Alsardary,+Zayd

= = Many of us have heard about extremism; its effects on our world today. But do we know what extremism actually means? Extremism is the condition or act of taking an extreme view. When you think about the meaning, you assume that this could never happen in your religion. The thing is, many people don’t really know that there is extremism in many of the major religions today such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Even though you might think that this fact could never be true, this brochure will actually prove many things about extremism in each religion of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Let’s start off with Christianity. According to http://www.sciforums.com/good-things-from-christianity-t-46835.html, Christianity has many good things about it such as charity work and even inspiring many of history’s greats such as Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, George Washington, and many more. The problem even though it has these great things that have attributed to mankind today, there is a lot of extremism in Christianity. For example, in Canada there are The Sons of Freedom, a sect of anarchists, have protested nude, blown up power pylons, railroad bridges, and set fire to homes, often targeting their own property. A more serious situation would be The National Liberation Front of Tipura a rebel group, classified by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism as one of the ten most active terrorist groups in the world, has been accused of forcefully converting people to Christianity. And they call that not being extremism? To force someone to a religion if they do not believe in it would definitely be considered as an extremist move and in Christianity it is told that you cannot force people to believe someone to believe if they refuse. The same is in Islam. One more thing that is considered to be extremist would be the point that Christian extremists support school bullying. A lady who was a parent of a Christian child was disappointed that the school was trying to reduce bullying. The source of this woman’s displeasure is that reducing bullying interferes with the fundamental right of Christian children to spread anti-gay hatred and bigotry at their schools. Supporting the fundamental right of Christian children to spread anti-gay hatred and much more? That is definitely considered to be extremist. Also, The Aryan Brotherhood takes passages from the bible (mostly Old Testament) and tries to pass it off as proof that white men were meant to lord it over anyone of color or not of their strict interpretation of Protestant Christianity. These all support the extremism of Christianity.

The next religion is Judaism. Jewish people may be thought to be kind, and most are. The problem here is they, too, have extremism in Judaism that goes way too far. England was the dominant power in the Middle East at the time. When the UN created Israel over Arab and British objections, the British government thought that an unstable situation had been created that made Palestine ungovernable, so it withdrew out its troops. Some Arabs had been dispossessed of their land in order to make room for Jewish immigrants and were disappointed. The Arab countries surrounding Palestine united in support of the displaced Palestinian Arabs. Almost immediately after the British troops got out, the Arab states attacked the state of Israel with the goal of pushing the Israelis off the land and giving it back to the Arabs who had been dispossessed. Israel fought and won its survival. In the war Israel captured Gaza. According to http://themiddleground.blogspot.com/2004/08/extremism-in-religion-and-culture-is.html, y ou have the Orthodox Jews who insist on building settlements all over the West Bank and protect it at gun point, saying that it is their "right" to claim the land because Abraham's 5000 year old covenant with God. Extremism anybody? Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, but when a government allows extremist movements to hi-jack the peace process because they don't like some part of it, that government is applying extremism.

Last but not least there is Islam. Muslims are very nice people and are open to people of all religions. There is extremism in this religion also. For example, The Iraq War. Terrorist bombed the country and caused tons of misery and death to many of the civilians there. As quoted from [] “Today Al Qaeda is the best example of terrorists who misuse Islam. Also Osama bin Ladin would be the perfect example of extremism. The thing is Muslims are always misjudged and are treated wrong in many ways.” And they truly are. Did you realize the sudden decrease of bombings when George Bush assured the world that the troops would be out of Iraq soon? All they want is their freedom. Just because there are Muslim terrorists in the world, you cannot blame it on **all** of Islam. The same thing is for all other religions. For example, in the holy book the Quran, it is quoted “//That is anyone slew a person unless it be for murder or for separating mischief in the land. It would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.//” This tells us that you cannot kill any innocent people and if you do u are not considered a true Muslim; you are a Muslim by name. The main point that is trying to be conveyed is that yes, there is Islamic extremism. But when we talk about religiously motivated extremism we cannot talk only about the Islamic world. As quoted from an article by Gene TeSelle called “Thinking about Religious Extremism” it says “During the past time we have learned that extremist attitudes based on religious motivations are not only to any one religion but can be found in any of them.” That point completely supports the main belief of extremism in the world. You cannot just blame bombings on a certain religions when your own religion might be interacting in the same way in the world. In the end you see that there is extremism in all religions and that even if we were to eliminate it, there would be many consequences to it. We should never think that religions are wrong for what they do to the world such as bomb and kill when there are some things that are just like that in your own.