Dogmism: Breaking the Cycle of Extremism

Islamic terrorism became known worldwide because of the 9/11 attacks which overshadowed previous attacks from the 1970’s. Since then, terrorism has been unfortunately and unfairly connected to Islam.

This connection is easily brought back up to mind and conversation whenever a terrorist attack occurs, whether it was rooted in Islam or not. Whenever a terrorist attack occurs, the common expectation nowadays is for it to be caused by a disgruntled Muslim.

Whenever it is proven to be caused by a Muslim, anti-Islam sentiments rise. Muslims then take a defensive stance.

Proper Muslims expectedly denounce the attack and say that it was un-Islamic. But by then, the connection between Islam and terrorism would have really formed in the public’s mind.

This in turn causes the public to be anti-Islamic. This creates more disgruntled Muslims who can get easily radicalized, creating more terrorists.

The cycle is thus created and strengthened. We can call this ’the cycle of extremism'.

The Cause: Connecting ideas to other ideas, which are just remotely connected

Since it is obvious that terrorist attacks are un-Islamic and anti-society, referring to such terrorists as ‘Islamic’ terrorists is a misnomer.

Terrorist attacks are based on a blind belief propagated by the founders of those terrorist societies.

For example, Osama Bin Laden propounded a wrong and blind belief that terrorist attacks would drive Americans out of the Middle East. But in reality, it caused the Americans to flock into Iraq and Afghanistan as soldiers from 2003. It even caused his own death in 2011 through a US Navy Seal attack.

In the end, Bin Laden’s belief left everyone — himself, his friends and foes, Muslims and Americans alike — worse off. Clearly, if Bin Laden knew his own interest and could either look deeply into the root causes of his anger or have foresight of its consequences, then his mind would’ve never created such a belief in the first place.

If he could connect his idea of smashing airplanes onto tall buildings (Idea 1) with the idea of US revenge (Idea 2) that would hurt both himself and Islam in the end (Idea 3), then he would not have done what he did.

David Hume knew that most humans have a weak ability to connect effect with ultimate causes, and causes with their long-term effects.

Thus, those who blame terrorism on Islam is suffering from the same weakness that caused the terrorist to do his attack in the first place. They do not see that jihad was meant to keep Muslims within Islam and never to terrorize others:

This is a self-defense measure to keep Islam intact amidst all the rival philosophies going around. The best solution is not to attack Islam and to let Muslims get the good and bad consequences of their beliefs.

The Solution: A New Term Called ‘Dogmism’

The cycle of extermism can be broken by dealing directly with the root cause, which is the suffering experienced by the extremist.

In Bin Laden’s case, it was the pain of seeing American troops in the Middle East. It would be naive to think that the US can be requested to leave their oil interests totally to the Arabs.

Since in this case, the root cause cannot be fixed, we have to limit the damage by separating Bin Laden’s terrorism from Islam, Arabs, and even Saudi Arabia.

Instead of attaching the word ’terrorism’ to ‘Islam’, we replace it with the word ‘dogmism’ as a container for shallow-minded extremist beliefs. We then attach it to its proponent or founder so that the attacks by Al-Qaeda are part of Bin Laden’s Dogmism.

His dogmism is similar to, but a bit different from, that of ISIS which we can call Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi’s Dogmism.

Notice that in both dogmisms, the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ is never encountered.

Another example is Hitler’s final solution of killing all Jews in Europe, which we can call Hitler’s Dogmism. This avoids reference to ‘Socialism’ which is part of the Nazi name.

Lastly, we call Trump’s policy of blaming election loss as cheating by the opposition as Trump’s Dogmism. This separates it from the Republican party and white people.

In this way, the root cause can be easily traced to the originators of the blind belief, such as Bin Laden, Baghdadi, Hitler, and Trump, isolating them from Muslims, Arabs, Germans, and Republicans respectively.

The public will then connect the terrorist attacks to the proponents themselves instead of onto a whole religion, race, country, etc.

Once the whole world knows about the specific flavor of that dogma and its proponent, then the world can simply find solutions against that person and the causes behind such a flavor of dogmism.

• Noun: Dogmism
• Person: Dogmist
• Adjective: Dogmistic
• Adverb: Dogmistically

Examples:

• Trump dogmists attacked the US Capitol in an effort to reverse the election results.
• The dogmists of Imperial Japan resolved to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941.

• He dogmistically rejected the job application of the gay black man.