Dear Sir,

The latest violence in France just highlighted a need for a comprehensive approach to the Middle East/Isil phenomenon. War begets war and too often the response to violence or terror is to inflict even greater violence and more terror.

The war in Syria is only part of a confluence of issues needing to be addressed. Fortunately, most of us living in Western countries have been free from the conflicts that are the daily realities of many countries and don’t understand the numbing effects of our privileged existence.

The rights we enjoy on simple things such as an electoral system, voter rights or the ability to go to a human rights commission or forward a complaint to a governor because we feel our rights violated in some way.

We, for the most part, have no awareness of what it means to live in an environment where your difference of opinion can have you imprisoned — and that’s if you are lucky. Because also that’s with the assumption that there is a justice system in place because often there isn’t.

Added to the quandary is foreign interests whose primary purpose is to extract national resources. They have been doing this by controlling the political processes that denies people these fundamental rights.

More than 100 years of a form of colonialism is breaking down all over the Middle East and, to be fair, even among Western nations.

The process of breaking down colonialism dominated the strife during the 20th century and was tumultuous to put it mildly.

The core of the Isis battle is the issue of self-determination. The cofactor that makes the road towards self-determination palatable is ideology. The present ideology is not palatable because it isn’t compatible with pluralism and diversity; rather, it is sectarian and separatist. The whole world is sliding slowly towards multiculturalism and the negation of national borders and harmonisation of laws and codes of practice. The Isis ideology fits outside the global bubble and trend.

The true solution must embrace both the long-overdue notion of self-determination and the needs to have an ideological message that comes from the core of the religious text.

That is universal and remains relevant, bringing fresh enlightenment to every age.

Unfortunately, nations being pulled into the military operative only stoke military revenge and retaliation.

It took billions of dollars to promote the jihadist and separatist ideology of Isis, and it grew in the soil of Western exploitation.

No amount of bombs will stop it. Only a message of love can conquer hate, and to repair and amend is the sole attitude required to redress the harm of a century of exploitation.

The world needs to spend billions of dollars of counter-propagation, promoting the message of harmony and peace, which is firmly embedded in the text, but deliberately veiled by the propagandist because it does not satisfy the needs of those who stand to benefit and dominate under a controlled theocratic state.

The new spiritual message has to create the same fiery passion among people for a peaceful and just world as those who display it at present to seek domination.

KHALID WASI