Where do we go from here after Medina attacks? [THE NATIONAL]

July 7, 2016There is a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, where he said that the sanctity of a single believer’s blood is greater than the sanctity of the Kaaba itself. In his view, buildings, regardless of their symbolism and sacred nature, were incomparable to the sanctity of the blood of human beings.How wretched then that the second last day of Ramadan saw a suicide bombing only metres away from his final resting place in Medina. And yet, the outrage that was expressed in so many quarters should have been multiplied, many times over, for the deaths of those whom ISIL and their cohorts have killed over this month.Muslim scholars and sages teach that good deeds in the month of Ramadan are multiplied many times over – such is the nature of the sacred month. These extremists targeted an inviolable place – the city of the Prophet – in the last 10 days of Ramadan, a particularly sacred time in a sacred month.The perpetrators might well claim to be Muslims, but the form of religion they espoused – as well as those who sent them in that direction – cannot be described as Islamic by any normal standard. Muslim religious authorities worldwide have described the acts of ISIL and its fellow travellers as a rejection of Islamic tradition, and the most frequent victims are Muslims themselves.How, then, this phenomenon of extremist neo-Islamism can be described as “Islamic” beggars belief.There remain, nevertheless, two rather disconcerting suggestions in the aftermath of these attacks.The first is that these attacks will send support for ISIL over the edge, in that this latest outrage will finally convince the majority of Muslims that ISIL is illegitimate, due to its utter disregard for the sanctity of Islam’s most sacred places.This suggestion implicitly claims that ISIL is not already discredited among Muslims – and has been since its onset. Otherwise, the recruits of ISIL would number far more out of the 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.But there is also the reality that the attack in Medina provoked far more public expressions of outrage than other attacks – such is the symbolism of Medina, and the genuine love and affection that Muslims feel for the resting place of their Holy Prophet.Yet, as he himself said, blood is sacred in and of itself – and that bears close consideration and examination.The abysmal attacks that took place in Bangladesh, the obscene onslaught in Iraq and the appalling assault on Istanbul’s main airport – all in the space of a few days – must inflame yet more disdain. Hundreds of people died in these attacks – the latest victims of a heterodoxy that rejects that historically normative mainstream of Islam.The question is, nevertheless, what the international community will do now. Alas, the expectations are small. Normal voices of Islamic thought remain unable to compete with more extreme voices, for two main reasons.ISIL’s form of extremist Islamism is not synonymous or closely identifiable with purist Salafism, and it would be unjust to suggest otherwise.But there is a real relationship there, as there is with certain extremist right-wing schools of Islamism, and there are highly sophisticated networks of funding behind that. Internationally, we’re not likely to see that change.Secondly, the voices of more mainstream notions of Islam continue to suffer from either financial deprivation on the one hand, or independence on the other.For far too long, opponents of Islamism with real sources of financial power have failed to recognise that the deepest ideological threat to extremism comes from voices who are identified as being rigorously independent and unshackled to the state, whatever that state might be.On the contrary, many a decent voice in the battle against different types of extremism have had their effectiveness lessened by being identified with a state power structure.Or, worse still, that same power structure has silenced the more normative voices, because those voices also call out the abuses of the state as well as extremist Islamists.And far too many people in positions of power in the Muslim world are unwilling to accept that consistent criticism of injustice may also include criticism of state-led injustice.It is a cliché to say that “enough is enough” – because enough should have been enough years ago.But perhaps the attack on Medina will remind people that these extremists know few limits, that they view little as inviolable, that they reject and distort in such utter disdain and that enough people in positions of authority in the Arab world in particular and Muslim communities in general will admit that things have to change.Even if they did change today, this scourge would be with us for much longer to come. Nevertheless, if the Muslim world wants to hasten the demise of extremism, it must start somewhere.Dr HA Hellyer is a non-resident senior fellow at Atlantic Council’s Centre for the Middle East in Washington, DC and at the Royal United Services Institute in LondonOn Twitter: @hahellyerSource: The National