Islamic extremists, whether individuals or terror outfits, are competing with one another across the globe to demonstrate that they are more ruthless in enforcing the tenets of what they claim to be pure Islam
The diplomatic and naval finesse with which the operation to rescue foreigners belonging to as many as 26 nations, including thousands of Indians (many of them Christian nurses from Kerala), caught in the ongoing rival Islamic groups clashes in Yemen, is a tribute to the growing prowess of India and its influence in this part of the world.
This is one point even the worst critics of this Government will concede: The cooperation Indian operations in the Gulf have been receiving, including from the Saudi and Iranian governments which themselves are daggers drawn in the Yemen situation, is a reflection of the high esteem these governments have now come to hold Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Prime Minister has been on an official visit to France. News reports said that the French Government rolled out the high red carpet for Mr Modi. looked at in the backdrop of the his recent visits to several major countries, from Japan to the US and the Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, the response these visits received from the local Government leaders and the wide range of issues covered and MoUs signed, all within about nine months of the new regime in New Delhi, there no doubt that a new spring has arrived.
While the success of the evacuation operation from Yemen does underline India’s emergence as a global power, the blood-letting taking place in most of the Islamic world goes on unabated. The civilised world watches in horror all that is now happening in Yemen and in Syria and Iraq, the massacre the other day in a Kenyan university by Islamists, the continuing killings of Christians in Nigeria by extremists and the bombings of Shia mosques in Pakistan by Sunni extremists. Add to that, the continuing persecution of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Islamist terror is no longer targeted only against non-Muslims. It’s is now mainly inter-Islamic. The Shia and Sunni divide has converted several Muslim countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, libya, Sudan, Tunisia, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya etc, into live-war theatres. If Muslim-majority countries like Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia are apparently able to overcome Islamist virulence, it is mainly because they are under a sort of dictatorship that does not tolerate extremism. Both Jakarta and Kuala lumpur do not hesitate to enforce the death penalty against the Islamists.
Bangladesh, under a democratic regime headed by Sheikh Hasina, has received full support from her Army and from a larger section of the Muslim-majority population, to prevent Islamist forces from running riot. Similar is the situation in Egypt, where the Army succeeded just in time in reversing the upsurge of Islamism, and in Turkey, where Islamist extremism is kept in check by the Army and a section of the public long accustomed to secular governance under the military rule enforced by Kemal Atatürk in the 1930s.
But, as the situation in libya, Tunisia and the sub-Saharan states in Africa show, Islamism is running riot and mass massacres are the order of the day. The much-hyped Arab Spring has been virtually trampled under an Islamism that is intent to enforce by barbaric violence, a Middle Age hierarchy which rejects all liberal ideas and freedom under the guise of religion.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent confession about his pre-occupation with Islamist terrorism at home, exposes much of the inner dynamism of the spread of violence within the Islamic crescent in West Asia and Africa. The very Government in Islamabad that claims to be worried about Islamist terrorism and extremism at home, strongly promotes and even plans terrorist attacks in India — the recent terrorist attacks in Kashmir, the periodic surfacing of Islamist conspiracies to target Indian personalities and installations, for instance, are the clinching evidences.
With the intensification of the intra-Islamic armed conflict and the barbarism which Sunni extremism is demonstrating in Syria-Iraq, or in Nigeria or Kenya, among other places, serious fundamental questions arise about the source of the sick mindset that inspires the faithful to kill others and also to get killed in the process.
Is there a religious sanction for stoning to death, mass or individual executions, the denial of any type of freedom for womenIJ look at, for instance, how mass demonstration of support for the killer of Pakistan’s Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, Tariq, is taking place in Pakistan, despite the court’s finding him guilty and sentencing him to death. Why should there be such massive sympathy for a ruthless murderer of an innocent manIJ
The basic question has been asked by many, not excluding liberal Muslims, whether violence against dissent, suppression of women (including by the practice of hijab), denial of freedom to make their own choices etc, is fundamental to Islam, and whether the religion mandates against any change from the rules laid down several centuries ago.
If the answer is ‘yes’, the whole range of violence that cuts through Islamic countries and the attempts of the orthodoxy to impose the religion through terrorism in countries as far as the US, Spain, the UK, France and even India, acquires religious sanction. Is it because of this fundamentalist faith that the bulk of the Islamic leadership as well as masses seem to observe a silence over the shocking developments in West AsiaIJ A silence that speaks loudly, in factIJ
However, it is also true, that many Muslim majority countries have found ways of adjusting themselves to the demands of changing circumstances without infringing their basic beliefs. Those who question and resist such changes also insist that they are being true to their holy book. According to one analysis, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion.
This prognostication may or may not be true. So long as the internal upheavals are confined to national or regional boundaries, the world might keep out of what is happening to the Islamic world. However, the world is faced with a peculiar situation. The disastrous doctrine does not respect national boundaries. The fatal virus of hate and mayhem spills out in competitive destruction, with each Islamic group exercising a romantic influence on fellow religionists abroad, and pervading into other civilisations and peoples. There is also competitiveness in barbaric practices, as we witness in throat-slittings, mass butchery and reports of live burials. Traditional Islamic rivals explain away all of this in the name of ‘true faith’. like it or not, that is the given justification.
Humanity cannot allow itself to be entirely sucked into a latter-day Holocaust. Is there no way out of this dead endIJ