The attack on a posh restaurant in the Gulshan area of Dhaka and the explosions at an Eid gathering in Kishoreganj may have occurred in neighbouring Bangladesh, but they have sent shock waves in India. Coupled with the arrest of members of a suspected ISIS cell in Hyderabad, the news that a clutch of people from Kerala have left the country to fight in Syria-Iraq and the invocation by the ISIS to Indian adherents to stage ‘lone wolf’ attacks, the incidents in Bangladesh have raised the possibility of similar attacks happening in India.
On the face of it, there are few voices that are openly sympathetic to this new wave of terrorism. Most of the established Muslim clergy, particularly incensed by the explosions that killed worshippers offering Eid prayers, have been strong in their condemnation. The clergy too has not shown any significant sympathy for Zakir Naik, the Mumbai-based Islamic tele-evangelist, who has been accused by the authorities in Bangladesh of motivating the Gulshan attackers. They have viewed Naik as a New Age interloper who threatens to somehow challenge their authority among Indian Muslims.
It is also noteworthy that the attacks on ISIS and, for that matter, Naik, have been couched with elaborate references to Islamic theology. It has been suggested that a fundamental misreading of the religious texts has prompted the new extremism.
The debate is in many ways reminiscent of the intra-Marxist deliberations that accompanied the violent attacks launched by the Naxalities in India in the late-1960s. like the Gulshan attackers, many of those who were guilty of killing ‘class enemies’ ranging from landlords and traffic policemen to venerable vice-chancellors were from privileged backgrounds. No doubt their hearts bled for the poor and dispossessed but there was absolutely nothing in their personal lives to suggest that “semi-feudal, semi-colonial” India had done them grave injustice at a personal level.
The two established Communist parties challenged the Naxalites of yesteryear at an intellectual level. Those inspired by Mao Zedong’s ridiculous and destructive Cultural Revolution and who proclaimed China’s Chairman as India’s Chairman were charged with deviation from the Marxist doctrine and leninism in particular. Their heady activism was debunked as “infantile disorder” and equated with individual terrorism. The Naxalites in turn denounced the established left as guilty of both “revisionism” and “parliamen-tary cretinism”. Some of the bitterest battles were waged between the Naxalites and the CPI(M), a civil war that was astutely used by the authorities to cripple both forces.
Before there is a similar temptation to intensify the use of established networks of conservative mullahs to fight the pro-ISIS radicals, it may be worth exploring some curious features of the recent incidents.
According to the survivors of the Gulshan restaurant attack, the terrorists asked the hostages to recite a verse from the Koran. Those who could were apparently spared and those who couldn’t were brutally hacked to death. Yet, in Kishoreganj, the attack was directed at those who had come to offer Eid prayers, those who perceived themselves as either devout or nominal Muslims.
How are we to reconcile the contradictory logic of the two incidentsIJ To my mind, they cannot be reconciled. Indeed, in upholding their own version of the Islamic utopia on earth, the ISIS has directed its fire mainly at fellow Muslims.
Apparently there is logic to this apparent madness. In a recent book Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea by Shiraz Maher, a former Islamist who deserted the cause, Salafi-Jehadism (of the ISIS variety) is a redemptive philosophy that “seeks progress through regression”. According to its doctrinal tenets the five central tenets of Islam are: Jehad, Takfir, Al-Wala’ wa'l-bara, Tawhid, and Hakimiyya. “The doctrine of al-wala’ wa'l-bara’ establishes lines of loyalty and disavowal; takfir delineates Islam against everything else and protects it against insidious corruption from within; tawhid and hakimiyya explain what legitimate authority should look like and who it should serve; and jehad prescribes the method for this particular revolution.” Maher believes that these ideas that guide the ISIS are “well established in radical Sunni thought”. And, in the context of the turbulence that has gripped Iraq since the ‘secular’ but oppressive Government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the doctrine has been moulded to justify internecine war among Muslims.
Whether the ISIS philosophy is Islamic or heresy is an interesting but abstruse debate that is outside most people’s area of expertise. To my mind what is interesting is that those who carry out acts of barbarism on behalf of the ISIS actually believe that they are following the tenets of Islam. Conversely, those seminaries in India and Bangladesh that have denounced the attacks believe that the ISIS represents a perversion of Islam.
In the realms of theology, detached from the uncertainties that grip life in an age of terrorism, this may be a fascinating debate. But assuming, for the sake of argument, the theoreticians of the ISIS have a greater weight of the scriptures on their side, should it make a difference to how the State should deal with the growing problemIJ
The theological uncertainties involved in assessing the ISIS problem through the prism of Islam are obvious. To my mind, they provide an opening to all those who use scriptural authority to mould the tenets of State policy. The ISIS and its terrorism must be resolutely fought because they go against acceptable standards of behaviour and offend common decencies. The other facets of the problem are tactical issues, best left to those involved in counter-terrorism operations.