In the name of Islam
There is no limit, it seems, to the extent Da’ish, or Islamic State, can extend shari’a cover over its barbarities. It has conducted mass executions, public beheadings, killing of women, children and elderly, all in the name of Islam. And importantly, even in the days leading to its formal caliphate – when it was executing more than a thousand Shi’a and Christians by the day – international powers that matter not only did not stop it, but actually aided it in their collective proxy war against the Syrian government. The Americans were forced into this conflict, however reluctantly, when Da’ish executed a US journalist, and the Obama administration had to act.
In an age when militant Islam and Shari’a insurgencies are commonplace, as is the violence of the al Qaeda mould, Da’ish still stands out for its cruelty. Recent reports that more than a hundred women were executed for refusing ‘jihad marriage’ – some of them pregnant – and a large number of Yazidi girls committed suicide to avoid just such or even worse fates, are hair-raising. The Arab and British press have also investigated stories of IS publishing a detailed 60-plus page guideline about acquiring, keeping and selling non-Sunni slave girls. Human rights organisations talk of girls as young as 12-years old being sold into slavery. Again, all this is done in the name of Islam.
While al Qaeda was mutating into IS, the Americans had moved from their Iraq misadventure to interfering in the so-called Arab Spring. And as the protests rolled into Syria, they allowed their Saudi friends to fund and arm militant groups that later became these barbarians. Despite their love for human rights and democratic values, the Americans let the Saudis employ their Taliban/al Qaeda proxy model in one of the region’s truly secular states. And even as Da’ish openly displays what such war-games of powerful states can do to the lives of millions upon millions, there is no coherent strategy, let alone a narrative, that outlines how the developed world intends to cage this monster it created. Unless the Muslim world and the west join to finish off this exploitation of religion, there will be more news of unbelievable cruelty by Da’ish.