Financial religious extremism

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I am convinced that the state is on its way to becoming religious in character par excellence, as the bulldozer of religious extremism is sweeping everything in its path and this is what we are seeing through dozens of indicators.

What mitigates the danger of this extremism, in the short term only, is that it is a material, financial, not ideological, extremism, i.e. extremism to win voters, or to accumulate wealth, and build centers of power, and the evidence is the ease of satisfying or suppressing the votes of any extremist party with financial deals, and we have names of all those who have made big fortunes for themselves, as a result of their bidding and exploitation of extremism for personal benefit, and then withdrawing from the arena to enjoy what they have collected through various illicit means including gift projects, or licensing private schools and universities, and so on.

What indicates or shows that their “extremism is not valid” is their lack of hesitation, as deputies or preachers, to intervene with the authorities to release their companions, even if they are of moral concern or drug smugglers.

As for the “ideological” Islamic religious extremism, it is currently present in large parts of Pakistan, in all of Afghanistan, and to some extent in Iran, with its authorities able to use the matter to their advantage.

Among the examples of extremism in Kuwait is what we have come to see in the form of parliamentary proposals by deputies who have no work, oversight and legislative task, instead, they only are intent on bothering the society with their recent bills.

A number of them proposed that the Human Rights Committee in the National Assembly discuss the challenges and obstacles facing citizens and expatriates when practicing their beliefs and rituals!

This is a bad joke, as these people know, before anyone else, that they are the root cause of the problem in the first place, so who are they laughing at?

Likewise, other extremist lawmakers have submitted a bill to establish a national authority for translation and Arabization. The institution will be tasked to change the names of companies to Arabic and enforce a fine of KD 1000 on the violators.

Amazingly, some of the lawmakers who submitted the bill are owners and partners of companies with foreign/Latin names while others are not good enough in Arabic language.

Another group of deputies submitted a proposal to create an electronic portal, not a manual one, with the “Labor Authority”, to recruit domestic workers, and to call the portal Barrera, a female domestic who worked in the house of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

These deputies forgot, in the midst of their hypocrisy, that there is a government company that is already carrying out this task!

However, most of them are under control because of the fact that most of them own charities and societies and they are in need to continue to run them. Other lawmakers are members of religious blocs but they are concerned about their financial interests as many of them have their commercial and contracting companies. They participate in public sector tenders either directly or through their children.

Although extremism in Kuwait is mostly purely material, and it can be easily eradicated, due to the quality of the leaders of this extremism, leaving them to work freely, as is the case now, will allow them to continue digging their trenches within the government administration, and spreading their extremist ideas in the minds of school students and fortify their party fortresses, so that, after a long time, it will be difficult to control them, let alone uproot them!

So when does our rational government make a move?!

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad alsarraf

This news has been read 26564 times!