Sufi bards to the rescue
and Roman history of Mesopotamia. The conclusion to which I leapt was plausible but wrong.
One of the gunmen, it emerges, was trained in terror across the border in a Libyan Islamist outfit affiliated to the ISIS. Libyan commentators speculate that these two and their cell — nine of whom have been arrested — may have been acting to avenge the death of a leading Libyan ISIS militant. A Libyan MP has told the world press that the gunmen intended to attack the Parliament building which is near the Bardo Museum. Parliament was debating a law to curb terrorism. The gunmen encountered the police cordon around Parliament and turned their attention to the tourists who were emerg- ing from a coach.
A third theory maintains that the Islamists want to destroy the democracy of Tunisia. The Tunisian government is only a month old. The terrorists may have planned an attack on tourists to damage one of Tunisia’s prosperous industries. Of the 27 people killed in their assault, 12 were from a cruise ship visiting the city. Crippling tourism, the terrorists calculated, would hurt the economy and the government.
Perhaps the word “atrocity” is losing its meaning. I am aware that there are other forces in the world perpetrating atrocities. The attacks on churches in any part of the world deserve the name. When Al Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers in NY their motivation was unclear. Bringing down two buildings and murdering a few thousands seemed to be a gesture rather than a strategy. It was a gesture to pronounce that America was the enemy of Al Qaeda. There was no need for mass murder for that. The world could have been told through the Internet. Now the ISIS has made its motive very clear.
They want to wage wars to convert the world to their brand of Islam and impose their code of Sharia law on the nations. Conquering territory in Syria and Iraq is their immediate business, but killing tourists or kidnapping Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria and enslaving Yazidis is also part of the plan.
After every atrocity, the leaders of Western nations condemning the murder or mayhem find it necessary to say that the outrage, the murder or the random killings, have nothing to do with Islam. This is not because Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande are meticulous scholars of Islamic theology. They are politicians and, quite rightly, make statements that they calculate will protect the minority Muslim communities of the European nations and of America from attack.
What they assure their populations may not be true. The military dictator of Egypt, General Fattah al Sisi is however firmly on their side.
He addressed the Al Azhar University’s scholars and mullahs and exhorted them to condemn the ISIS as heretics. Al Azhar’s theologians haven’t complied. Gen. Sisi’s plea should go out to every Muslim in the world. Can they interpret their religion as condoning or condemning the acts that the non-Islamist world characterises as “atrocities”?
There is, of course, no central authority in established Islam. The Shia Iranians would regard the Ayatollahs, and particularly Khameini, as the Catholics regard the Pope. The Caliphate seems to issue its own diktats through the Internet, though there is no indication that these emanate from Mr Al Baghdadi, the Caliph himself.
The deafening silence, which I personally regret comes from two sources. The first is a limited but necessary voice: that of the majority of immigrant Muslims who live and work and adapt to Europe. The second, much more universally significant, is the voice and opinion, for want of a better word, of Sufi Islam. Sufis don’t have a pope or ayatollahs, but they have poets. Speak!