Terror: Why radical Islam could sound death knell for humanity

Has humanity reached the end of its humanness? Have we become less human and more animal? Watching videos of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or simply IS) beheadings, one could easily come to this conclusion.

These videos, in which one human being casually looks into the camera and speaks about how he is about to behead another person, for whatever reason, remind one of the end of humanity. We could say environmental degradation is killing humanity.

But probably it isn’t destruction of flora and fauna that will annihilate us; it is this strange thing called ideology that will.

For at the root of the Isis atrocities is an ideology that denies the humanity of everybody else.

Religion is simply a cover, since it is based on belief and belief isn’t an easy thing to argue with.

Isis, or simply the Islamic State, has the whole world as its enemy. Conferences are being held in many parts of the world on how to deal with IS and other terror organisations such as Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and even the Houthis.

These are not your old terror groups that worshipped Marx, Che Guevera, communism or proclaimed themselves as revolutionaries. The likes of IS horrify the world because they say they are killing or destroying non-believers — and cite God to be on their side. This claim isn’t new. Its newness is simply because IS and its type has trashed all the ideas of enlightenment, a philosophy that the Western world believes had liberated humanity from a state of ignorance — and religious belief.

The consequence of IS invoking religion in its actions is that many Westerners seem to have no clue on how to deal with it. So when you read the book Isis Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (Regenry, 2015) by Erick Stakelbeck you remain with deep disappointment. The promise in the title isn’t delivered. Isis isn’t actually exposed.

ISIS Exposed is a rant against Islam, Muslims, the Obama administration for supposedly being too cosy with Muslims; it is a call for Americans to fight back militarily at home, in Iraq and wherever in the world that radical Muslims operate; it urges Americans — and implicitly the Western world — to revoke the citizenship of migrant Muslims, and to ban Islamic organisations that may have associated in any way with radical Muslims.

Stakelbeck outlines how to deal with radical Islamists in a 12-points strategy, calling on “… well-informed and patriotic Americans to take the steps we must eventually take if the global jihad embodied by Isis is to be defeated.”

But even Stakelbeck knows how difficult confronting and defeating Isis, and such other organisations, is. First, this is not a definite enemy. It is an enemy that is in the shadows.

The fact that ‘lone wolf’ radicals have been attacking institutions and individuals in the West and the rest of the world suggests that security has to be a communal priority.

After all, as in the case of Al Shabaab in East Africa, security agencies have often been infiltrated by radicals. Also, many institutions responsible for national security still rely on conventional means of dealing with the kind of insurgency preferred by radical Islamists. 

 Second, the idea that radical Islam is nothing but a declaration of the eventual clash of civilizations is spurious. There are hundreds of reasons why radical Islam has become popular, even to the most educated people.

RADICAL ISLAM

If radical Islam is about the power of conviction — the idea that there are human beings who can passionately use words to make others follow them and their murderous ideas, what does this say about Western rationality? Does it mean that the ideas that have been used in the past to (pro)claim our humanity are no longer convincing?

Third, is radical Islam a sign or a consequence of the banality of traditional religion? Has traditional Islam — or even Christianity — failed in its claims of universal humanness? If one considers that religion has often been used to defend inhuman regimes, regimes that don’t allow freedom of expression, democracy and are unjust, then how can we pose counter-arguments against the likes of Isis and Al Shabaab?

Won’t they say their kind of undemocratic theocracy isn’t new; that it is just different from such systems in many countries in the Middle East and many Christian African dictatorships?

Stakelbeck has fascinating examples of young people from Europe and America drawn to Isis – many who can’t give a good reason why they’d commit their lives to kill, main or enslave non-Muslims in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.

But who decides what a good reason for joining a terror group is? Is it surprising that some of these young people claim to be simply bored with their predictable lives of unemployment, crime, violence, police brutality, poverty, cultural rootlessness and a media that is trying very hard to make zombies of people?

Lastly, aren’t these so-called radical Islam organisations simply business outfits? Isn’t it, especially in the Middle East, about money-making?

Isis runs a state — it pays wages to its workers, it buys equipment, it sells oil, it has tried to issue a currency, according to media reports, it has proclaimed sovereignty over a region with huge oil deposits. Aren’t these guys businessmen. Aren’t these the essential characteristics of capitalism — chasing a dream, wherever it is or can be found?

So how can Stakelbeck and many other experts on security — argue that the way to defeat Isis is to adopt the same anti-human means of disenfranchising, jailing and bombing them?