no place in Islam or humanity. Islam bears no responsibility for them and their claim to be an Islamic State is ridiculous”, a Palestinian engineer, Nawaf al-Dweik, in Ramallah told Reuters. “There should be a joint Arab force to go in and destroy these killers and be rid of them once and for all.”
Understandably, Arab governments and leaders in the region have severely attacked the killing, signalling a further toughening of stand against the IS. Jordan responded by swiftly executing two IS/Al-Qaeda-linked death row convicts.
The graphic murder of the 26-year old Jordanian pilot, who was captured in December when his fighter jet, part of the US-led bombing campaign against the IS militants, went down, comes close on the heels of the coldblooded beheading of the two Japanese hostages, one after another, by Isis.
The Japanese journalists were killed on tape again apparently in response to Japan’s offer of $250 million in aid to the Middle East nations fighting against militancy. The Daesh, as it is known in Arabic, demanded the same exact amount in ransom for the Japanese hostages. Of course, under pressure from the western governments, Japan refused to ‘negotiate with the terrorists’ with chilling consequences.
Ironically, the slain Japanese freelancer Kenji Goto wrote in 2010 in a tweet: “Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That’s what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters.”
Last year, Isis shocked the world when it beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in their regulation orange jumpsuits. Indeed, since it burst on the scene last year, the ISIS has been on a relentless killing spree.
And now the latest massacre of the 21 Egyptian Christians in the distant Libya, which prompted a swift response from General Abdul Fattah Al Sisi, bombing several targets in Libya on Monday, only goes to show that the once little known outfit born in the badlands of the US-occupied Iraq has now acquired a threat of pandemic proportions transcending borders.
And every massacre and killing by Isis – from the butchering of Yazidi tribesmen to the gunning down of blindfolded Shia militia men and Iraqi soldiers – is calculated and aimed at delivering maximum impact in an age and time when news and images travel at the speed of light. And death by fire delivered the ultimate shock value for a people for whom fire represents the ultimate punishment from God.
Even in its earlier avatar as Al-Qaeda in Iraq led by the dreaded Jordanian Al Musab Al Zaraqawi, the group was known for its exceptionally brutal ways. All in the name of Islam and the believers, of course.
But faith is not what killed the Jordanian pilot or the Japanese, American and Egyptian hostages. Islam has nothing to do with this death cult, no matter what these cynical killers say or claim to justify their actions and raison deter.
Indeed, the Arabs and Muslims have all the more reasons to despise these groups because they have suffered the most at the hands of terrorists. Besides, they claim to speak and perpetrate these shameful acts in their name and in the name of their faith.
As Iraqi academic Prof Ibrahim al-Marashi argues, “what killed Kasasbeh was not Islam. What killed him are the new dynamics of globalisation and transnational violence that have consumed the Middle East and the Islamic world, unleashed by the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Syrian civil war.”
Unless the world acknowledges and confronts these ‘dynamics,’ it cannot effectively deal with the groups like Isis. You cannot ignore the fact that the group was born in response to a brutal, cooked up war and occupation that killed more than a million people in Iraq.
Groups like Isis and Al-Qaeda and their competitive shenanigans to attract the world’s attention are mere symptoms, not the disease itself. Unless you do something about the germs that cause the sickness, you cannot conjure up a cure.
That said, the Arab and Islamic world can no longer content itself by blaming the west or by issuing routine condemnations every time an atrocity such as this is committed. Muslim societies have to come up with more imaginative, bold and effective ways to check this fast spreading sickness in their midst.
We can no longer deny the fact that extremism, whatever its causes, has emerged as the greatest ever challenge to the Islamic world. And this scourge within can be confronted and eliminated by the community itself. External and spurious solutions can only aggravate the malaise.
This article originally appeared in the Straits Times, Singapore.
The writer is a Middle East based columnist. Email: aijaz.syedhotmail.com