Mamdouh Bitar, Mira Albitar:

   The main characteristics of the causes of the region’s crises are represented in several forms, including the duality of extremism and fanaticism. Extremism does not express a negative state, and its inclusion in the list of causes of crises may be wrong. Extremism is a position, and every position may be considered extremist by others, i.e. far from the positions of other parties. The fact that a position is close or far from other positions does not make it wrong or correct. Fanaticism, on the contrary, is derived linguistically from the “blind” that is placed before the eyes, and placing a blindfold before the eyes, i.e. the loss of sight, can only be negative, while there is no blindfold in extremism!

 In thought, there is something called moderation, or what can be called balance. Moderation includes a kind of voluntary abandonment of a position that may be correct. Positioning between positions or in the middle does not mean right and correctness. Right and correctness are represented in the type of position produced by the mind and thinking, regardless of whether it is in the middle or at the extremes (extremist). The extreme right-wing position or the extreme left-wing position may represent right and correctness. Moderation is nothing but a bazaar in which interests are exchanged, i.e., giving up something in exchange for obtaining something else in order to obtain what can be called a ceasefire in a war that is still ongoing or declared. The bazaar postpones making the final decision for a period. Extremism remains positive as long as it does not turn into fanaticism, leading to renewed clashes and not stopping except with the duality of defeat and victory. Extremism regresses to fanaticism, meaning severance, isolation, and self-absorption, meaning infection with a malignant mental illness.

  Intolerance represents a dogmatic, absolute state that does not allow for the existence of another party. Absoluteness equals forced unity free of relativity and full of absolute truths. The one who represents all of this par excellence is religious thought, that is, the concept of the absolute, transcendent God, which in almost all cases falls on the infrastructure, that is, the earthly, and this means that everything follows. The small ones turn into great gods, that is, they possess most of the attributes of the heavenly, mighty God. Here, the matter reaches the worship of the deified who know only absolute solutions and judgments, which by their nature are not credible and not correct. The further absolutism is from credibility and closer to failure, the more it is strict in denying other acceptable and logical positions. This is called formal forced unity and means imposing homogeneity, which can only be formal in the presence of natural difference.

 Secular thought differs from absolute religious dogmatism in that it does not deify nor recognize an absolute truth. It is flexible, relative, temporary, and changeable, not supremacist, and thus does not express the intellectual “classism” that dominates one idea and enslaves another. No matter how extreme secularism is, it does not turn into fanaticism except when it regresses due to the factor of isolation into fanaticism, that is, to the nature of religious thought, which has led to many problems, including the loss of the changing modern identity of religious people, as a result of their faith-based attachment to the past, which they consider valid for all times. It is self-evident that nothing is valid for all times and places! , that is, an identity that has reached the age of 1440 years is no longer valid for moving through history. The problem here lies in the inability of these godless people to acquire a modern identity with which they can move to a better present and future. Staying in a specific time means staying in the state of this specific time. Consequently, these godless people remain in the stage of the camel and the dromedary and in the civilization of captivity, theft and plunder, i.e. corruption. Does humanity know anyone more corrupt than the best nation in this age and the previous one?! What do their past concepts mean when their feelings push them to the necessity of moving by plane and car, while what is rooted in their subconscious directs them towards another superstitious faith, i.e. moving on the back of the camel or the dromedary? The result here will be the birth of a schizophrenic state and an internal war within themselves, and their fear of the future, because their shackles are not in their hands, but in the hands of fate and destiny and in the hands of divine wisdom, which has taken away their will. They are walking from one unknown to another unknown and they do not know where they will land. They are now hungry despite… Divine wisdom, and what will be their fate if they continue to rely on that divine wisdom?

   The number of refugees among them to areas of human wisdom such as Europe has reached millions, but they continued in their divinity and reliance on divine wisdom, to the point that denying reality led some of them to say that they did not seek refuge in Belgium, for example, but rather in God’s vast country, and that social assistance was from God’s grace and not from the humanity of the Belgians. God provides for whomever He wills!! Why did God not provide for them in the areas where they were born and lived? They thought that God was dealing with them according to his classification of them as the best nation, but it seems that he lied to them. As a result of many paradoxes and the inability to integrate refugees into European societies, laws and regulations are now being legislated that enable them to return millions of refugees to the areas from which they came.

 Secularism, which moved to this region a few decades ago, is trying to settle its accounts with all those past values, including religious values, after the failure of the Messiah of religious reform. In the context of settling accounts, religious thought declared a general mobilization, which was called the awakening, which turned into a defeat. We noticed many of its manifestations in Egypt, for example, with the defeat of Morsi, and we notice it now even in Saudi Arabia and other regions such as Iran, which was violently struck from outside and from within the region, for example in Syria and Lebanon. In Syria, the Brotherhood is disowned, and in Lebanon, Iran’s arm, Hezbollah, is in the operations room to amputate arms!