The Coming of the Apocalypse

                                                The Coming of the Apocalypse

The ominous signs of World War III are present as “darkness visible” to use the Miltonic oxymoron. These signs have been flickering since the twin towers in New York were razed to the ground at the turn of the century. The aggravation, worsened by the US military intervention first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq ostensibly to topple Saddam Husssein have  galvanized terrorist groups such as  Al Queda, Taliban ,Boko Haram and presently the ISIS to strike terror at will. These groups have ingeniously turned the table on US and the West by playing the Muslim victim card citing nearly 45,000 Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their targets are mainly US and Western Europe-France in particular- though the extended lethal effect has been borne by Nigeria, Syria and Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. We in India have had our share though intermittently with Pakistan’s non-State actors making a common cause with the terrorist groups under the banner of Islam, covertly and violently unleashing their hatred for the nation.

The latest press release by the French government warning of a possible chemical and poisonous attack has sent everyone into an alarming tizzy. Belgium has been put on alert, shutting down its metros and postponing football matches. Europe has woken up; so have Russia and US to the escalation of the murderous and destructive threat by ISIS. The West has come together, mobilizing its forces to counter this menace. The two erstwhile superpowers –America and Russia are working out ways to contain ISIS. These two arch egoists have joined hands, sinking their major differences about Syria through a unified Syrian-owned political transition plan to end the civil war in Syria. So far so good, as the ISIS has the deadly arms power, money and willing suicide bombers to wreak havoc on many innocents both in the Arab world who are non IS sympathizers and in Western Europe besides US and its Allies. ISIS that stood for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has shed off the last two letters and now remains as IS with its single objective to establish an Islamic  Caliphate, a state governed in accordance with Islamic law by God’s deputy on Earth,  the Caliph. It seeks a direct confrontation with the US-led coalition, viewing it as a War between Muslims and their enemies described in Islamic apocalyptic prophecies.

The 21^st century has all the signs of a bloody war of the proportion of the two world wars of the previous century. Humanity has not learnt the lessons either from World War I (1914-18) that had caused the death of 17million people nor that of World War II that accounted for the death of six million Jews and millions of people across Europe and Japan. WWI happened due to increased militarism, aggressive imperialism and nationalism among European countries, in particular among Germany, Great Britain and Russia, while WW II witnessed the megalomania and anti Semitism of Hitler  that brought all other European nations together to fight him with the assistance of US. But our present generation has forgotten history- as recent as of the last one hundred years. Mankind has not learnt anything from those two devastating wars and is currently on the path to break into yet another catastrophic war. This is not the time to justify atrocities as vendetta wars, apportioning blame either to the ruthless, fanatic Muslims, or to the stupid war that George Bush had started first to strike at AL Queda in Afghanistan and later at Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

What is the one major lesson of the two World Wars that we ought to have learnt and which we have not? Two wrongs don’t make a right. The genesis of all wars has so far been ego bruise -real or imagined. Prima facie, this conflict seems a religious conflict between Muslims and Christians, between Sunnis and Shi-ites, between Muslims and non-Muslims , but looking at it closer, it is a clash between Western imperialism and the Ottoman imperialism that seeks to establish its hegemony from Portugal to China with a ruthlessness that is unimaginable to any civilized mind. Riding on the banner of Islam, perceiving the dominance and conquest of the imperial West as a threat to its identity and destruction, propagating the victimhood theory of being bombed and looted by the rapacity of the West and justifying the  right to vengeful retribution, the IS has intrusively worked upon the minds of the socially and economically deprived Muslims in the West and allured them to join the fight against Christian and non Muslim nations. It was a clever strategy “to present a binary view of the world as good and evil and show that all that is good is with Islam and all that is evil is with the West”(Adam Deen trying to figure a counter narrative to militant Islam). The sense of victimhood and the call for revenge for a just cause has had a tremendous appeal not only to the socially and economically  deprived sections of the Muslim youth, but also to  the educated groups whose understanding and grasp of the nobility of Quran is poor, if not non-existent. Thus the greed of the Western nations for the oil rich resources of the Arab world combined with the extremist version of Islam which is deviant from its original helped IS to grow thick and fast. Germany among the rest of Europe has understood the devastation of cruelty and hatred perpetrated by Hitler and his Nazi army and has moved away from vendetta politics to develop into a more humane and civilized society.

The question before the world is can aggression end aggression? Can violence end violence? Can brutal war be an answer to the bloody war unleashed by IS?  How to create a counter narrative to the perverted narrative of Islam as spread by the IS? Modern concepts of nationhood, civil rights, liberty, brotherhood and equality that have been the cornerstone of European and Western democracy have to be strengthened to stop the spread of IS caliphate founded upon the megalomania of the self styled Islamic Caliphate whose visceral hatred of non Muslims is similar to the toxic dislike of the Jews by Hitler and the Nazis.

The world has to come together to demonstrate the power of humanity, rationality, liberality and freedom against the inhuman forces that thrive on irrational, illogical and imperious diktats of the IS leaders who betray their ignorance of the peaceful religion Islam by saying killing apostates is Islamic. Many leaders have spoken about drying the funds of IS, bombing the IS holds in Syria and Iraq, but if minds cannot be cleansed and purified, if hearts are not rid of hatred and fanaticism, if attitudes are not changed  to put the past behind and to forge forward, stealthy drones and carpet bombing will only aggravate the hurt and vengeful belief in victimhood. The world should seek the voices of the moderate Muslims like those of the the 1071 Indian Imams and Muftis who had decreed a fatwa against IS for its un-Islamic and inhuman acts. Gandhi said “An eye for an eye makes the world go blind”. How prophetic these words are! Two wrongs don’t make a right. No amount of sabre rattling speeches can match the guns of violence. The voice of sanity alone has the power to drown the voices of hell.  Aakar Patel’s advice to the Hindutva votaries rings true for the entire world. He writes: “…it’s easy to rouse an Indian mob to hatred. To desist, to resist bigotry, even when it is popular is leadership.” The World has to unite to speak their  “mann ki baat”(the Voice of their Conscience) to drown the voices of hatred and inhumanity. The conversation between a father and his son that has gone viral is the answer to the boom-boom of the guns:

The Son said:  “They have guns, they can shoot us because they’re really, really mean, daddy,”. “It’s okay, they might have guns but we have flowers,” his father said.

At the end of the conversation, his young son said he felt reassured by what he’d heard. “The flowers and the candles are here to protect us,” he said.