Over 400 years ago a ‘terror’ cell in London headed up by Robert Catesby planned an extreme act of violence (blowing up parliament) as a reaction to the intolerance and persecution inflicted on his community by what was felt to be a very oppressive monarch (King James I). What had initially been a plan for regicide was transformed into a plot to destroy the government in one single explosive event. We commemorate this every year with our own fires and fireworks on November 5th.
Much has been said emotively about ‘extremism’ in recent months. The word has been linked with those who perpetrate acts of fear and violence, both near at hand and far away. ‘Extremists’ are felt to be infiltrating schools, nation states and parliaments – whether followers of a religious tradition or of a political persuasion.
The word ‘extreme’ (from the Latin extremus) literally means ‘that which is not familiar’. It is a superlative of the term ‘exterior’ or ‘extra’ – that which is not part of us. A similar word used is excessive or in excess.
Therefore, in one sense extremism could be said to be activity that we are simply not used to. British politics would appear to be very passive and tolerant, all carefully managed and under control. So when people start overthrowing regimes with weapons of war or aggressively denouncing and threatening the status quo, we are shaken that such actions are somehow outside the rules.
Yet, life is not quite as simple as this – dividing people into groups that we are comfortable with and those we are not. The line between good and evil does not lie between nation states and tribes. It does not run between West and East, North and South; or between the developed world and the non-developed, or between one faith tradition and another. Nor between one coalition/alliance and another. As the Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, “The line between good and evil passes through every human heart.