Genghis Khan-style Cruelty of Isis
The tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims
who had demanded the pilot be freed now
know what their fellow Muslims in Syria
and Iraq had in mind for him
By Robert Fisk
February 04, 2015 "ICH"
- "The
Independent" -
So they burned him in hellfire. That was
what Islamic State (Isis) wanted to show
the world. This was Genghis Khan-style
cruelty. First, Isis forced the
Jordanians and the Japanese to
acknowledge its power - by offering a
Japanese journalist as bait for
negotiations - and then showed the
Jordanian king and the Japanese prime
minister what it thought of them. The
Jordanians had demanded proof that Flt
Lt Muath al-Kasaesbeh was alive, and
they were given their evidence – as he
was led into his cage of fire. The
Syrian military could have warned King
Abdullah of Jordan what to expect:
months ago, Isis put captive Syrian
soldiers to the torch – and then
barbecued their heads on video. And
no-one said a word.
For King Abdullah,
who had offered the failed al-Qaeda
suicide-bomber Sajida al-Rishawi as
payment for al-Kasaesbeh’s life,
there may, most dreadfully, be
advantage in the burning alive of
his young pilot. Those tens of
thousands of Jordanian Sunni Muslims
who had demanded he free al-Kasaesbeh
now know what their fellow Muslims
in Syria and Iraq had in mind for
him. But who among the Arabs will
not now also question the cost of
supporting the American war against
Isis?
In the West — where we
have almost run out of clichés of loathing –
we will describe this Isis version of
burning-at-the-stake as barbarous, heinous,
inhuman, apocalyptic, animal, etc. But
Muslims may reflect that among the first
verses of the Koran is a warning to them, of
the “grievous chastisement” to be visited
upon those who only pretend to believe, the
‘monafaqin’, those who lie to themselves,
who are not ‘true believers’. There are the
true believers, of course. There are the
non-believers. But then there are the
‘pretenders’, who will suffer – and here I
use Tarif Khalidi’s latest translation of
Islam’s holiest book – “painful punishment”.
Of which – and the clergy of
the European Middle Ages would agree – the
fires of hell are most painful of all. But
many Muslims may see, in Isis's’ frightful
action, one awful misdirection of God’s
message. For it is God who must visit the
‘pretenders’ with punishment. God is the
judge on the day of judgement. Not Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi or the Isis media men who filmed
the cage and the poor man writhing in
torment within under the torrent of
petroleum. It is, of course, for the Muslim
world to decide on this strange
interpretation, but there will be ruthless
leaders aplenty – Bashar al-Assad of Syria
comes to mind, now that we have decided that
his enemies are even more horrible than him
– who will benefit from the cruelty of the
last few hours.
Long
before Isis butchered the Iraqi army and
Iraq’s Shias, and put the Christian and
Yazidi peoples to flight, it was chopping up
the corpses of the Syrian government’s
supporters and sending videotapes of their
decapitation to their families before
releasing them to a public which largely
preferred to look aside. It is not Isis
which has changed. It is us. Our intolerance
of the autocrats of the Middle East – of the
al-Sissis and al-Assads, of the Hashemite
monarchy, of the quivering princes of the
Gulf, even of the Supreme Leader of Iran,
Ayatollah Khamenei – is already mutating in
the face of the Caliphate. All must surely
become our ‘moderates’ again, those who wish
to ‘unite against terror’ now that we gaze
upon the fires of hell in Raqaa and Mosul.
For Isis, their Muslim
enemies must, by definition, be traitors to
their faith. And so we may re-read the
Khalidi translation with special care. “And
if someone says to them: ‘Do not sow discord
in the earth,’ they answer: We are merely
trying to bring people together”.
Which is what the
‘moderates’ say, of course. And poor Flt Lt
al-Kasaesbeh, in his agony.
© independent.co.uk
