Muslims must wage a war against Islamists
There is something horribly wrong about the world we live in when the truth can't be spoken, leave alone written, lest it offend the easily offended.
This is beyond the absurdities of forced political correctness. It is denialism compounded.
Even the most unbiased critique of what President George Bush rather rashly described as "Islamofascism" and others have politely labelled as radical Islamism fetches immediate retribution, ironically not only by Muslims who refuse to acknowledge the rogue elephant in the room but more vehemently by Left-liberals.
The critic is accused of "Islamophobia" and cruelly hooted into silence.
But that's not exactly why Bush's successor in the White House won't mention the "I" word. President Barack Obama, like the proverbial ostrich, believes if he keeps his head buried in the sands of Arabia long enough, the storm unleashed by Islamists will blow over. Unfortunately, that's not how it is going to happen.
Carnage
The storm will continue to lash places as distant as Orlando, Medina, Baghdad and Dhaka, twisting and turning its way through Brussels and Istanbul, Mumbai and London, long after Obama vacates the White House this winter.
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| Police on patrol after a bomb was thrown on Bangladesh's largest Eid congregation on Eid [July 7] in Kishoreganj district, Dhaka division. (AP) |
So it's immaterial, really, that he should have chosen to gloss over the facts when an Islamic State rage-boy ran amok in an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 people and injuring scores of others.
His refusal to publicly name and shame the hideous ideology of hate that inspired the carnage neither adds to nor subtracts from the horrific reality of our times.
In sharp contrast, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forthright in her condemnation of the jihadi attack on a fashionable cafe in Dhaka that left 20 civilians and two police officers dead.
She appealed to parents to stop their children from treading on the slippery slope of radical Islamism. Her warning may have come too late. The son of her party colleague, an Awami League leader, was among the five hostage-takers.
The others also came from privileged families: they went to the most expensive school and college and never knew deprivation.
A myth is often propagated that marginalisation and oppression, the twin staples of the grievance that seeks to legitimise radical Islamism, to justify, ever so slyly, death and destruction.
The bleak world that Islamists aspire for, the joyless and cloistered society they crave, are posited as the alternative to the imagined badness that agitates young minds.
Though not for the first time (recall the profiles of the 9/11 terrorists) Dhaka knocks that silly argument proffered by apologists off its feet.
Atrocities
Bangladesh also demonstrates how dangerously deep the ideology of hate that conjoins al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State, Boko Haram, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hamas, has seeped into the masses.
A video that shows a group of Bangladeshi children re-enacting the massacre in Dhaka, bordering on glorification of the killers, is a reflection of the silent spread of this cancer.
These children could well have been ours. Indeed, do Muslims, who are appalled by the atrocities committed by radical Islamists, know what their children are up to?
Radical Islamism that breeds the jihadist mindset is the core of the problem.
A lesser commented fact is that more Muslims have been killed by Islamists than non-Muslims. In a sense, Islam is at war with Islam, seeking dominance among believers and non-believers.
We periodically hear calls of war on terror, how countries must join hands in defeating the scourge of this century. But these calls are meaningless.
The demon will be defeated only when Muslims rise in fury. Vacuous fatwas by duplicitous mullahs are no more than water pistols in this war on terror.
Hatemongers
The real weaponry is the collective might of Muslims who are offended, not by those calling out terrorism for what it is, but by what terrorism does to the living and the dead. It's not a blame-game. Nor is it a zero-sum game.
It is about seizing control, regaining ground. If radical Islamists are indeed a minority, then the silent majority must speak up and reclaim their faith.
To simply say terrorists have no religion is to indulge in denialism of the most debilitating kind. Meanwhile, demonisation must stop, and stop now.
It serves nobody's purpose, least of all the potential victims, to vilify an entire community and look for enemies among friends.
Far sight demands building a grand coalition that can use overwhelming power to defeat the barbarians at the gate, metaphorically if not literally as many gates have been smashed and the barbarians are no longer outside.
What must also stop is pandering to the easily offended and the clergy that motivates young men and women to embrace radicalism through subterfuge and direct speech.
Preachers of hate, Zakir Naik is only one among numerous of his kind, have to be gagged and banished. That task is easier done by those to whom he and his ilk preach.
The looming war, some say World War III is already on and it's not your granddad's war, seeks a matching response.
Are we up to it? Or shall we allow faith and politics, a deadly combination, to stand between us and that which is morally correct, ethically just?
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)