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Gamal Abd al-Rahim Arabi
Part Two: An unavoidable War of Ideas
In the first part of this essay we presented the main roots that led to the emergence of extremism and terrorism now being attributed to the Islamic religion. We demonstrated how the terms of reference for the Salafist interpretation of religious texts underpinning the official and popular institutions such as the Council of Higher ‘Scholars’ and al-Azhar and the like are the same terms of reference underpinning the takfīrī jihadist movements. As long as terrorists draw from the same sources, the difference between the thinking maintained by those bearing weapons and others who do not believe in violence, is purely formal.
There are many factors behind the emergence of the phenomenon of Islamic violence, including political, economic, social and psychological ones, and the most important of these is the "intellectual" factor resulting from the interpretation of texts of the Qur’ān and the hadith, in addition to many concepts and fatwas contained in works of fiqh and the Islamic tradition.
The simple, devout Muslim understands that his religion commands what is good, beautiful and merciful, and forbids all that is evil, ugly and cruel. So when he sees a human being beheaded, or stoned to death, or women sold in slave markets and shared out among the fighters like so many spoils, or humans killed or persecuted merely for practising another religion,
