How can we stop our children from being
radicalised by extremists?
By Shakir Lakhani Published: March 24, 2015
I ask
this question because all around me, our kids are being brainwashed by adults
who are scared that Islam will disappear from the world if the younger
generation is not trained to kill for the
sake of religion.
“Nana, you should wear shalwar kameez when you go to the mosque,
not jeans and T-shirt, Akmal driver Chacha says so.”
“Mummy, why don’t you wear a burqa,
our Islamiat teacher says your prayers will never be accepted if you don’t.”
When you hear such sentences from children who are only six or
seven-years-old, you wonder how you can prevent your children from turning into
extremists.
We cannot prevent our
children from speaking to our staff members (drivers or security guards) or
those who teach them how to read the Quran. These individuals are placed in our
lives and we cannot overlook their presence. Muslims have differing beliefs,
but the hard-core ones, which we need to keep our children away from, are the
ones who believe that not only Pakistan, but the whole world has been created
for Muslims who follow an extremist version of Islam.
This belief automatically negates the concept of sub-sections
within a majority. When I was a child, we heard that there were only two sects,
which have existed for centuries. Mosque Imams were more relaxed and I
never heard anyone preaching that it was a good deed to kill those who did not
follow the “true” faith, Islam.
Eventually, things
started getting worse. Almost all the Christians of Karachi migrated to greener pastures (most Hindus had
fled to India immediately after partition). When we were in school, we would
play and eat with Christians, Hindus and Parsis (there were a few Jews as
well).
Nowadays, children rarely come across non-Muslims. I
occasionally come across teenagers who think that only a few non-Muslims are
left in Pakistan, and it’s only a matter of time before they are wiped out.
The decline probably
started after some of our labourers and working class individuals began
returning from Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia, and became convinced that the hard-line
version of Islam practiced there was far superior to the relaxed one inherited
by Pakistan.
Suddenly there was a proliferation of organisations preaching
what they considered the “true” Islam and many people joined them. It was not
long before our TV channels also began to telecast programs in which so-called
scholars were invited to convince people to follow their ideologies.
At wedding dinners and
such occasions, religion and politics are
the most popular topics. I keep overhearing obscure things such as whether
Islam allows us to eat prawns and crabs or whether a man’s nikkah is
broken if he prays behind a man who belongs to another sub-sect. Extreme cases
include brothers quarrelling over which imam should lead funeral prayers
because they both belong to different sub-sects.
I wonder if this battle
can ever be won. At times I am filled with despair over the decreased levels
of tolerance in our society, especially when I
witness things such as people in my neighbourhood building a new mosque because
the Imam of a nearby mosque followed a slightly different version of Islam.
Now, when I go to offer prayers in the mosque where the Imam apparently follows
a different version of Islam, some of my neighbours express their aversion openly.
I weep for my people, for my country and for the Muslim world. I
have no solution to the problem, except perhaps keeping our children away from
individuals who lean towards extremism.
Engineer, teacher,
industrialist, associated with petroleum/chemical industries for many years.
Loves writing, and (in the opinion of most of those who know him), mentally
unbalanced. He tweets @shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
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