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AEIdeas

Each of us probably had our favorite part in President Obama’s State of the Union address the other night. Personally, I’m delighted to learn that Obama is hard at work battling the “bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.”

You might be wondering what exactly the president means by this formulation. It’s hard to imagine that it has anything to do with the massacre of cartoonists at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo earlier this month, or the attack on Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket that followed.

Those grisly terrorist acts earned the faintest possible mention in the president’s speech: “we stand united with people around the world who’ve been targeted by terrorists — from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris.” Nor did Obama use the words Islamism, radical Islam, political Islam or, indeed, the word Islam itself.

If you’re as worried as I am about the global phenomenon of violent Jain extremism, then this is welcome news. The president’s carefully measured words show that he’s aware of the dangers we face from all kinds of extremism.

Jainism, in case you’re wondering, is a faith practiced by millions of people in India. Its central tenet is non-violence. Some Jain monks, a common enough sight in India, cover their mouths to ensure that they don’t accidentally take a life by swallowing a bug.

Now clearly Obama is too polite to call out violent Jain extremism by name, but I’m pretty sure that he’s working hard to degrade and destroy it. On the frontlines of this cosmic battle, each day must bring quiet word of Jain fundamentalists thwarted in their bid to ransack a US embassy or fly a plane into a skyscraper based on an interpretation of their holy texts. (Just because they haven’t done it before doesn’t mean we should drop our guard.) But worry not, Obama has us covered.

Now it’s time to start fretting about those violent extremist Mormons.

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