Not granting the gift of hatred

After last Friday’s terrorist massacre of innocent people in Paris, Antoine Leinis, the husband of a victim at the Bataclan concert hall, wrote on Facebook: “Friday night you took an exceptional life – the love of my life, the mother of my son – but you will not have my hatred… I will not grant you the gift of my hatred”.
Such a humane and civilised response may be disarming for hate-mongers across the bloody divide, but not for the mutually exclusive yet reinforcing stone-hearted terrorists and militaristic empires.
We were told the terrorism of 9/11 changed the world, but for the worse – more wars, more hatred and greater polarisation and fragmentation of states and societies. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack and thus provoked the US to invade Afghanistan, under the Taliban, who had refused to decline asylum to their comrades-in-arms. The Islamic extremists’ provocation provided a smokescreen to the US and its allies to spread the theatre of war to the secular-nationalist authoritarian Iraq and later to Libya and Syria on flimsy grounds.
Now, as the Islamic State (IS) or Daesh has taken responsibility for apocalyptic terrorist attacks in Paris, it is being proclaimed that it has “changed Europe”. Mr Leinis, though, refuses to be “scared... to view my countrymen (including immigrants) with mistrust, to sacrifice my liberty for my security”. The question is: what kind of change – for better or for worse? And will it be different from the post-9/11 revenge of the world empire that led to the creation of the IS on the debris of two states: Iraq and Syria?
Human history has not seen such a mind-boggling maze of complexities blinding the adversaries to unintended (or intended) consequences. The creation of the Taliban was not an intended consequence of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan by propping up Afghan and other mujahideen.
Similarly, the creation of the IS was not intended, while bringing down the

‘axis of evil’ – Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al-Assad (and later another nationalist, Gaddafi) – on the false pretext of chemical and biological weapons for strategic objectives and oil. It also intended to better serve the needs of regional clients, such as the Saudis and other sheikhdoms, and squeeze a defiant Iran at the same time. A tall order – resulting in greater disorder.
The more the US and its allies got into exploiting ethno-sectarian or other cleavages for tactical gains, the greater were the dilemmas it created and the more it got stuck in the quagmire of the proxies that it propped up.
On the other hand, rooted in its history, the world of Islam is not only at war with itself – the sectarian wars within and across borders – but also with the world at large: rejection of modernity in political and cultural spheres and aversion to western civilisation. Despite embracing modernity in material terms – we see its ugliest expression in the Arab world – Muslims generally intellectually and ideologically live in medieval times.
In its own inquisition, the so-called Muslim world is passing through turmoil – not able to redefine its past, negotiate conflicts and relationships within each country and among Muslim nations and the world powers, resolve the conflict between modernity and traditional systems, and above all cope with the revivalist and extremist variants of Islam threatening a status quo superimposed by the ‘infidels’ associated with a colonial past.
Both globalisation and its inverse version (international jihad) are creating an abnormal and conflicting transition in the east, the Middle East and the Maghreb in particular.
The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the IS or Daesh, Boko Haram or Al-Shabab, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, Taliban or LeT/LeJ – they all subscribe to various shades of Khawarij/Takfiri/Wahabi sects, and are supported by various patrons. These groups and the Iranian militant proxies, such as the Hezbollah and other private Shia militias – despite fighting amongst themselves and killing more Muslims than ‘infidels’ – have a common worldview, despite apostatising each other.
They agree in the rejection of democratic values, religio-cultural pluralism, western civilisation and modernity, and misinterpret jihad and qital to the advantage of their barbaric tactics and naked terrorism against non-combatant populations, forbidden by the Quran. Finding fault entirely with the past colonial and current neo-colonial hegemonies, they take refuge in the past glory of Islam and combine their extremely reactionary ideologies with revolutionary sentiment to impose their prototype of fascism over the people they coerce into subjugation.
The greatest threat that the IS is posing now is a by-product of various factors, including its use against Shias and Yazidis in Iraq and then against Alawites and Kurds in Syria. The US ignored the IS to check Iranian militias in Iraq and gave it a military advantage when it attacked Palmyra in Syria. Similarly, the Saudis, Qataris and others continued to support the IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham in their enmity with the al-Assad dynasty or sectarian conflict with the Alawites, while the Turks allowed the IS to butcher Syrian Kurds.
The IS emerged out of the Al-Qaeda branch of Iraq and benefited from the discriminatory policies against Sunni tribes pursued by the former Shia regime in Iraq, and won over Sunni tribes and former soldiers of the decommissioned Iraqi army. The void created by the destruction of the state structures of Iraq and Syria let the IS expand its tentacles across the border. In this it was helped by anti-Bashar al-Assad forces and countries bent on uprooting the last Baathist regime – also the last member of the steadfast front against Israel.
Unlike the strategy of Al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden – meant to create anarchy and mayhem through global terrorism – the IS has combined international terrorism to bring 44 million Muslims immigrants into conflict with their European countrymen and the creation of Khilafah or the Islamic State to attract Muslims and youth from 90 countries in the name of an Ummah beyond territorial obligations.
After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, the IS had said that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grey zone themselves” – leaving Muslims settled in Europe with one choice: either apostatise or emigrate. With overreaction and/or the fanning of Islamophobia by ultra-nationalist parties, Europe can fall into the trap of the IS.
On the other hand, those in the Muslim world who, in their passionate indignation against the west, try to justify the attack as a reaction to the US’s or the Europeans’ imperialist policies, or who casually evade the required response by simply saying that it is not an Islam that they believe in, are in fact giving room to the extremist fringes of their societies.
Those who raise the anti-imperialist bogey forget that in the most epoch-making national liberation struggles, neither Ho Chi Minh, nor Mao, nor Nelson Mandela, nor Yasser Arafat ever supported terrorism or the killing of innocents. And this is what the Quran says as well.
The world must change for the better after the Paris carnage but not the way it changed after the 9/11 tragedy. This is not just a war in military terms, against terrorism or a ‘merciless response’ to barbarity, it is more about saving humanity from the crimes committed against it under whatever pretext – religion or maintaining world order – and emancipating the deprived and disenfranchised people of the east from the pitfalls of the dark ages and the corrupt and authoritarian status quo.
By becoming savage towards savagery you also become savage, and Europe must not compromise its freedom, liberty and pluralism for temporary security. The world can be secured in partnership with all those who are against savagery – be it from the east or the west.
The writer is a political analyst.
Email: imtiaz.safma@gmail.com
Twitter: @ImtiazAlamSAFMA