Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's blog

Ideologically, passive militants regard it as their duty to give full assistance to active terrorists. And if such terrorists are in their thousands, the number of their supporters runs into millions. This being so, the annihilation of known active terrorists would not suffice to put an end to the phenomenon of terrorism. It is essential, therefore, that the issue of the enormous support given by the world-wide network of passive terrorists be immediately addressed. Their minds must be re-engineered. Their violent thinking must be transformed into pacifism.

The terrorists’ self-styled ideology gives them the conviction that, by dying in battle, they become martyrs and that, as such, they will have a new and far better life in paradise. It is this belief, which has made suicide bombing totally acceptable to them. Given this situation, it is only when their self-styled ideology is shown to be baseless by producing a counter ideology that their violent actions will ever come to an end.

Modern terrorism must be brought to an end. But this cannot be done through counter attacks. For one thing, this would be like trying to quell non-state terrorism by state terrorism. And for another, modern terrorism derives its strength less from guns and bombs than from its ideology. That is why a counter ideology rather than counter-bombing would the more effectively put an end to terrorism.

The evil of terrorism has come to be a present-day affliction. It is widely condemned, but what terrorism is has not yet been clearly defined. After a great deal of thought on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that terrorism is definable as armed action carried out by non-governmental organizations. Certainly, the public have the right to peacefully present their point of view, but on no consideration do they have the right to engage in militancy, for armed movements of this sort run counter to accepted national and international principles.