until a few years ago, to become extremist terrorists? When this happens, what about the responsibilities of various factions of society–ranging from governments, educators, community and religious leaders and individuals–to resolve this widely spreading, worldwide problem of fundamentalist terror? How can we stop the causes of terror, rather than bemoaning the outcomes after they’ve already occurred?

Of course we will never really know the answers to these important questions from the point of view of the individuals involved—they can no longer tell us. But we can speculate a bit, and reach some general conclusions. As someone born in Iran and transplanted to the United States in my youth, I have some thoughts about the answers to those questions.

In the case of the three French citizens who committed these heinous terror attacks, we know they lived in a minority community in France, an “Arab ghetto,” as some describe it. The people in those areas report feeling slighted, ignored, discriminated against and not accepted by mainstream society. Many researchers have concluded that these issues, paired with the Muslim community not having fully assimilated in French society, have become serious problems in France, contributing to the violence and terror now plaguing the nation.

These three terrorists, from marginalized and socially-unaccepted backgrounds, likely had poor educational opportunities. As they grew up one or more of them accumulated criminal records and spent time in jails. There, at least one met older and more hardened violent criminals who could indoctrinate and train them in a violent brand of “Islamic” terror—which has nothing to do with the actual practice of the religion of Islam.

Just like in many other societies, these young men may have developed rage and hatred against the community they felt treated them like second-class citizens. And while they apparently had no political or “religious” convictions until just a few years ago, their radical extremism obviously provided an outlet for their hatred and anger, gave them feelings of self-worth and exaggerated importance, exploited their lack of education and trained them for violent, suicidal vengeance.

This is not a new phenomenon in human history. Murderous criminal gangs have formed in many societies for the same reasons, among groups who have suffered from discrimination, have not been accepted as equal, have not integrated, and have not been well-educated. Until societies fully accept, assimilate and build unity with their minority populations, we will continue to suffer from this problem.

How can governments, community and religious leaders and educators, in places where people of various backgrounds live, resolve these serious issues and create unified societies?