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A few years ago, a Roman Catholic priest said to me in some frustration, ` if only you Muslims would get rid of the law.’ This was one of several conversations where I sensed that for many, Islam is seen purely as a religion of the law rather than love, a religion more concerned with obeying rules and practising rituals rather than right belief. He added that while all religions speak of God’s love, only Christianity speaks of God’s unconditional love, a love which isn’t earned through right behaviour or good deeds. While I had serious reservations about his knowledge of love and law in Islam, I understood his underlying criticism. I explained that even if some rituals are important in worship, rituals on their own in Islam, don’t reflect goodness, virtue or always lead to a heightened awareness of God or our ethical relationship to one another. As one scholar has said recently `the danger in all religions is the drift from the inward to the outward, resulting in a focus on the shell at the expense of the kernel.’ But over the years, it seems to me that a number of imams and preachers, albeit a minority, have used the pulpit for talking about this shell, the dos and don’ts of religion, the need to conform or face punishment, the need to secure an Islamic identity untainted by the west. It may not be a message of so called radicalisation, or call for any violence but it’s a message which constantly sows the seeds of fear, fear for one’s own salvation, fear for one’s own faith and perhaps most importantly fear of other ways of thinking and being. Weekly messages of fear and judgment rather than those of love, forgiveness and self-reflection, can paralyse people’s abilities to think critically and openly and subsequently limit their aspirations and desires for themselves and for others. When faith is all about convictions rather than living with the questions of life, this can not only hollow out the language of faith but lull people into thinking that all of life’s complexities can be resolved through simple Q&A. This is an ideological battle and may be the biggest threat to our democracy, for liberal democracies thrive on people’s desire to feel alive, the freedom to explore, to imagine, to take intellectual and emotional risks, to live with all kinds of uncertainties. Islam too has this history but it’s now competing with the convictions pedaled by extremists who have become the refuge for many; theirs is a wholly different narrative of fear with a simple but deadly solution. At the beginning of Ramadan, an ISIS spokesman said “Aspire to battle in this noble month … make Ramadan a month of disasters for the unbelievers.” The events in Tunisia show that for Isis, fasting and killing others is the perfect answer to an imperfect world. It is ritual without ethics.