ISIS feeding off fear & hatred

Be warned that the following column may sound offensive to you, if you are not honest to yourselves. Yes, please be HONEST.

That is what I meant. If we are not honest with ourselves and admit to our mistakes honestly, we cannot expect any change in anything around us, including in understanding the idea of new religion called ‘extreme Islam’ seeking to establish its Caliphate in the world.

It is still an idea because it is changing the contours of its own belief continuously. The ISIS has not crystallised itself into a complete religion. If we want to call it ‘Islam,’ please go ahead and do so. But I don't agree with that conclusion. It is a new variant and new form of Islam that is fighting the very Islam in its core first. Also note that it is killing more Muslims than the Western countries whose greed and avarice created it.

Having said that, let us now come to Paris terror attack. Agreed that the latest attack on Paris was dastardly. It is a crime against humanity. The whole of Western world was emotionally ripped apart. "This to us, when we are taking your refugees in such large numbers?" any Parisian would ask.

Perhaps all those European civilisations are asking the same question now. Why? Are you accommodating these refugees, numbering a few hundreds to thousands, as a guarantee against ISIS attacks? If not, why raise the issue now?

No doubt, France has received 6,700 Syrian asylum claims, and expects to receive several thousands more. In response, European and other Western leaders have convened repeated international summits to try to help France and other Western countries figure out how to deal with this.

It is wonderful, is not it so..to help hapless refugees? Now read this. Lebanon currently hosts 1.1 million Syrian refugees — equivalent to one-quarter of the country's population. In response, the world has given some aid but has fallen far short of the United Nations' annual funding requests.

Lebanon is enduring not just a tremendous economic burden but a political burden. The world truly does care more about France, in this respect and in many others, than about Lebanon. And that has consequences.

I never agree with what Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party who said the other day on Paris violation. He is yet another mad cap in this land of plenty and no different from all those Mani Shankar Aiyars and Salman Khurshids and those who bless them with such madness.

But I did grieve Beirut the other day when about 43 lives were lost to two human bombs. I do grieve Lebanon every day and even Syria itself. Look at the countless attacks on Syrians. Their own government does it. The ISIS does it. The opposition to the government does it.

And a few countries supporting the government or the opposition or the ISIS, directly or indirectly, also attack Syrians in their homeland, forcing them to flee the country to die elsewhere leaving behind many more to die in the coming tomorrows in Syria.

How about Iraq and other troubled areas of the Middle East. What happened in Afghanistan? I did not like it when Baghdad was bombed and devastated. Because for me, bombing Baghdad was strafing my childhood. My childhood dreams and memories were filled with Baghdad and its neighbourhood, about flying carpets and the princes and the magic lamps. My favourite 'Chandamama' kept feeding my imagination throughout my golden days with stories from the palaces and streets of the fabulous city just as it did from 'Panchatantra'.

There is a lesson in all these deaths, I believe. Not just some lives, but also some deaths are more precious. Have we intensely ever watched the killings fields of the world other than the West and the US. Even if the media reports it, it remains just a fleeting movement for most of the readers.

When Mumbai happened, not once but twice at least, what was the reaction of the West? They at their best step in to condemn the barbaric act but advise restraint on our part. You cannot go after the perpetrators of these violations because the need of the hour is talks, they advise us. The moment their own land is violated, they are ready to “make you pay dearly and swiftly.”

By all means, we have to fight the ISIS. But how is the world going to do it? If the world does not want to draw a line, a clear line between ordinary Muslims and ISIS torch-bearers, it will be a useless fight. Please note that of the 10 or so who attacked the innocent citizens of Paris the other day are Parisians themselves.

The idea of death is spreading. The disgruntled, impoverished, discriminated youth of the world is getting wooed by the ISIS. There is no fund crunch for it. It has its own resources of revenue and oil fields and is sitting pretty on the fact that it has a good number of sympathisers across the world.

So when a mosque in Canada gets deliberately set on fire in retaliation to the Paris attacks, when anti-Muslim protesters held a rally outside the Portland Rizwan Mosque, one of them with a shirt that said "Proud to be an infidel. Islam is a LIE" or in Florida, when the Islamic Center of St. Petersburg received a bomb threat over voicemail: "We are tired of your [expletive] and I [expletive]

personally have a militia that is going to come down to your Islamic Society of Pinellas County and firebomb you and shoot whoever is there in the head," it is music to the ears of ISIS and such all other forces. It is this alienation that is what they are seeking to later claim "we told you so you see".

In every attack against a hapless Muslim family anywhere in the world, the likes of the ISIS find an opportunity. Here is where in the silence of their homes and societies that the youth scout Facebooks and other social medium to radicalise themselves. The more Muslims are killed, lynched or coerced elsewhere, the more ISIS cadres are born. Please remember this. Islamophobia is not the answer to ISIS. Count the number of Muslims who love ISIS for that matter, more so in a country like India, where the Muslims are not outsiders as in the Western world? They are as much a part of this land as the others are. Remember the Dadri incident and the fact that the victim's son is in the Indian Air Force who would kill as many enemies in case of a war? Extremist groups feed off alienation.

A study published last year in The Economic Journal found that the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes after 9/11 led to a decline in assimilation rates in American Muslim communities. In places where hate crimes increased the most, Muslim immigrants in subsequent years spoke English less fluently, were less likely to marry non-Muslims, and women were less likely to be working. We will understand that civilized societies everywhere are pitted against them. Because ISIS is not for these societies, it fights every cannon of the civilized world and hence, entire world is its enemy including such Muslim world. I think the governments must look at those Muslims who oppose the emergence of ISIS, and protect them against the extremist onslaught. And then fight ISIS!