Walking on the Egg Shells

Fayyaz Ahmed Mughal
Extremism is commonly an ideology or act violating the political centre of a society or more simply violation of common moral standards set by a group of people. But the term could not be cramped to a single line only; it varies from people to people, state to state and ideologies to ideologies. For a multicast, multi-cultural, multi-sect and multi-class society, the meaning of extremism can not be confined to a specific group or limited people. We are such a multi-facial society where every group, individual or character is inclined towards extremism in one way or the other. We are fundamentalists in our beliefs, thoughts, actions and even relations. Our minds are authoritative and our souls are polluted.
We must confess that we are all fundamentalists. Everyone among us sought to impose his ideology to his fellows, acquaintances and even families by hook or by crook. Discussing politics, routine life matters or dogmas, we want to overwhelm our opponents and for this very raison d’être we can go to any limit. There is no place of dissident because we have no patience; we are totally devoid of tolerance. In clash of thoughts, ideologies and beliefs we forget the humanity; it becomes a secondary and even tertiary object. Our Ideologies are more revered than humanity. If truth be told there is no humanity, neither in our minds nor in our hearts, for us, it is an obsolete and extinct word.

In day to day matters we experience manifestation of one or the other form of extremism. More categorically we are facing worst form of extremism displayed by our religious school of thought. Many banned outfits amid religious school of thoughts founded a reign of terror, in a bid to besiege the nation. But all the eggs are not rotten, where a chunk of Islamists is pre-occupied by volatile mindset; there are also broad minded, liberal and resilient people that candidly deplore the terrorism in all forms and manifestations. They are not only wise but sagacious enough to present true image of Islam.
Parallel to conservative Islamist school of thought, we see anti- conservative class, more commonly liberal school of thought. Albeit, in today’s world, liberalism drives the meaning of softness, flexibility and elasticity but liberalists proved them identical to religious school of thought. . It is obnoxious that liberal cadre very resiliently labels Islamists as fundamentalists and fanatics but our liberal and moderate school of thought is also occupied by extremists, the liberal extremists. To antagonize the conservatives, liberal faction is touching the extreme of extremism. Sheer abhorrence for the Islamists has led the liberal class to the door of extremism. They express it by criticizing, censuring and condemning the life style of conservatives. For example, wearing veil is an individual act, it is someone’s own way of life, but for liberal extremists, it is a symbol of extremism. They don’t have right to interfere in one’s personal matters, but they want to dictate, they want them to adopt the life style they offer. They want their hegemony. This is what called the real dichotomy. Apart from persuading the religious mindset, our liberal spear heads also speak loud about the modern image of Islam. Sorry to contradict, Islam is a complete religion with a complete code of conduct for a peaceful life. It neither needs trimming nor modernization. It neither needs bullets nor silly statements.
The motor behind this clash of ideologies is very simple. Islamists want Islamic values to occupy the central policy of the state. They want to influence state machinery for the accomplishment of their agenda. Contrary to conservatives, religious school of thought, liberalists want class interests as the major state policy. They want to persuade state for their own interests. Spat among both the groups is irking daily life. The only sufferers are lower and white collar faction of our society whose main concern is better life style.
This is not the story of today; our history is replete with lucid examples of this spar. The row amid both the factions can be settled only by a balance policy of the government but unfortunately state has completely failed to settle this dispute. State is just pushing the days, sometimes by tilting towards one school of thought and sometimes other. An imbalance policy could be catastrophic. This is an op-ed for the government to adopt a stead fast balanced policy. We are walking on the egg shells; increase in imbalance will accelerate the anarchy and finally a complete disaster.