The consequences of not challenging the Islamic State

By admin-s On Aug 4, 2014

Mosul is empty of Christians for the first time in its history

Mohamed Ghilan, Al Jazeera

Extremism is dangerous, but it is more dangerous to let it flourish and manifest itself the way the terrorist organisation known as the Islamic State group has been allowed to. The problem with allowing extremism to grow unchallenged is that it will eventually drive rational parties into extreme reactions in order to combat it. Thus, more innocent civilians will inevitably suffer in the process, as the problem becomes too big to contain.

Targeting minorities

Recently, Islamic State seized Mar Behnam, an ancient monastery near the predominantly Christian town of Qarqosh, to the southeast of Mosul. The militants expelled the monks, allowing them to take only the clothes they were wearing and preventing them from saving any of the monastery’s relics. A few days earlier, Christians in Mosul were given an ultimatum to convert, pay a religious levy, or face death. Their response has been a mass exodus that left the northern Iraqi city empty of Christians for the first time in its history.

The Islamic State has been engaged in a vicious campaign of abductions, murders, and expulsions of minorities in all the areas they sweep through. In practice, they exemplify the very reason why fighting, i.e. armed jihad, was permitted in Islam, which was to combat the oppression of aggressors like the Islamic State:

“Those who have been attacked are permitted to take up arms because they have been wronged – God has the power to help them – those who have been driven unjustly from their homes only for saying, ‘Our Lord is God.’ If God did not repel some people by means of others, many monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where God’s name is much invoked, would have been destroyed.” [22:39-40]

This verse in the Quran is recognised by Muslim scholarly authorities to contain the primary reason for armed jihad in Islam, which is the repelling of unjustified aggression against oneself or others due to difference in belief. Moreover, a corollary that is implicitly understood from it is that non-Muslims living in Muslim lands must be protected and it is impermissible to unjustly expel them or destroy their houses of worship. In their treatment of Iraqi Christians, Islamic State fighters flagrantly commit the very acts abhorred in Islamic teachings.

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Religious violence is quickly metastasising. After seizingMosul and Tikrit, the Islamic State are stepping up their attacks in Baghdad. The recent wave of Baghdad bombings exercised by the Islamic State targeted mostly Shia Muslim areas, the victims of which have been overwhelmingly civilians. If this is an indication, we can expect that should Islamic State take over Baghdad, we will witness a genocide of an unfathomable scale if the militant group continues to be unchallenged.

In June, the Islamic State militants staged mass executions, advertising afterwards that they had killed in one report 1,700 Shia soldiers in Tikrit. It is not for nothing that in every case the executed have been men. According to the Islamic State’s bastardised conceptualisation of Islam, Shia are not even Muslims, and therefore once they are conquered, they can kill the men and enslave the women and children. Thus, it is not far-fetched that we may soon hear of slaves sold in public markets of northern Iraq and Syria where this group operates.

In response to the eminent threat from the Islamic State on the Iraqi capital, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s highest-ranking Shia Muslim cleric, issued a fatwa summoning the country’s Iraqi Muslims, regardless of sect, to take up arms and defend the country, its people, and its holy sites. However, Sunnis, who remaindivided on where they should pledge their allegiance, do not consider Ayatollah Sistani’s call authoritative. The impetus for them to join the army, remain neutral, or even fight among the ranks of the Islamic State is largely determined by prospective political gains that depend on their specific tribal or geographical context, and how they feel about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government.

One the other hand, a number of different Shia militias have sprung up, and Baghdad is increasingly on edge as it prepares for war with the Islamic State. However, it seems that among these militia groups are fringe Shia militants exercising their own brand of terrorism, killing 25 women in Baghdad who were accused of prostitution. The region is thus falling deeper into lawlessness.

The extreme anti-Shia sentiment harboured by the Islamic State militants did not develop in a vacuum. BBC World Service recently released a documentary titled “Freedom to Broadcast Hate” in which they investigated the proliferation of TV channels in the Arab world, spreading sectarian religious and political messages that deepen the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims. In some cases, TV evangelists sensationally invoked God in prayer to destroy their counterparts, whom they view as an existential threat to Islam as a whole, and entice their viewers to do the same. Most of the recruited fighters for the Islamic State are products of a TV-raised generation, having their religious and political opinions formed through watching such sectarian programmes.