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Published : 07 Dec 2015, 06:42 AM
"The solution that we see, and God the Exalted knows better, is for us to drag the Shi'a into the battle because this is the only way to prolong the fighting between us and the infidels … The only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres among the Shi'a with blow after blow until they bend to the Sunnis.
"Someone may say that, in this matter, we are being hasty and rash and leading the (Islamic) nation into a battle for which it is not ready, a battle that will be revolting and in which blood will be spilled. This is exactly what we want."
This was a part of long missive to Osama bin Laden in 2004 from Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. If you are unfamiliar with that name you should get to know it. He is the father of the modern day Islamic State.
His transformation from a Jordanian petty thug with a drinking habit and fondness for tattoos to a pitiless soldier of the Islamic insurgency in Iraq was nothing short of legendary. However, I do not want to write about Zarqawi as there are volumes written by the likes of Joby Warrick.
I want to focus on a key destabiliser that Zarqawi employed to beat the stuffing out of the American invaders and deny the West any hope of any victory in the Middle East, ever! How did this uneducated street thug achieve such a feat as beating the most technologically superior army in the history of history?
The answer; he went after the 1,400 year old jagged wound in the Islamic psyche that is the Shi'a and Sunni divide within Islam. His attacks on all things Shi'a in Iraq was relentless and he got what he wanted.
A pitiless civil war, a sectarian central government and cowardly American occupation Army counting the minutes to get the hell out Dodge, um, Baghdad! All that has now morphed into the Islamic State under Zarqawi's Spiritual Assistant, Ibrahim Awad al-Badri who is now the so called Caliph with a nom de guerre, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.
I pray and hope that the Government of Bangladesh does not stare at the stark facts and then twist and turn to hide from the facts and invent lies and more lies. The attack on the Shi'a Ashura procession in Old Dhaka and the killing of the Muezzin in the Shi'a mosque in Bogra are all part of a tried and tested playbook.
The government of Hasina keeps conflating the lack of physical presence of foreign fighters in Bangladesh as "there is no IS" mantra. They are quick to use the attacks as more evidence of shenanigans of their political rivals, meaning BNP. From all evidence, BNP is a dying force under the leadership of a senile old lady who seems to live in the past.
The real threat is the ideology of hatred. The threat will become reality if the sectarian ideology catches on because of the very shallow knowledge of Islam and the perverted teachings of Islam by the acolytes of Islamic State.
In Bangladesh, what we have are not IS thugs from foreign lands but ideologues who are dancing to the tune of the madness that Zarqawi started in the wake of America's ill-conceived invasion of Iraq.
The Shi'a-Sunni bloodletting has been going on since the death of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The modern day bloodletting that IS has set up was started in the City of Karbala on March 4, 2004. It is now called The Ashura massacre. Hundreds of pilgrims, number of Imams and other religious figures died in that multi-bomb attack.
The seeds of the modern day bloodbath followed a direct line from the massacre in the same city, Karbala, in the seventh century. Even the name of the city has a foreboding meaning. It is a combination of karab which means devastation and bala, which means distress. In this place of devastation and distress the Prophet's closest male descendants were massacred and the women of his family were taken captive and chained.
The history of Karbala has been told and retold over the centuries and the positions have hardened over the centuries. There is no rational way to mend this great divide. This started almost at the time of the Prophet's final illness. As the illness worsened, the question weighed on all in the oasis of Medina, but was never talked about: who would succeed him? Who will take over and lead the fast growing religion and its many conquests?
The history of Islam may well have been different if he had had a son. The battle of succession may not have happened and we would not face the appalling sectarian divide for 14 centuries. Muhammad (PBUH) had neither a son nor a clearly designated heir. He died abtar, in Arabic this means cut off or severed. More generally this refers to dying without a male offspring. This then set the stage for the bitter battle for succession. Of the 4 Caliphs after Muhammad (PBUH) three were assassinated. So much for peace and loyalty!
The question that haunts the Shi'a-Sunni split is, what did the Prophet intend after his death? There was simply no clear and unequivocal designation of a successor, and thus the matter of succession became a matter of faith rather than a matter of fact.
Sunni scholars have argued for centuries that Muhammad trusted the judgment of the community to choose the rightful successor, whereas the Shi'a scholars have argued just as vociferously that Muhammad (PBUH) mentioned his son-in-law Ali as his successor.
However, without a clear directive the question of succession divided the community formed by the young and thriving religion and it continues till today. There were many rivalries and contests among the close associates of the Prophet. However, nothing was as bitter and hostile as that between Ali and the Prophet's wife Ayisha. She was the youngest of nine wives and a teenager with all of the teen angst and desires.
She was also Muhammad's (PBUH) favourite wife. Other than his first wife Khadija, all of the other marriages were political in nature. As was customary in tribal culture, marriages were a way to establish bonds and cultivate loyalties among various influential groups.
However, Ayisha was intensely disliked by a large segment of the closest family. There were many reasons but one that stands out in history is the tale of the lost necklace. Aiysha had gone with the Prophet on a raiding party outside of the Medina. At daybreak when the Camp gathered up and left for Medina she realised that she lost a necklace the Prophet had given her.
She slipped out of the Howdah (the covered chair on the camel) and went looking for the necklace. No one noticed her gone. The caravan left without her and she spent the night under an Acacia bush. Next day she returnd to Medina with a young warrior named Safwan and set the tongues wagging in the little oasis.
Even though the salacious accusations were simply that, unproven accusations, they set the relationship between a somewhat haughty teenager and the associates of the Prophet to a bad boil. Bad blood continued on unabated as Muhammad (PBUH) lay in his sickbed.
Things got so bad that Aiysha moved into the sick room when the Prophet died. Eventually, they buried the body of the Prophet under the bed space to maintain control. The compromise candidate Abu Bakr turned out to be an austere old man who did nothing to mend fences among various factions within the family and the close associates.
He was focused on external expansion, his own relatives, and raids into distant but fertile places such as today's Iraq. The net result was that the divisions, resentment and the hatred just festered and culminated on the fields on Karbala with the death the Prophet's grandsons.
The division between Shi'a and Sunni is solid and unfortunately seem to be unbridgeable. The Muslims in these two sects have developed rituals that make even the daily mundane tasks of praying five times a day radically different from each other. So, let us acknowledge that this huge divide cannot be mended by mere mortals. However, we need to do everything possible to stop the IS exploiting this ancient but raw wound and turning the world into an inferno.
The fear I have is this: the current Bangladesh government has a tendency to look at facts squarely and come up with convenient political nonsense. To wit, they kept saying there is no IS, even though the systematic and planned murders of the bloggers and foreigners were proof that a well thought-out plan of destabilisation was/is at work.
We need to take IS at their word. They have shown over and over again that, they mean what they say and they say what they mean. They have declared their intention to destabilise Bangladesh and that is what exactly they hope to achieve. The attack on the Shi'a mosque and killing of the Muezzin is just another, albeit, a very significant, step in their playbook of destabilisation.
They do not have to be IS fighters from the wastelands of Syria or Iraq, they just have to be the ideologues who believe in the rhetoric of "End of Days" and are willing to kill, maim and destroy anyone who do not agree with them.
In Pakistan "Lashkar i Jhangvi" has killed so many Shi'as and attacked so many mosques that the Shi'as have retaliated and formed their own militias. The failed State of Pakistan is a little more failed because of the mindless fratricide. Pakistan too keeps saying there is no IS even though the proof is in the form of dead bodies and destroyed property all over the place. This is exactly what the IS wants for Bangladesh. They want an all-out war, fratricide, and mayhem so that they can proclaim a universal Caliphate soaked in blood, cruelty, and injustice.
What should we do in Bangladesh?
First and foremost, give them the bullet. There is no redemption for the hardcore Jihadists and the Takfiris. There is no way to reason with them and no way to reconcile with them. Yes, it is possible that there will be miscarriages of justice but in the equilibrium of security and justice I am willing to err on the side of security.
Saudis are about behead 57 suspected extremists. I am not sure that all of them are extremists per se. Knowing the Saudi proclivity to behead people who do not support the oppressive regime, I am sure there will be a number of innocents whose heads will roll. Only a few months ago, I would have said, even if one innocent life is lost it is not worth the risk.
However, the murder and mayhem in Paris and the burning of the Jordanian pilot in a cage leaves me no choice but to accept some risks of grave miscarriage of justice when these monsters are concerned.
As Abdul Aziz al-Shaykh, the Saudi grand Mufti, the country's top cleric and Islamic Jurist empowered to settle matters of law by religious fatwa said simply, "ISIS are not Muslims. They are enemies of Islam". This then is a proper Takfir or denunciation of these thugs. It now becomes the duty of all Muslims to resist these thugs and annihilate them. It is the Jihad of our time.
