The fight against radicalism is the greatest challenge facing the Arab world and the West today. Daesh (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has taken the beauty of Islam and perverted its message, creating division, bringing destruction, spreading fear, inflicting pain and showering death upon all those who oppose its twisted agenda of hate and radicalism. It is a cancer that needs to be excised by civilised nations, a barbarism that holds no place in the hearts of all peace-loving people, an evil philosophy that holds no quarter in the minds of all right-thinking men, a distortion that needs to be corrected by all who see a vision of the future in peace, a discordant voice against those who see harmony.
While allies have commenced a coordinated assault on Daesh operations on the ground in Iraq and Syria, military power, drones, and air strikes combined will erode the operational effectiveness of these evil-doers. What combined military might cannot do, however, is erase the twisted philosophy that breeds hatred, bigotry and injustice. For that, vision, patience and foresight is required.
Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has set out a clear agenda in permanently dealing with those who propagate extremism — a blueprint that details how to remove the conditions in which such rabid radicalism festers and propagates. His three-point plan is not a bellicose agenda — but realistic, attainable and peaceful; one that exemplifies the very principles on which UAE society has thrived and prospered. Shaikh Mohammad is right when he says that an enduring solution requires winning the intellectual battle, upgrading weak governments and spreading grassroots human development.
The extremism of Daesh thrives on ignorance, feeding off misguided beliefs and twisted interpretations of the true peaceful path of Islam. By depriving it of the oxygen of ignorance, the flames of hatred can be snuffed out. By improving the conditions on the ground, where all can have clean water, good education, better housing, equal opportunity and access to jobs, health and education without regimes governed by the currency of corruption, extremism can be excised and erased.
