Perhaps the nightmare which started with the mushrooming of blood-thirsty jihadists in 1980s in the Muslim world, once morally, technically and financially funded by the West, is now becoming a devilish reality; it’s no more a frightening dream.
It’s being reported that the terrorist group which has occupied large swathes of Syria and Iraq and calls itself a ‘Caliphate’ has ordered all girls and women in and around Iraq’s northern city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). If it is true then it may result in forced circumcision of around four million female children and women up to the age of 49. FGM, the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, has nothing to do with religion; it’s a centuries-old tribal tradition practiced in parts of Asia and Africa to prevent ‘immoral’ behavior.
ISIS has earlier been involved in bombing of mosques, shrines, churches, eviction of Christians from Mosul, forced marriages of underage girls, severing the heads of government soldiers and supporters, and what not.
You talk to a layman on the street, he will out rightly not only condemn but reject these actions in the name of religion. My question is why religious parties in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world don’t come forward and reject Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, or ISIS in one voice. If you ever hear a condemnation from them, it’s loaded with tons of ‘ifs and buts’. In my opinion all these religious parties are in a way complicit in promotion of the evil forces.
Yes, they speak of killing of 800 Palestinians by Israelis in the last 15 days but we find them speechless on the killing of the same number of Muslims on daily basis by their own brethren in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
True, hypocrisy sees no bounds.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia