Although the spotlight has been on Gaza over the past week, violence in Iraq and Syria persists with the expansion of the Islamic State and its aspirations to establish a caliphate engulfing the Levant and Iraq and, ultimately, spread its reach far beyond.
The fact that the self-proclaimed caliph did not mention Palestine in his recent speech is no coincidence, wrote columnist Mustafa Zein in Al Hayat.
“The true problem is not the caliph, as he is but the mere product of an environment drowned in misery. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are part of a deeply rooted culture and its rapid spread among the youth reflects how deep its roots are in societies that have used advanced technologies to disseminate monstrosity,” he wrote.
“Considering the current predicament from another angle, [the Islamic State’s] emergence may not be the negative occurrence that we perceive it to be from a broader perspective of the prevailing reality in the region and in the Muslim world,” opined Abdel Rahman Al Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat.
“The rise of this organisation that is more extreme and violent than Al Qaeda itself has come to save Muslims before the end of the game,” he wrote. “It forces everyone to face their responsibilities and puts an end to two serious problems in the contemporary mindset: indifference and political opportunism.
“Thank you, Islamic State! Thank you, Al Nusra Front! Thank you, ancient Al Qaeda! You have awakened bureaucrats from their slumber, you have exposed lurking extremist cells and defined the conflict between Muslims, the extremists and the non-extremists,” Al Rashed continued.
The Islamic State has unmasked all “Islamic States” that walk among us under cover, talking of freedom and democracy where their discourse is nonetheless fascist, takfiri and extremist, he observed.
“The Islamic State only grew because many governments around the world slumbered and reduced their activities, thinking they had been victorious in the war against terror – until various governments and civil forces were awakened by the victories of extremists.
“We should face the Islamic State, not by fighting it in Al Anbar in Iraq, in Deir Ezzor in Syria, or in Al Jawf in Yemen, but internally – whether in Muslim countries or in countries where Muslim minorities have been touched by extremist ideologies, from China to Europe,” concluded Al Rashed.
In the pan-Arab Al Hayat, Yaseen Al Hajj Saleh considers that “as Israel is set to stay, the caliphate shall probably remain and will hopefully not spread. Israel is currently unable to spread, save to the detriment of Palestinians. The core difference is that Israel aims to tame and give lessons, whereas the Islamic State should be tamed
“The Islamic State that has promoted itself to a caliphate states that colonialism may spring internally,” he added.
“Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s caliphate is a kind of colonialism that combines religious racism and aggressive war, with the targeted society taking over private and public resources to the benefit of the caliphate’s invading soldiers,” he remarked.
“As Israeli colonisation continues – while Israel currently chairs the Special Committee on Decolonisation at the United Nations – and Bashar Al Assad’s regime survives, colonisation by the Islamic State is bound to endure,” concluded Saleh.
Translated by Carla Mirza
cmrza@thenational.ae