Islamic State and Religious Extremism
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
When compared to the Islamic State (IS), Afghan Taliban strike us as a group of moderate nationalists with a religious tilt entangled in the web of local traditions and tribal pride. Of course, there was nothing moderate or reasonable about Taliban; after all, the memories of the public executions of innocent women still haunt us. However, the puritanical interpretation of the Islamic law (the Sharia) by the Iraq-based jihadi organization, its intolerance for other religions, its hatred for women freedom and its culture of beheadings of foreign journalists is so vicious and inhuman that it can only be considered as a manifestation of a sick mind which must not be confused with any religion, let alone Islam.
Of late, if you notice the rigidity in explaining the Islamic laws by such groups has turned into a new frenzy as though their clerics revise their own interpretation of the Sharia on regular basis scavenging every rule that may contain even a shred of clemency to replace it with pure savagery. My question is why do we see this trend; and how did this process start?
You guessed it right. This brutality started exactly where you think: Pakistan. As I recall, one end of the puzzle lies in the tribal belt on the western border of Pakistan, the area covered with dry, rugged mountains which run between the two countries. Here, the combination of a failed and ineffective US invasion of Afghanistan on one side and the lousy and conspiratorial military operations of the Pakistani Army on the other side gave birth to the infamous Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Once organized, under the pretense of Islamic doctrine, TTP butchered thousands of Pakistanis irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity or age. From neonates to the eighty years old cancer patient and from young male college graduate - the only bread winner of the family - to the newly married pregnant female, it declared everyone as an enemy.
Along with the mass killings through their suicide bombings - its signature strategy - TTP also terrorized Pakistanis by releasing the videotapes of decapitation of the soldiers, by promoting the target killings of minorities, by kidnapping the rich to extort the ransom money, and by sponsoring the sectarian outfits. Petrified by its ruthlessness, the hapless people almost knelt before it on their knees to negotiate a peace deal, which most of the times, the terrorists refused. And when they did agree, the pact did not last long. Once TTP had squeezed the maximum benefits, it would walk out of it like a glutted fully relaxed feline after devouring its prey.
Just as the militants wrecked our cities and towns, its predecessors, the ‘milder, more reasonable’ Afghan version focused on fighting the foreign forces avoiding civilian casualties. Which is why the TTP becomes the bad Taliban and the jihadists on the other side of the border turned out to be the good ones. This distinction draws no confusion in Pakistan while for the West, the difference between the two groups, if there exist two groups, seems to be none to minimum.
Similarly, in Iraq after ten years of dismal US performance, the violence has returned stunning the entire world with its lightning speed, thundering power and disconcerting vigor. This hurricane goes by the name of IS. It maintains a strict discipline like a professional military, follows strict chain of command and carries much more resources. Its activities also extend beyond the boundaries of a single country, unlike TTP involving Iraq, Turkey(indirectly) and Syria. Put it all together and I assure you that you will draw the same conclusion as I did: the war against IS would require more time, commitment and financial support than it took to capture Baghdad.
Looking at this unsettling yet growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism, when the whole world fights a war on terror, should we not ask why do we fail to contain a distorted religious philosophy that we believe is inhuman to begin with. Does our strategy suffer from a basic flaw? Can you tell me any other plan put forward by the world except for using force?
In my opinion, the war after 9/11 should have been fundamentally fought against religious extremism and the decision to invade Afghanistan had to be the last option, once all other avenues to capture or kill Osama bin Laden had failed. Instead we witnessed a knee jerk response from America like the ‘Hulk gone angry’ who lost control and killed thousands of people with its robust fire power destroying the whole nation and essentially sending it back to the ‘stone age.’ What comes next from the remains of a war-wrecked Afghanistan is not rocket science to figure out: a cunning, more extreme form of resistance. Some resentful Afghans also believe that they were left alone by the Western powers to suffer under the tyranny of Taliban and afterwards the West penalized them again for not resisting the tyrants. Attacked from both sides, they lost their livelihood, their families and their loved ones. Besides that, they also lost their identities, brushed under the same generic name: the Taliban.
The real battlefield did not have to be the desert mountains of Kandahar; rather they should have been the schools, the universities, the madressahs and the mosques. The fight, likewise, needed to be more ideological than physical focused on raising the collective conscience of the pupils above the sectarian and religious divide; teaching them to challenge their own intolerant tendencies, encouraging them to question the rigid rules of their faith, and even daring to take on the clerics with violent messages. We did nothing of that sort and now have to deal with the mindset that only worries about the guns, the bullets, the tanks, the bombs and the seventy-two virgins in paradise.
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