Fellow Nairalander,
Peace and blessing of the Merciful God be upon you!

As part of my contribution to bring positive development to this segment, I am deciding to come here once a while to contribute to this section useful topics that could be of help to muslims and their faiths. I am of view that if muslims want to be understood, they should first begin from within. I will touch on this topic later.

In the wake of the capture of Faruq, the failed christmas bomber, a lot of attention has been focus on Nigeria and Nigerian Muslims.

I have been impressed by the prompt condemnation of Faruq's action by the generality of Muslims in Nigeria. This is commendable.

Whichever way we look at it, Faruq action has brought to fore a new urgency to curb Islamic radicalization world wide. What made the matter more painful was a reckless bloodbath that occured in Bauchi around the same period. With that, we effectively sent wrong signal to the world as a haven for terrorists!
Brethrens, the Islam that we are given did not preach death and terror. A set of people has arisen to to use Islam as a weapon of oppression. Not only against non muslims but also against muslims.

Today, I am asking reasonable people : what can be done to stem the tide of Islamic radicalization? How do we put an end to continued use of Islam to settle political differences?

I dont think there is something we need to do about it and if there is, it must be the government of the day in conjuction with the stakeholders that will make a policy to eradicate that kind of immoral and unislamic acts. THese terrorists, we dont know where they reside and operate from. That is my own suggestion.

Islam needs to rise up to defend its integrity.
Islam (if its really true)needs to reassert itself as a religion of peace.
Islam, and muslims need to rise up with one voice and condemn entirely terrorist acts and denounce those who commit the cowardly attacks as non muslims.
Im not even sure there was any message from the SCIA in nigeria condemning the act by young muttallab.

As long as there is culpable silence on the part of peace loving muslims(im sure there are), as long as there is tacit or even overt support for terror, as long as islamic leaders fail to condemn those who terrorise and as long as justifications are given whenever acts of terror are commited, Islam will be viewed by the wider population of the earth as a violent and terror supporting religion.
Islam needs to 'rebrand' and then people may just see any other message the religion has for the world.

@olalekan, the terrosts are not spirits. They have houses and families and live among us. The potential terrorist recruits are characterized by
1. Extreme and often misleading preaching
2. Chronic ignorance of interpretation of shariah/Quran
3. Placing too much emphasis on what someone said *usually sheikh* instead of Quran
4. Placing too much emphasis on hadiths (especially the fabricated hadiths) over the quran
5. Religion comparison, with view not to educate, but to show how knowledgable they are of other religions and to win argument.
6. Placing too much emphasis on appearances than conduct.
7. Lack of tolerance of other religions.
The manifestation of extremism, begun when someone start expecting everyone else to follow his path/conviction even when it is clear he has no point!

It is from among people like these that we have potential terrorists. When they start facing foolish danger, then they are a great candidate for the devil's job.

@reindeer, you said it well

well even if the potential terrorists are characterised by those things you mentioned, I dont think we can do anything to that as they have freedom of speech and it has never been in the law to report such people to the Law Enforcement Agency. I will still say it is the government of the day in collaboration with the stakeholders that can formulate a policy to curb such act.

that is where the problems with Muslims lie. The thinking that we can't do anything about something we created yet, we see how they play politics even with shariah.

There are three kind of people in the world. The wills. The Can'ts. And the Won'ts. The Wills achieve everything. The Won't oppose everything. And the Can't fail everything.

In the end muslims are the losers. Freedom of expresion is not an excuse to allow some maniacs drag the whole religion into the mud.

What can we do?

Muslims alone can help defeat terrorism. This is a fact. Western world will never achieve anything without active involvement of muslims. Everything needed to defeat terrorism is in shariah. When faithfully applied, terrorism will either reduced or vanished.

Just look around you and see how many time some people proclaim death on non muslims in a day, and how many times they preach peace as found in islam. Take a look at this section, for example and sample the negative topics started by muslims against positive ones, you will understand there is so much hatred in the land.

But we can not reach a conclusion without the government backing, islamically or democratically. [b]Everything needed to defeat terrorism is in shariah[/b]pls state those things needed, then we can see that we have something we can do about it.