Issue is that groups like JI are deeply rooted in society. If you start rounding up people and hanging them, and improsing them, situation will quickly turn into the rebel-vs-Assad situation in Syria, and there are lots of hungry countries ready to throw money at and fund the Pakistani version of “rebels” - i.e. groups like JI etc who will feel disenfranchised when their leadership starts being put in jail.
Syrian population that is running away has said one thing in multiple interviews, and they are right. You can get rid of one group and it doesn’t matter. Other groups will rise. We tried to get rid of Taliban , we got TTP. We get rid of JI, it will be some other group then later. Getting rid of Al Qaeda, and then we got ISIS.
The issue isn’t the group itself and it’s leadership, it’s the underlying thought process of extremism. It’s the idea that people actually think misogyny, women’s strict dress codes and social laws about women (i.e. are they allowed to work, drive, etc), how you treat someone who chooses to not believe in Islam, apostasy ideas, treatment towards non-muslims, treatment towards shrines, treatment towards churges/temples/synagogues, treatment towards other sects of Islam, shia vs. sunni ideas, rules regarding jihad, predictions of a khalifat, etc are all actual Islamic beliefs.
None of the above is Islamic, but people won’t accept that, and that’s a very deep rooted problem amongst all muslims, and that’s what people mean that we need “Islamic reform”. These topics need to be addressed by scholars, and clarifications need to be made, and then furthermore, the education needs to be widely implemented. Clarifications are being made, but right now, education is in the hands of wahabbi funded curriculum, rather than these clerics that no one seems to be listening to.
The following ideas need to get built into curriculum in Pakistan - in madrassah system, and in the private and government sectors also. And not just in Pakistan, but in every muslim majority country, and in every muslim immigrant community outside. And that’s NOT going to happen any time soon, because there are too many salafi/wahabbi forces that won’t let it happen. We have to disown wahabbism, and you’ll see, the radicalization will end.
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niqab - make it haraam. Women must be made to show their face. (ref: hadith where Rasulullah explictly states the face stays open).
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hijab - make it optional. Don’t celebrate this as something that makes a woman automatically heaven-bound, as we celebrate it today. It was not used as such back then. There is also no evidence a woman was ever punished for showing her hair, and there are hadith’s that show women did come in front of Rasullullah SAW w/o covering their hair. “Khimar” in the Quran should be translated as “cloth” rather than “headcovering”. Use the literal translation, don’t impose an implicit translation on this word. Muslim scholars will mostly reject this idea.
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Acknowledge that beards and hijabs have become a cult-indocrtination code. Nothing different than a gang tattoo used to identify you as different from others and as part of a sorority/fraternity group. There is NO such dress code in Islam. This is all based on one hadith where Rasulullah SAW suggested muslim men in war grow beards to distinguish themselves from the enemy. We are not in war anymore and shouldn’t be.
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Educate on the very distinct rules for Jihad which the Quran already dictates. Shove it down everyone’s throat so they understand they’re not supposed to pick up arms on their own. Give the power to wage war ONLY to nation-states and leader heads. Make it a crime to pick up arms on your own, and treat it as TREASON, and hang these people right away.
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Make it a crime to hurt a Shia. Hang the people that do it. Educate sunnis and shias both about each other’s interpretations, and make it socially acceptable to pray next to each other moving your hands in different ways during prayer. Even a verbal slur or a verbal criticism of Shias should be blocked and punishable. Should have punishments like what would happen if you made anti-semitic statements in the US.
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Make holidays for minorities public holidays, and have muslims openly participate with these non-muslims during their holidays. Muslims can celebrate Holi with Hindus in India, why can’t we?? We should have been standing guard at that park in Lahore protecting Christians while they celebrate their Easter publicly.
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There needs to be a door to door check of people suspected for extremism, take their laptops, cell phones, etc and if you see suspicious activity and activity/books preaching hate, take it from them and put them in a detention center where they are deradicalized. I think yeah, it’s getting to this point that if we don’t start nipping these people in the bud, that they will cause more and more problems.