A Jordanian pilot burned to death: who are the victims of Islamic extremism?

The organisation variously known as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh or “that ghastly lot terrorising Iraq and Syria”, has apparently burned to death the Jordanian pilot it captured after his plane crashed on a bombing raid against their positions. To make sure the execution was as unpleasant as it could be, it seems the pilot was placed in a metal cage before being drowned in flames.

Muadh al-Kasasbeh with the captors who later
murdered him with all the cruelty they could muster

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on the Koran, but I suspect that it nowhere recommends burning prisoners of war alive. Equally, I’m pretty certain the vast majority of Muslims around the world would be as doubtful as I am that this is principle of Islamic belief. Some Muslims might argue that beheading people, as Daesh has also done, is legitimate since that fine ally of the Democracies, Saudi Arabia, likes to indulge in the practice, but not even that enlightened nation goes so far as to recommend burning.

It is all the more likely that a great many adherents of Islam will be sickened by what has happened, since the victim was as Muslim as his torturers claim to be.

That isn’t actually surprising. Amid all the fear that some new terrorist outrage causes us in the West – and the attack on Charlie Hebdo must have put ice in the blood of most of us – we have a tendency to forget that most terrorist violence, including most Islamic terrorist violence, has Muslims as its victims.

In exactly the same way, when the press was bleating about thuggish young men, many of them black, terrorising poor little old women and stealing their inadequate pensions, it failed to point out that the vast majority of victims of muggings were young men, most of them black. When people lash out in anger and bitterness, justified or not, the victim is likely to be someone standing nearby, who is probably very like them.

So who are the victims of terrorism generally?

According to the Global Terrorism Database, an organisation that really exists, in the US, 50% of all terrorist attacks around the world take place in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. That’s a piece of information we ought to keep clearly in mind when we evaluate the success of the NATO intervention in Afghanistan.

Overall, where that database has been able to ascertain the faith of the victims, it finds that between 82% and 97% of all victims of terrorism are Muslim.

Over the ten year period after 2004, the US suffered 131 terrorist attacks, of which fewer than 20 were lethal. The UK did less well, principally because of continued unrest in Northern Ireland: over the same period it had 400 attacks, of which most were non-lethal.

Iraq had 12,000. Of those attacks, 8000 were lethal. Again, a useful piece of information when we think about Western intervention in a Muslim country.

Overall, though, the real message is this: the outcry against “Muslims” that goes up when a small number of Islamic fundamentalists carries out an attack, needs to be balanced by a cry of sympathy for the Muslims who make up the vast majority of their victims.

One of the most recent of whom was Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh. A Muslim burned to death by the self-proclaimed Muslims of Daesh. In what has to be the most shameful terrorist outrage for quite some time.

Thokozile Masipa: above all, a fine judge

There’s been a lot of talk about the judge in the Oscar Pistorius case, Thokozile Masipa.

A remarkable judge

A woman sitting as judge in such a high profile case. Today, that’s not so remarkable, though not many years ago it would have been.

A black judge presiding over the trial of a white celebrity. In South Africa. That remains remarkable even today. South Africa took its first stumbling steps towards racial equality only in the 1990s. Masipa sitting in judgement over Pistorius is something of a milestone.

But the quality of Masipa’s that hasn’t attracted anything like enough attention, is that she’s an excellent judge. Black or white, man or woman, anywhere aspiring to democracy needs all the Masipas it can get.

Yesterday, Masipa acquitted Pistorius of murder (there was no jury). That’s a judgement that has shocked a great many people.

And yet, what she pointed out was that much of the evidence against Pistorius was hearsay. Witnesses had testified to hearing screams, but it was impossible to rule out that it was Pistorius himself screaming. Angry texts exchanged by the couple only revealed how human relationships fluctuate and did not prove murderous intent. Overall, she felt that the prosecution had simply not proved its case “beyond reasonable doubt”, and therefore the charge could not be made to stick.

In those words, Masipa spoke out for an essential and threatened principle. In Britain today presumption of innocence is in jeopardy. Those who give way to terror in the face of terrorism, not realising that this gives the terrorists their greatest victory, have called for people suspected of fighting with Islamic State in the Middle East, to have to clear their own name.

Masipa’s judgement restates the opposite view. She didn’t say Pistorius was innocent of murder. She said that the prosecution had failed to prove him guilty, and that’s all it takes for an acquittal. The prosecution has the police on its side and the colossal means of the state. If it can’t convince a reasonable person of its case, which is what proof beyond reasonable doubt means, then its case must fail.

Oscar Pistorius in happier times

This was shocking only to those who suspect, as surely a great many of us do, that Pistorius deliberately killed his girlfriend and and believe that’s enough to convict him. Masipa has replied categorically, “no, it isn’t.”

She did also go on to accuse him of being negligent by firing four shots through a locked door without even establishing who was behind it.

Today she confirmed that his negligence was criminal, when she convicted him of culpable homicide. That was a judgement as clear-sighted as yesterday’s. Pistorius doesn’t deny he fired the shots that killed Steenkamp. What Masipa has now said is that by doing so he behaved with disregard for human life, whether or not he knew who was behind the door. That has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, and so it has led to his conviction.

Masipa got it exactly right. With so many apparently ready, even enthusiastic, for many of these things to be done wrong, that’s far more important than the immediate matter of the Pistorius case. It’s a beacon to nations that would be free.

And that’s what really matters about Thokozile Masipa.

What we really need is a politician with a sense of humour, a willingness to be self-deprecating, and the sense to realise that there’s more to life – more even to his life – than politics.

London has got itself a mayor who entirely fits the bill. Boris Johnson likes to make a fool of himself in public and share the joke. He’s a fine classical scholar and writes and broadcasts in an amusing and engaging, if slightly superficial, way on Roman history. 

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
"What a great sport I am!"

Sadly, he also provides living proof that we actually need a politician with those qualities like we need a hole in the head.

Terrorists achieve their primary aim when they terrorise us. And that happens when we panic so much that we’re prepared to give up our own values in response to their actions. Yesterday, it was demonstrated by that same jocular, amusing, bumptious London Mayor.

Boris Johnson has called for a “minor” change in the law so that anyone travelling to the war zones in Iraq and Syria would be presumed to be a terrorist, and liable to prosecution unless they can prove otherwise.

In other words, with this “minor” change he would like to undo a value won and upheld through centuries of agitation for basic rights: the presumption of innocence. The principle means that in any criminal case, it is for the prosecution, backed as it is by all the apparatus of the state, prisons, security services, the police, to prove its case against the solitary individual in the dock, usually supported only by a lawyer.

For Johnson, doing away with this right is a small matter. As a man educated at Eton and Oxford and in possession of a significant fortune, he of course has little to fear from the state. If anything, as a leading Conservative politician, he’s far more likely to be exercising that power against others. What is truly worrying is that he speaks for a constituency within the broader electorate that is all too ready to believe him and give up rights that protect it, in order to seek safety from a supposed terrorist threat.

Why are we talking about such a threat? Because the voice-over on the video that Islamic State released of the murder of American journalist Jim Foley had a British accent. That touched a nerve among many in Britain. But if the result is that we cease to defend fundamental rights, then we shall have given Islamic State a far greater victory than it could have imagined.

Fortunately, Johnson’s suggestion has already been denounced by another leading Conservative, Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General. He called it “draconian” and said that it would criminalise much legitimate behaviour. However, it’s insignificant that Grieve is the former Attorney General, believed by many to have been sacked for being too liberal for the current government.

That government includes the Home Secretary Theresa May, who intends to bring in new legislation against people and organisations who advocate extremist views.

Interestingly, that’s an even more pernicious intention than Johnson’s, because banning extremism sounds eminently sensible. But who will decide just what’s extreme? Let’s remember that there was a time when campaigning against slavery, or for women to be given the vote, or for Ireland to win its independence, was regarded as extreme. 

Do we really want government to decide what is or isn’t extreme? Do we want to give it the power to act against the views people advocate? Might it not be better to have it concentrate only on extreme actions rather than views? Most such actions are illegal already.

These are Tories, who are prompt to talk the language of “British values”, which they insist immigrants must endorse. It seems that they don’t regard presumption of innocence, freedom of thought or freedom of speech as fundamental among such values.

In addition, they proclaim their commitment to small government. It’s curious how easily, then, they advocate initiatives that massively increase government’s capability to intervene in all our lives. And then disguise what they’re doing behind a veil of good sense or, as in Boris Johnson’s case, one of engaging good humour.

It strikes me that as well as needing to deal with actions by Islamic State militants, we in Britain need to be ready to confront another threat far closer to home. And far more pernicious.

Islamic State: history repeating itself? Without redeeming features?

Explaining increased British involvement in action to stop the Islamic State in Iraq, David Cameron points out that the alternative was to allow the emergence of a “terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a Nato member.”

The Nato member in question is Turkey. And, curiously, seeing that region threatened by a militant Islamic movement is a repetition of history – though, as often happens when history repeats itself, the second time round is even more painful than the first.

When the prophet Mohammed died in 632, he left the Arabian peninsula united as it had never been before. His successors discovered an energy and a military drive that would astonish and, generally, overwhelm their neighbours. To their North, two great Empires had been battling with each other for centuries: the Byzantines, successors of Rome, and the Persians. Within a generation, the Persian Empire had been completely overrun by Islamic forces and the Byzantines had lost huge territories, principally in the regions that now make up Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – and Turkey.

See the repetition?

Their sudden irruption on the scene wasn’t the only remarkable aspect of the Muslim conquerors. Their behaviour after victory gave them some unusual redeeming features. Instead of massacring their defeated foes, or even crushing them, they usually recruited them. So, for example, when they’d stretched their Empire along the whole of the North African seaboard, they decided it might be worth crossing the straits into Southern Spain and trying their luck in Europe. Tariq ibn Ziyad, who led their first landing on the rock off the Spanish coast which bears his name, Tariq’s mountain, Jebel Tariq, now Gibraltar, was in all likelihood a Berber, rather than an Arab, and the son of a former prisoner of war.

Once in Spain, the Arabs made allies of the Jews, long oppressed by the Visigothic Christian rulers. Jews held the captured cities on behalf of the Muslim armies, which could therefore move on to capture some more. The tradition of coexistence with other communities inspired one of the world’s great cultural centres in Cordoba. Muslims ran the show, but Jews – who were allowed to settle in pride of place right next to the Mosque – and Christians were tolerated and allowed to debate with Muslim scholars in one of the richest periods of intellectual development in Europe.

When Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote the works that would transform Christian thinking and underpin the Renaissance, he drew heavily on the thought of the Greek pagan Aristotle, as interpreted by a Muslim scholar from Cordoba, Averroes (Ibn Rushd).

That was then. Today a new Islamic military force is threatening the borders of what were once the Persian and Byzantine Empires. Given the opportunity, it would no doubt be more than happy to take the whole Mediterranean littoral and even threaten southern Spain. However, based on their track record so far, you can be pretty certain that they wouldn’t want to found a community in Cordoba that would win an international reputation for the free exchange of ideas.

Islamic State: attempting to reproduce the Muslim conquests
but without any of the redeeming features

On the contrary, it has proved to be a life-threatening condition to be non-Muslim, or even simply the wrong kind of Muslim, in the presence of the Islamic State. 1500 Shia prisoners of war were executed in a single day; Christians or Yazidis have been murdered, enslaved or driven from their homes in huge numbers.

The militants of Islamic State are trying to reproduce the great conquests of Islam in its early days. But as I said before, the second time round tends to be less admirable, less glorious than the first.

In Islamic State’s case, a lot less admirable and a lot less glorious.

No bad thing if we can help stem their attempt to repeat history.

A young girl measures human progress

A picture in today’s Guardian caught my attention. 

From the Guardian of 11 August

I wondered what different people might see in it. I imagine most of us would see a young girl. A child.

If we looked a little closer, we might think she was sleeping peacefully, although the setting – adults and other children sitting behind her, wide awake, and frightened – might suggest that she was actually sleeping in exahustion. I still hope that most of us, if we were present, would want to do nothing worse to her than lower our voices so she could keep on sleeping.

If we then read the article, we would discover that a large group of men in Iraq, where she comes from, would have wanted to do far more than that. They would have seen in her a target, a Satan-worshipper, and they would have been driven by a holy zeal to do God’s work, into killing her or forcibly converting her to Sunni Islam. After conversion, she would have been reduced to slavery.

I don’t think there’s much to rule out in the list of things that could be done to a young girl who’s made a slave by the Islamic State.

All that because she’s a Yazidi. That indeed is why she is where she is in the photo, and exhausted. She’s just completed a draining trek to safety in Kurdistan, from a home invaded by the IS militants.

The safety’s only relative, because it depends on the ability of the Kurdish Peshmerga to hold IS at bay. Equally, though she’s lucky to have escaped – many thousands of others have not – that luck is also relative: she is now entering onto the misery of life as a refugee, dependent on charity, with neither a home nor a living to support her.

So we should amend our view of the photo again. An exhausted, unfortunate young girl, we might say.

If she were from Gaza and not Iraq, she might not now be the deliberate target of a terrorist movement, but she would be in serious danger nonetheless, as a potential victim of collateral damage by the Israeli Defence Forces, one of the world’s most powerful armies. She would be at risk because Israel has decided that, in its self-defence, it has every right to deploy hugely destructive firepower in densely populated areas. Anyone it kills as a result it views a regrettable but entirely legitimate casualty.

So again, let’s review our judgement. An exhausted, unfortunate young girl who doesn’t really matter much, even to people who claim to respect democracy and human rights.

Which adds up to a measure of just how far humanity has progressed down the tens of millennia. We live in a world in which many people feel that it is perfectly justified to snuff out the life of that little girl, or to cause her unbearable suffering. Some will act that way because they believe it is the will of God. Others out of indifference to her fate. Yet others to gratify some deeply deformed appetite.

Humanity will have reached a state we can call civilised the day we can look at such a sleeping young girl, and the only thing any of us would want to do to her, is cover her with a blanket.