Unless one reaches the roots, actions against the Islamic State will be futile as such groups will keep emerging
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: The world didn’t believe it when the news of the enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and girls in Islamic State (IS)-controlled Iraqi areas started pouring in; but soon, these horrible acts were confirmed. A number of Yazidi women who managed to escape from the clutches of the IS revealed to the world that female slaves are being bought and sold and being subjected to sexual cruelty. There was uproar when a ‘fatwa’ (or, more accurately, a ‘rape handbook’) surfaced wherein the IS set rules for female slaves. The ‘fatwa’ discusses in graphic detail the rules under which the owners of the slaves are allowed to exploit them; apparently, it’s an attempt to regulate the treatment of enslaved female prisoners. The ‘fatwa’ outlines 15 rules to modulate this centuries-old hateful practice in the 21st century.
I see many people condemning the fatwa and declaring the IS to be a disgrace to Islam. Any sane mind will go by this condemnation, but then I find what the IS is doing with female prisoners is the same as what some leading religious scholars, revered highly in the Muslim world — some of them even belonging to Pakistan — have advocated in the past. There is no point in condemning the IS alone; we need to dig further into where terrorist organisations are getting their guidance from. Unless one reaches the roots, actions against the IS will be futile exercises as such groups will keep emerging elsewhere under different names, but with the same agenda. For Pakistanis who still have a soft corner for the IS, such acts should serve as an eye-opener. This is the type of theocratic state some religious parties and their militant outfits want to have in this country.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, January 3rd, 2016.
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