Read the prelude to this article here.
Imagine a man in a courtroom on trial for the murder of his wife. According to him, he killed her because he didn’t find her attractive enough and wanted to get rid of her without having to pay for alimony. With a confession from the accused in place, what do you expect the public prosecutor to do? Nothing, because the man has confessed to his crime and the judge must now proceed to pronounce the verdict. Now, wouldn’t it be weird if the public prosecutor disputes the man’s reasoning behind the crime, accuses him of lying under oath and instead presents a theory that he killed her not because of his unwillingness to pay her any alimony, but because he disliked her cooking? Questions will be raised about the mental health of the public prosecutor, and for obvious reasons. A crime was committed, a life was lost, the accused confessed to the crime with a plausible explanation and unless the said explanation has any bearing on the nature/length of the sentencing, which in this case it doesn’t seem like, why is the public prosecutor squabbling over the motive of the crime? Moreover, why has the motive behind the crime, murder no less, gained more importance than the crime itself?
What I’m getting to here is, when a terrorist shouts the Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest), called Takbir in Arabic, pledges allegiance to the Islamic State, where does the ambiguity remain behind the intent of the attack? The perpetrators are confessing/claiming/shouting at the top of their lungs as to why they’re killing people, so who are we to dispute their claim that they are wrong in associating themselves with Islam, get offended on behalf of all the Muslims in the process (irrespective of how the Muslims themselves feel about it) and give various other arguments in order to deflect the blame from the obvious? A perpetrator’s claims are contested when they deny any wrongdoing, not when take full responsibility for their crime!
One of the arguments given by the leftists is, “But, the ISIS does not represent Islam”. Irrespective of their credentials (or rather lack of) to speak on the matter, let’s analyze the association between ISIS and Islam a little more closely.
Before I proceed any further, let me clarify one thing here: I have NOT read the Quran, and for the arguments I’m about to present here, it’ll be clear that I’m not required to to make the said arguments.
Let’s begin.
Question: What will you say about someone who has a BA, MA and a PhD in Islamic Studies? Do they also not know about Islam? Assuming that you didn’t respond with a vehement ‘NO’ to this question, let me introduce you to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current head and the first emir of the Islamic State, and one of the world’s most wanted terrorists (assuming he’s still alive, though according to some reports, he was killed in a US airstrike on June 12, 2016, a story that is yet to be confirmed by the coalition forces). Baghdadi obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad in 1996, and a Master’s and PhD in Quranic studies from Iraq’s Saddam University for Islamic Studies in 1999 and 2007 respectively (source). Clearly, he knows more about Islam and the Quran than most people who claim that his organization, the ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.
Now, considering that we haven’t seen ISIS indulge in any activity other than raping women, trading little girls online as sex slaves, bombing and beheading the civilians to name a few, what does it say about the book they follow, the Quran? If Islam is based on the Quran and the ISIS is headed by a person who has a doctorate in Islamic studies, how is the ISIS not related to Islam and consequently the Quran a doctrine devoid of any radical thoughts?
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that Quran indeed preaches love and harmony. Firstly, let’s be clear that this part was never disputed. A religious text is a lengthy document and Quran might contain chapters that do preach compassion. But what about those chapters that preach otherwise, and if such chapters don’t exist, then how could a person with a doctorate in Islamic studies get it so wrong? The standard reply to this question, something that we hear way too often is, ‘Quran has been misinterpreted by these terrorists’. Being the devil’s advocate here, my question is, ‘How do we know’? Could it be possible that it isn’t Baghdadi and his ilk, but the non-radicalized Muslim population that has misinterpreted a document that was meant to be violent in the first place? Related question: ‘What is the logic behind the notion that the interpretation of Quran by the non-radical Muslim population is the correct one and not the other way round’? If two people read the same text and one of them preaches love while the other slaughters people, how can the text be termed as preaching love only when the evidence suggests otherwise? How can we ignore this second person who read the same text and went on a killing spree? Unnecessary politeness at play or some hidden personal/political agenda, or maybe all of these factors combined? Moreover, in all this unnecessary noise, the moderate and sane voices of people like Nasser Dashti are lost, something that we need to hear more of and spread.
I’ll end this write-up by citing an incident. Hopefully you’ll be able to draw parallels between what I’ve said above and the incident that’s described below:
On June 19, 2016, ‘Star Trek’ actor Anton Yelchin died in a freak accident due to a manufacturing defect in his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Apparently, the said model has been involved in more than a 100 crashes. Now, when such a pattern is observed involving the same make and model and lives are lost, the fingers will point towards the car manufacturer. What you don’t do here is:
- Blame the driver, the prevailing weather conditions at the time of the incident, the pedestrians, the quality of the roads and everything/everyone other than the factory producing these cars.
- Attempting to save the parent company Fiat Chrysler from embarrassment by not pointing out its blunders.
- Pondering over how Fiat Chrysler’s employees will feel if their employer is criticized.
- Scoring brownie points with the management of Fiat Chrysler by pointing fingers to other car manufacturers like Toyota and Honda with questions like, ‘But what about them? They’ve issued recalls in the past. They’ve had accidents too’, or with arguments such as ‘Jeep produces other vehicles that have never been in accidents, which is proof enough that it’s an epitome of quality engineering and can never produce faulty cars’.
- Lining up to buy a Jeep Compass, another model from Jeep produced at the same factory that produced the ‘rogue’ 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, or posing for photographs with it to be uploaded to Facebook later with captions saying ‘I love Jeep’ in order to prove that you’ve not lost all faith in Jeep, yet (this is what I am referring to here).
- Questioning the credentials of someone like me for writing this piece by saying that since I don’t work at Jeep and have no idea about the design of the 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, I have no authority to question the defects in the said product and malign Jeep’s reputation in the process, despite the fact that the repercussions of the faulty design are for the world to see and all I’m doing is associating the effect with the most probable cause.
Why? Because:
- the said behavior will not prevent the next accident from happening.
- refrains from identifying the problem, which is the first step towards fixing any problem.
- it’s noise, that serves no purpose other than attempting to deflect the blame.
So let’s move beyond this unnecessary discussion and instead discuss as to how we all can pitch in to stop the spread of this malaise of terrorism and radicalization.
