JIHADI MAYHEM IN EGYPT

W hat religion sanctions killing of co-religionists and, that too, in a place of worship? Apparently, the Islamic jihadis seem to believe that neither religion nor the fact that worshippers are far removed from the resolution of whatever grievance they might have against the government is relevant to their mission of wanton killings. Whether the cause is right or wrong, whether they are justified in raining death periodically on innocents, jihadi terror is so self-absorbed that it is impervious to the voices of reason and commonsense. The death last week of over 300 people in a mosque in a far corner of Egypt underlines the growing abuse of religion in the name of Islam. Among the dead were 30 children. Although no group has claimed responsibility, it is widely suspected that the Islamic State terrorists based in the north Sinai desert were behind the carnage. President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi had no doubt as to who was behind the massacre. In a national broadcast after the attack, he promised ‘brute force’ against the militants to take out the perpetrators. Late on Friday evening, air strikes at the supposed hideouts of the terrorists and their vehicles are said to have resulted in several deaths of the suspected attackers. According to reports, the worshippers in the al-Radwa mosque were attacked by a group of militants. Following the attack by a human suicide bomber inside the mosque, a group of militants opened fire recklessly from sophisticated assault weapons on the survivors as they rushed outside in sheer panic. Militants affiliated to the Islamic State have found safe sanctuaries in the Egyptian desert, though, in periodic clashes with the security forces, a number of them have been eliminated, particularly after Sissi took over. Nearly a thousand members of the security forces too have lost their lives in the fight against militants in the last couple of years. A likely reason for the attack on the alRadwa mosque is said to be that it attracts a lot of Sufi Muslims, a huge target of intense hatred by the Sunni militant groups. Since the rise of Islamic State, several local militant groups have linked to it, causing further mayhem in an area which was not long ago a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the Islamic world itself seems to have got used to this fratricidal war among various sects of its own great faith and the problem of Islamic militancy is compounded further when some of these jihadi groups receive not-so-secret moral and material support from rival Islamic countries. The seeds of the militant jihad lie within the Islamic world – as does the solution. The world at large is a mute witness and often an innocent victim of the violent excesses of the Islamic terrorism. There seems no early end in sight to this scourge of our times.