Stand Up Against Extremism – The Killer Weed And Worse Than ‘Ebola’

By Lukman Harees -August 27, 2014

Lukman Harees

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”- —Robert F. Kennedy

Africa these days has been battling  with ‎EBOLA, a severe, infectious, often fatal disease in humans and primates  with no apparent cure in sight. Many have been dying  while the desperate medical researchers are frantically searching for a cure , to stem this tide. In the UK, I have heard of another battle; botanists trying to stop the spread of an invasive killer which has been ‘eating’ the gardens and ruining lives. It is the deadly  Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) , which in winter dies back beneath ground but by early summer the bamboo-like stems shoot to over 2.1m (7ft), suppressing all other growth. Eradication requires steely determination as it is very hard to remove by hand or with chemicals.

The reason for mentioning about Ebola and the Japanese knotweed  was to provide some context to describe the enormous challenge of crisis proportions , the present world has been facing , in order to  destroy or stem another killer disease or weed. The Scourge of  Extremism. Many examples can be cited to show the depths of absurdity to which extremism can take a person or a movement to or blind them, witnessed in recent times.  Three examples can be shown to prove this point. Read More