Interreligious Dialogue as an Effective Way of Preventing and Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism.

By having a glance at policy papers and strategies dealing with counteringterrorism and prevention of violent extremism from different international organizations such UN, OSCE, and NATO, you can easily realize that there are so many approaches integrated into these strategies. They include hard ways, which includes police and military force — and at the other side,there are many soft ways indicated such as education, inclusive development, and improving the rule of law and human rights. One of the most critical of this particular category is that of increasing interreligious dialogue. “There will be no peace between the civilizations without a peace between the religions! And there will be no peace between the religions without a dialogue between the religions.”This is one of the main statements of Hans Kung, who claims and expects interreligious dialogue to advance ¨ peace and promote security on earth. Countering and preventing religiousterrorism is in the center the indoctrinated and sometimes misinformed and misused individuals. These people are almost impossible to have a successful treatment process just with use of hard ways, which may be undertaken by government institutions such as military or police forces. It is very indispensable with a high impact, and the role might have the religious institutions and leader over this indoctrinated/ideologically “infected” group to facilitate the process and speed up the solutions. It is usually easier, more effective, and less costly to prevent such a phenomenon in social, political, and economic dimensions than to counter it after many damages and problems have been risen. When you see the statistics on terror acts, conflicts, and wars, they further prove that the world has to unite to enhance religious tolerance, interfaith dialogues, and mutual understandings. For this reason, there have been many actors — such as governments, intergovernmental organizations, international organizations, civil society, faith-based organizations, and NGOs, engaged in raising the awareness of the importanceof religious tolerance and improving the interreligious dialogue. Besides the important actions undertaken by many international actors, a substantial number of states have been active in countering the phenomenon of terrorism, violent extremism, and religious radicalism to ease this serious worldwide problem.