This is with reference to the article “Inciting hatred through social media” (July 14) by Sabria S. Jawhar. It is true that social media is being used to spread hatred among people. This is a negative side of these platforms that I suppose we have to live with. We really can’t do much about it. However, we can use the same platforms to counter such hate content. The success of such elements depends on the ignorance of the people frequenting these platforms. We need to educate people about various religious and social issues. People who are easily falling prey to Daesh propaganda don’t appear to be well-versed with the teachings of Islam. They lack the proper understanding of the true teachings of Islam. They maybe good Muslims who follow all the rituals properly but they are not very good at understanding the context of Qur’anic verses and Hadith.
Such people are easily swayed by extremist propaganda. If one goes through the propaganda material, it would dawn on him that these extremist groups try to exploit the religious sentiments of simple people by quoting verses from the Qur’an and Hadiths out of their proper contexts. It is the responsibility of our scholars to wage an ideological battle against the ideology, which is only bring a bad name to Islam and Muslims. — Lala, Jeddah
Fighting extremism
