Ted Talks: Maajid Nawaz: A global culture to fight extremism

Summary

The Speaker was once a leader of a radical Islamic organization. He presents his views to illustrate how extreme movements are widespread and operate across national borders.

Meanwhile, he analyzes the succeeded conditions of extremism and proposes his perspective on how to advocate a democratic culture across Muslim countries.

In the beginning of this talk, the lecturer asks three consecutive questions by “have you ever wondered” to catch audiences’ attentions. Next, he describes “the age of behaviour” which is a period of trans-national ideas and narrative that has brought about the rise of extremism. He offers his personal experience to elaborate how his work was done through the technology. These extremists feel they are overwhelming and are not isolated anymore because of the facilitation of technology.

How are these organization are succeeding? “We should understand the power of social movements”, the lecturer replies. The social movement comprises four elements: ideas, narratives, symbol and leaders, and Al-Qaeda is a noted example in this social movement. However, on the other hand, we are facing a problem that can be summed up in the question: why are there no global and grassroots social movements to advocate democratic cultures across International borders? The lecturer answers this question with four general points, which are complacency, political correctness, political and economic failure and ideology of resistance to explain the democratic culture falling behind.

To curb the widespread and borderless influence of extremism and promote genuine and civilized society, the lecturer proposes the idea of creating the demand for democratic culture from the grassroots-based social movements out of political atmosphere. In Muslim countries, the civil society lacks a democratic culture. 

Critique

The lecturer gives his past personal experience to illustrate the phenomenon of extremism, which is quite convincing. He also analyzes the causes for why extreme Islamists have a voice around the world. In response, he proposes the concept to build the grassroots activism in order to propagate a genuine demand for democracy. He argues that this is the only way to build the democratic culture, from the bottom-up. Since the speech time was limited, it is pity that the lecture was not able to elaborate how to do this.

Although building the demand for democratic culture is a good starting point, it seems that many obstacles will need to be overcame at every step The sovereignty of a nation is a major impediment to choke the democratic culture. In Arab countries, almost all political systems are dictatorships and monarchies. That is, grassroots organizations will be closely put under surveillance by these political authorities. It seems that building the demand of the democratic culture in Muslim countries still have a very long way to go.