I am reminded of my grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi's, words: No one can oppress us more than we oppress ourselves. By submitting to tyranny, to thoughtlessness, to downright injustice and to senseless intolerance we are only encouraging the maniacs on the fringes to hijack our societies and our religious beliefs.

This is what I meant (in my earlier submission) by the Culture of Violence that pervades human society. We tend to look at violence only in terms of its physical manifestation and ignore the violence of thought, word and deed. It is this "passive" violence (or non-physical) that eventually lserves as fuel to spark physical violence. So, stopping physical violence requires us to acknowledge and eradicate the "passive" or non-physical violence that we commit in society all the time. For peace to prevail we need harmony in human society and to achieve harmony we have to build relationships that are based on respect, understanding and acceptance. If Islam is hijacked by a small group of inhuman and radical elements it is for the larger Islamic society to wake up and do something about it.