Shadow of terrorist Islamic State spreading over Asia and Africa – Mr. Abraham Kurien IPS [Retd DGP]

The Article is based on the following News items.

14th January: Islamic State (IS) suicide squads struck in a US hotel chain Starbucks Café in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, in South East Asia killing 7 persons and injuring 12 ;

15th January: Islamic militant group Al-Shabab, affiliated with Al Qaida, overran an army Unit of the Peace Keeping Force of African Union in a village in southern Somalia, reportedly killing 63 soldiers;

16th January: Al Qaida armed terrorists mounted an assault on a hotel and nearby casino popular with Westerners and French soldiers in Quagadougou, the capital of Burkino Faso in West Africa , killing 23 people from different nationalities and injuring 33.

Victims of terrorist fury:

A striking feature of these ferocious and determined terrorist acts, spread across distant continents but carried out in quick succession, is the fact that the self-proclaimed Islamic State and their allies have targeted Muslim populations as well as western citizens alike. Indonesia is the largest Islamic country in the world with 170 million followers of Islam who make up 86.9% of the country’s population. Burkino Faso also has a Muslim majority population (61%). Somalia, in East Africa, is officially declared an Islamic State with an overwhelming majority (99%) of national Sunni Muslims.

Jihadi Salafism:

It becomes clear therefore that Islamic State (IS) is driven by a highly intolerant and extremely rigid religious ideology. It is known as Jihadi Salafism, a theological movement in Sunni Islam that is concerned with purifying the faith. Jihad, by definition, is a religious duty imposed on Muslims to spread Islam by waging war –Islam distinguishes four ways by which the duty of jihad can be fulfilled: by the heart, the tongue, the hand and the sword. Modern Islam places special emphasis on waging war with one’s inner self. It sanctions war with other nations only as a defensive measure when the faith is in danger.

Throughout Islamic history, wars against non-Muslims, even though with political overtones, were termed jihads to reflect their religious fervor. Original Salafi thinking on Jihad goes back to medieval times but came under the influence of an 18th century school of Islamic theology called Wahabism which preached holy war against Muslims who practiced worship of tombs and shrines. Salafis came to view themselves as the only true Muslims, considering those who follow different practices to be outside the bounds of the Islamic faith. The IS developed an even more severe version of Jihadi Salafism preached by its founder Abu Zarqawi. One IS statement says “The rulers of Muslim lands are traitors, unbelievers, sinners, liars, deceivers and criminal” and , “fighting them is of greater necessity than fighting the occupying crusader”.

Historical conflict with the Shiites:

Bent upon abolishing idolatry in Islam, Salafis denounced Shiites for their reverence for Prophet Muhammad’s family. Such enmity eventually led to attack on the two holiest Shiite shrines of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq in 1801, damaging the shrines and killing thousands. Founded in 2006 on such hostile Salafi and Wahabi traditions, the IS developed sharply sectarian views and harsh application of Islamic law. What the IS calls its “offensive jihad” is directed mainly against the region’s Shia. Apart from theology, the IS are also provoked by their belief that Shias have expansionist designs on the Middle East. The IS believes that Shiites are conspiring with the United States and secular Arab rulers to limit Sunni power in the Middle East, aiming at a “Shiite crescent extending from Teheran to Beirut”. IS counts Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria as collaborators in a nefarious design.

The Caliphate:

The IS has also inherited part of an al-Qaida ideology to overthrow established governments and replace them with a universal Islamic State. The idea took shape in 1928 when the Muslim Brotherhood was established as a political movement in Egypt. This organization canvassed the restoration of the Caliphate after the Ottoman Empire disintegrated in 1924 and proclaimed the Caliphate as the ideal system of government for the Islamic world. Jihadi ambitions for reviving the caliphate grew out of this. A prominent thinker among the Jihadis called Binali has formulated the idea that the IS is the true keeper of the Salafi- Wahabi heritage and that it should never give up its holy mission. Other Muslims who do not support the Islamic state are simply on the wrong side of history, according to this theory.

Expansion of IS:

The IS ideology developed during the insurgency in Iraq during the 2000s when a younger generation of jihadis influenced by a more extreme strain of Jihadi Salafism arrived in that conflict-ridden country. Zarqawi, a charismatic young jihadi introduced new ideas of revolution and became the leader of the militant group. Zawahiri became his right-hand man. Though on the Shiite question both did not fully agree, they worked out a four-stage strategy to expel the Americans from Iraq, establish Islamic State, expand the jihad to Iraq’s neighbors and ultimately confront Israel. When Zarqawi was killed in a US airstrike, Zawahiri continued efforts to establish the Islamic state. On 15th October 2006, the formation of the IS was formally announced to the media .Baghdadi, a former police officer was nominated as the “Commander of the Faithful” which was the traditional title of Caliphs in Islamic history.

The Islamic State of Iraq as it was initially described was presented as a State for Iraq’s Sunni population, but at the same time billed as a State for the world’s Muslims, as visualized by Zarqawi. On the death of Baghdadi, a second leader by the same was nominated as successor in 2011. Despite temporary set –backs due to internal conflicts, the IS soon revived its activity and extended its area of operation to Syria. In October 2014 Al Qaida formally broke ties with IS. But by then IS had forced its way into Iraq conquering most of the country’s Sunni territories, including the city of Mosul. Announcing themselves to be IS not just for Iraq and Sham but for the entire Muslim world, the newly proclaimed Caliphate called upon all Muslims throughout the world to give Baghdadi their allegiance and support. However, Al Qaida and other jihadi groups operating in different parts of the world raised objections to the claims of sovereignty by the IS. The controversies are not yet fully settled.

Jihadi Appeal:

The rise of the Islamic State in 2013-14 has energized the jihadi movement , attracting tens of thousands of young Muslims around the globe. Sectarian conflict in Iraq and Syria has given the group a new lease of life and allowed it to pursue its original Caliphal vision. The Islamic State’s harsh strain of Jihadi- Salafi ideology is now more popular today than ever. As long as the Islamic State maintains the trappings of an actual State in Iraq and Syria- or beyond- governing territory and dispensing justice, support for the group and its ideology will continue to grow. At all events, political turmoil elsewhere in the Middle East, particularly in Libya and Yemen, is creating conditions conducive to the Islamic State’s intended expansion. US air strikes in IS territory have altered the group’s strategy. In September 2014, Islamic State official spokesman Abu Adnani called on all supporters to kill Westerners arbitrarily throughout the world- Americans, Canadians, Australians, and their allies, both civilians and military personnel. In January 2015, Adnanai repeated his call.

Quote: The Islamic State’s Creed and Path (extracts drawn from statements issued by IS between 2007 and 2014)

1. “ We believe that jihad in God’s path is an individual obligation… and we believe that the greatest of sins after disbelief in God is barring from jihad in God’s path at the time when it is an individual obligation.”

2. “ We believe in the necessity of destroying and eradicating all manifestations of idolatry (shirk) and in the necessity of prohibiting those things that lead to it…” “Should I not urge you to do what the Messenger of god- may God bless and save him- urged me to do? That you do not leave a statue without obliterating it, or a raised grave without leveling it”

3. “We believe that lands in which the laws of unbelief prevail, and in which the judgments of unbelief prevail over the judgments of Islam, are lands of unbelief…therefore it is necessary for us to make known that we will fight any forces warring against the Islamic state of Iraq, even if they have Arabic and Islamic names..”

Recent Terror Strikes:

In the light of the IS ideology and its strategy brought out in the pronouncements quoted above as well as the global appeal it has generated, it is possible that Muslim countries that have been the victims of terrorist fury have invited the anger of the IS on account of peculiar circumstances of the practice of Islam prevalent there. Certain special features that are relevant may be mentioned as follows:

Indonesia: the largest Islamic country in the world with 170 million Muslims (86.9% of its population). Islam which gained dominance in Indonesia only by the 12th century is divided into two schools of thought: kebatinan influenced by liberal teachings of mystical Sufism; and santri which is a more austere Mecca oriented philosophy with a militant universalism of orthodox Islam. Indonesian Muslims are further divided by a conflict between traditionalism and modernism: traditionalists reject the modernists’ interest in absorbing educational and organizational principles from the West. It looks highly probable that IS must have found Somalia and Burkino Faso guilty of deviations from the Jihadist prescriptions of faith and practice or have resented their support for western nations.

                                                                                                                                            By,

                                                                                                                                            Mr. Abraham Kurien IPS [Retd DGP]