Texas shooting

IS claiming responsibility for the shooting in Texas have overshadowed the discussion on the moralities of free speech

It is a horror of great proportions that the Islamic State (IS) seems to have now penetrated the safe bastions of the US. The radical group, which had long cast a shadow of fear, gloom and suspicion in the Western world, has now marked its physical presence in the US. The shooting in Texas on May 4 over the display of cartoons of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) was a disconcerting incident in itself, for it broached, once again, the conversation on the true precincts of free speech. But the reports of the IS claiming responsibility for it have overshadowed the discussion on the moralities of free speech, shifting focus to the spill of the geo-political cauldron to least expected geographies.

There was, of course, a sense of far-off inevitability. The physical presence of the IS has been reported from a number of locations where militant groups were not known to have existed before. This is separate from the dissemination of the IS ideology across the length and breadth of the planet. And is also distinct from the many militants who are ‘converting’ to it across different geographies. Many from Pakistan, Nigeria and Libya have claimed affiliations with the IS in the recent past. Pro-IS graffiti, pamphlets, a staggering following on social media and its sophisticated modes of recruitment have been constant sources of fear across the world. Above all else, the indelible turf of the terror network in the UK and its recruitment from the British population did much to cause ripples among those who considered faith-based terrorism to be a phenomenon that is characteristically that of the poor, the under-privileged, and from the ‘Orient’ world. Global terrorism is thriving today under the umbrella of the IS. It is organised, ambitious and vengeful. So scathing have some of its assaults been that even the all-hated and much-feared al Qaeda shudders in the face of its brutalities. The Texas shooting makes for a testing moment for the already-marginalised Muslim diaspora in the US, as well as for Pakistani-Americans as one of the gunmen had reportedly attended school in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th,  2015.

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