With its large number of Muslims, India has a special responsibility to forge a positive response to the terrorists who call themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). That is not to blame ordinary Muslims in India or anywhere else for ISIL’s crimes. But as Sadiq Khan, the British Labour Party candidate for mayor of London, says, Muslims must not “bury their heads in the sand”. They have a key role not because they are responsible for outrages like the November 13 Paris killings but because their religion gives them a unique advantage in tackling the threat.
This is something India must remember as the Western powers rattle their sabres and replace Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin with ISIL as the greatest threats to civilisation. India needs to make a sober appraisal of its foreign policy priorities, and that appraisal must include the views of that 15 per cent of the population that follows the Quran. ISIL’s first direct recruitment appeal in the subcontinent is reportedly in Bengali. Whether directed at Bangladesh or West Bengal, it is all the more reason for India to evolve an effective and comprehensive response to the Islamist challenge.
It would be fatal to succumb to the bloodthirsty craving for revenge and be stampeded into joining what Mr Putin calls a “grand alliance” against ISIL. In many ways, the mood in Europe is even more vengeful than in the United States after the Twin Towers attack. Britain did not suffer either the Paris massacre or the siege to which the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali was subjected. Yet, a confidential official report shows a rise of more than 300 per cent in Islamophobic hate crimes in Britain between November 13 and last Saturday. They were not major crimes, but that they took place at all exposed how passions are beginning to be polarised as David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, thunders about the need to bomb Syria.
India needs to make a sober appraisal of its foreign policy priorities by also including the views of that 15 per cent of the population that follows the Quran. ISIL’s first direct recruitment appeal in the subcontinent is reportedly in Bengali. Whether directed at Bangladesh or West Bengal, it is all the more reason for India to evolve an effective and comprehensive response to the Islamist challenge.
There is no denying ISIL is viciously murderous. But the French experience should have taught others by now that bombing Raqqa, the ISIL headquarters in northern Syria, solves nothing. For one thing, the collateral damage (the death of innocent civilians including women and children who live in the vicinity) creates even more enemies. For another, George W. Bush Jr’s Operation Enduring Freedom demonstrated that Al Qaeda could be bombed out of existence in Afghanistan’s rugged hills without destroying the Jihadist menace. As Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s Labour Party leader points out, air strikes against Libya in 2011 merely added to the chaos and misery.
This is not to argue like Tariq Ali, the Pakistan-born radical writer, that ISIL would settle down to peaceful pastimes if only Israel were somehow liquidated. But it is to affirm that militancy feeds on historic injustice, real and perceived, as it does on ignorance and poverty. It is too late in the day to discuss Zionist occupation of Palestine dispossessing millions of Palestinians. Israel must be accorded the right to exist within secure borders. But Israel can best earn that right – as well as the Islamic ummah’s goodwill – by relinquishing the gains of the 1967 war and allowing a sovereign Palestine to emerge on the entire West Bank.
There is also a powerful demographic reason for avoiding hostilities that force people to choose between conflicting loyalties. The Pew Forum estimates that Europe’s 44 million Muslims constitute 6 per cent of the population. Brussels, home of the ethnic Moroccan mastermind of the Paris killing, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is 15 per cent Muslim. So is metropolitan Paris. Blackburn in the north of England is 29 per cent Muslim. Britain’s three million Muslims (5 per cent of the population) are estimated to increase to 26 million by 2051. It’s worth remembering that 27 per cent of British Muslims approved of last year’s Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, that more than 700 British Muslims have fled to Syria to fight for ISIL, and that a couple, Mohammed Khan and Sana Ahmed Khan, is currently being tried at the Old Bailey for planning to bomb either London’s smart Westfield Shopping Centre or the underground railway system. Mohammed Emwazi, the masked assassin nicknamed Jihadi John whom the Americans killed recently, was British.
There’s the additional complication that while most members of the 10-nation coalition fighting in Syria have their own axes to grind, considerable mystery surrounds ISIL’s financing and political protection. The terrorists are said to earn their revenue from selling the oil in northern Syria. But how do they market it internationally when the Saudis tightly control OPEC? ISIL is also reported to earn handsomely from selling antiquities from the ancient temples and monuments it is destroying. Once again, this means international trading links of which there is no evidence. ISIL’s closest ideologiocal ally would seem to be Saudi Arabia which uses its oil riches to export radical Islam globally and whose feudal regime follows policies at home that resemble ISIL’s in many respects. Yet, Britain’s leaders kowtow to Saudi Arabia and happily sell arms to the Saudis.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia want to get rid of Mr Assad. But Turkey’s first priority is to neutralise the Kurdish para-military forces fighting ISIL or, at least, ensure they don’t join hands with Turkey’s own disgruntled Kurds. Washington has reportedly earmarked $500 million for Mr Assad’s elimination and officially describes him as a “brutal dictator” which was the term it also used for Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. But remembering other unpopular wars, the United States will not send its own troops. Although accounting for 95 per cent of the air strikes, the United States now fights from a safe distance. Russia wanted Mr Bashar to survive and was accused by the West of pretending to bomb ISIL while actually attacking the anti-Bashar rebels. Now, Mr Putin wants revenge for the Russian jet the Jihadists bombed. Britain believes it might be possible to reach a settlement so that Mr Assad steps down after a period of transition.
India has far greater reason for circumspection than Britain, France or the United States. Despite the sympathetic statements Narendra Modi issued in London after the Paris attacks, India cannot afford not to ignore the provocation of the siege of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, where some Indian citizens were also holed up. Nor can India afford to respond to the invitation of the United Nations Security Council’s unanimous vote in favour of collective action against ISIL. But India cannot afford to ignore ISIL either, or to see it only in terms of Kashmir and Pakistan.
Mr Modi has a controversial record where Muslims are concerned. That is all the more reason why he should now play a constructive role and try to win their confidence in forging a united Indian response to a global challenge. ISIL is not a remote threat thousands of miles away. It can strike anywhere at any time.
