US returns to Iraq

How seriously extremists and fanatics can damage the image and heritage of the religion they profess and preach the massive displacements of non-Muslim minorities forced from the areas controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria make for an unenviable example. And no doubt over the time their mindless thought-control mechanisms become unbearable and invite riposte, often harsh and unforgiving. No surprises then that President Obama has decided to carry out targeted air strikes against the ISIS positions set up to detain and starve to death some 40,000 Christians at a mountaintop they took shelter over there after death threats by militants. Reports say the US government may also use air strikes to deny further territorial gains in northern Iraq and Kurdistan. The United States had walked out of Iraq never to look back. But it is the humanitarian disaster perpetrated by the Islamic State in its captured areas that brings it back in Iraq. Perhaps there is some logic to the assertion that the ISIS militants enjoy support of Sunnis and remnants of Saddam armies who are fed up with Shia-led Nouri al-Maliki regime, and helped ISIS militants capture large swaths of Iraqi territory. But the harshly implemented religious code in the captured cities by the new conquerors that tend to cast the Khalifa Ibrahim-ruled Islamic State in negative light not only in the Christen West but also in the Muslim countries. A media report says the latest numbers who fled Islamic State dwarfs the exodus sparked last month by its ultimatum to Mosul's Christian community 'to convert to Islam, pay jizya (protection money) or leave'. Accepted there is this Arab-Ajam historic schism, but in the Arab world itself, everyone is first an Arab and then a Muslim or a Christian or anything else. By profiling non-Muslim communities the newly-born Islamic State seems set on tearing apart the very geosocial fabric of the Arab society. The Arab governments may stand up and oppose the IS's brutal and inhuman governance, or look the other way but the West will not. President Obama has just set the tone.
Not that persecution of religious minorities is entirely a new phenomenon; this was always there but not in such scale and intensity as now, and unfortunately it is more prevalent in Muslim countries than others. Forces of extremism, fanaticism and militancy are on the rampage in greater number now but all of them are not Islamic. Muslim minorities are also targets of Buddhist and Hindu fanatics. Essentially, the menace of extremism stems from misinterpretation of respective religious edicts. That it has gone out of control it is because of two failures - weakness of global leadership to stand up in defence of its victims and the post-colonial Muslim world's 'vision-related crisis'. Lingering international injustices - seven-year long Gaza Strip blockade is one such case - breed discontent, sharpen appetite for revenge and in the process throws militants in the forefront. Over the time victimhood creates its victims. But for Nouri al-Maliki's anti-Sunni and anti-Kurd policies or Bashar al-Assad's tyrannical rule there would have been no ISIS. And the international leadership acting from the platform of the United Nations should have stepped in and stopped them but it did not. One won't be surprised if the Rohingya Muslims, whose mistreatment at the hands of Buddhist majority in Myanmar has failed to attract any action on the part of the world body, become violent. Extremism and militancy is not area- or religion-specific; it is a universal curse and it should be fought at that global level. But even more stunning is the failure of moderate Islam - a failure that carries the tag of culpability of being indifferent to the dangerous rise of sect-based fanaticism. Each religion breeds its own fringe of extremists, but it is the moderates who should keep them under check, even by force. Unfortunately that is not happening in the Muslim countries where extremists remain immune to harsh scrutiny and stiff reprimand. Of course, the Iraqi government has invited American air strikes to reach food to the imprisoned on the mountaintop and the Americans have positively responded to avert the impending humanitarian disaster. But had al-Maliki outfit been more cosmopolitan in terms of Arab traditions and stayed above sectarianism there would have been no such thing as the Caliphate of al-Baghdadi.