DEMOCRATIC culture, and not only democracy, needs to be strengthened for the socio-economic and political uplift of a nation, and the ideology is to be defined clearly as to what kind of a system of government the masses want in a particular country.

This was a consensus at a seminar “Khudi (An Awakening), A Counter Extremism Democratic Social Movement”, held at Nairang CafÈ on Saturday.

Speaking to the audience, Majid Nawaz, Co-Founder of Khudi, said it was not right just to elect a government by holding elections and then to be oblivious about the fact that how that government was running the affairs of the country. He said true democracy was the best form of government but once the elections were held and the government was in place, it needed to develop a democratic culture, and that democratic culture could be developed by giving everyone free will whichever way of life or whichever religion he or she wanted to have. He said the state should not be emphasizing upon making people convinced about adopting a certain religious ideology and it should be exclusively people’s concerns which religion they ought to follow.

Secondly, by elaborating the concept of ideology, he said first we needed to stick to the system of government we wanted to have whether it was democracy, dictatorship, religious party’s government, monarchy or whatever. He termed democracy, though not perfect, but still the best form of government, as he observed over several years of his experience around the world.

Talking about the root causes of terrorism in different areas of the world, he said grievances, poverty, deprivation of resources, lack of education were the only reasons for jumping into the act of terrorism. But it is also a person’s own ideological point of view, which prompts him or her to adopt terrorist ideology. He gave the examples of Usama Bin laden, Sheikh Khalid Muhammad and many others who were not deprived in any way but still became a part of terrorist organisations.

He said another reason for spreading this terrorist and extremist ideology was the tactical and ideological support of the terrorists by a portion of society within a country or globally.

By giving the religious point of view, he said Islam doesn’t fix any political system but it is suitable to all forms of government because it is a universal in nature.

Fatima Malik, a member of Khudi, explained the nature and working of Khudi and said it was neither a religious or political organisation nor it was a NGO but it was an organisation which was based on countering extremism for the growth of social order in the society. She said the organisation was based on preaching anti-extremism among the public, so that no one at one time was a part of any radical organisation.