Mohammed Al Aoudhi: “Extremism requires social and economic reformation”

In an interview with the newspaper “Echorouk”, Kuwaiti theologian Mohammed Al Aoudhi stressed the imperious necessity to move away from alienation and marginalisation when dealing with crises in the Islamic world especially those related to the young segments of the population

• He asserted that the fight against extremism requires a political and social reformation in the Islamic world.
• Q: Considering your long working experience amongst young communities, what are the main problems they are facing today?
• A: A  lot has been written and said about the youngsters’ problems in seminars and newspapers, but before talking about their problems one has to acknowledge sociological evidence; who are these young people? Aren’t they you and I in a particular period of time in the past?. These problems are samples of the whole society, because they do not live in another planet. That’s why I say if we need to understand the youngsters’ problems we have to analyse the whole society. The problem of the young people lies in the fact that, by contrast with mature persons, they do not posses enough experience to deal with difficulties in their daily life.
• Moreover, Arab societies, including Algeria are young ones. In his book “ The death of the West”, Pat Buchannan links the disintegration of the western societies to along process of transformation that ended up with the creation of family samples unprecedented in human history. This phenomenon doesn’t exist in our societies because we stuck to our paradigm based on the traditional family structure. I and you are still children in the eyes of our mothers even at 40 or 50.
• Q: What are the main crises that undermine the Islamic societies?
• A; We have to look back at the historical process starting from the Ottoman empire onwards, the Arab countries were colonized by the western powers, ten came another form of colonialism, whether we like it or not we grew dependent of them.
• For instance, the French tried to apply a western model at the expense of the Algerian religion and language over 130 years.
• Q:  How can the young people manage to stick to their scientific and ideological landmarks?
• A: I  have carried out in Kuwait an unprecedented study about the Islamic world that tackles the causes behind extremism especially after 9/11 attacks and asked young people in prisons along with their lawyers and some Arab interior ministers as well as experts in economy, sociology, psychology and many others. I came up with the conclusion that general established facts are insufficient and an in depth analysis is required.