Let us begin with a caveat: Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism is in no hurry to disappear.
According to the website thereligionofpeace.com which tracks reported cases of Islamist terrorism, 741 people died in 145 attacks across the world during Ramzan (March 23 to April 23) this year in the name of Islam. From Al Shabaab deadly Bar Sangunni strike in Somalia that killed 32 to five Indian soldiers killed in Poonch, and from 52 of a farming community massacred in Nigeria to 60 butchered in Burkina Faso, jihadists made the Holy month awash with blood.
A mob in Indonesia reportedly beat up two women and threw them into the sea for eating in a café instead of observing the Ramzan fast. While in India’s Gujarat, young Muslim woman Shaista was allegedly killed by five of her family members for falling in love with a Hindu man.
So, let us not fool ourselves. It will take very long for the corpse train to stop. But brakes have been applied, and even if it takes a long time, the beast will weaken and hopefully stop some day.
Here are seven jolts radical Islam has been dealt with lately. None of them are superficial. All of them contain the power to change.
1. No new ideas to offer
Any attempt at innovation, interpretation and integration come at a high price in Islam. The decree that the Quran is not to be challenged continues to stymie new ideas.
Muslims who deviated famously paid with blood. Salman Rushdie lived under threat for decades and was finally stabbed because his Satanic Verses seemed to mock Mohammad. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed because his book, The Children of Gabalawi, offended Egypt’s highest Islamic authority, Al Azhar. Arab scholar Suliman Bashear was thrown from a second-story window by his students at the University of Nablus in the West Bank after he suggested that Islam developed as a religion slowly rather than emanating fully from the mouth of the Prophet.
Degreed to live forever in 7th century wisdom, Islam fails to come up with ideas on issues concerning newer generations like climate change, women’s development, LGBTQ+, cryptocurrency, virtual dating, artificial intelligence and atheism without twisting itself up in an inarticulate rage.
2. Internet and ex-Muslims
In the past, even the harshest and most problematic tenets of Islam used to be passed down by parents and grandparents who tempered those down with their common sense and compassion. Internet has cut out that benign intermediary. It brings the verses raw to its audience.
It has also amplified the dissent of those like Taslima Nasreen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dina Nayeri, Tarek Fatah and others. Their work would have gone quietly and prematurely to the grave — perhaps along with their authors — if there were no internet.
This has also spawned movements like Ex-Muslims and Awesome Without Allah, a silent but rapidly spreading body blow to the Ummah.
3. Oil economy waning
Perhaps the biggest and most profound long-term threat to radical Islam is the bleak future of oil and rise of renewable/green energy. Since 2010, the stock value of the four largest oil firms has plummeted by more than half. In 2020, there were write-downs of $145 billion of oil reserves and related assets.
Oil money from West Asia has powered Islamic fundamentalism for very long. With that economy shrinking, radical Islam will have to find an alternative goldmine. And that won’t be easy.
4. Al Qaeda to ISIS as adverts
Another massive fallout of the Internet era has been the streaming of brutalities by Islamists worldwide. Al Qaeda crashing skyscrapers full of innocents or ISIS beheading citizens in orange jumpsuits have left a couple of generations of young, sensitive and rational Muslims deeply disturbed.
For centuries, Islamist genocides have entered the pages of history as mere numbers. For the first time, humanity could witness first-hand what the burning alive in an iron cage of 19 Yazidi girls who refused to be sex slaves of ISIS looks like.
Add to that the utterances of maulanas from Pakistan to Libya about 72 hoors, stoning of women in Afghanistan, persecution of homosexuals…all on camera.
It has been the most terrible advertisement of the faith, which the Left, ’liberals’ and overground Islamists have failed to whitewash.
5. MBS, MBZ and Abraham accords
Another massive development, closely linked to the sliding of the oil economy, has been the visionary leadership of Saudi and UAE crown princes Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed. Both are young and envision a vibrant and open West Asia which could be the Europe of the future.
They may be driven by the looming compulsion to open up their economy, and consequently, society, to the world to come and do business. They may not always act on consensus. But they are using their political systems to bring unsought of change to the region, starting with good relations with Israel and women empowerment.
If they have their way, the Islamic world could look very different.
6. Iranian women protests
The revolutionary protests in Iran triggered by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the moral police could be the beginning of the end of radical Islam’s bottomless tyranny against women. Since the beginning of the uprising, more than 500 have been killed. Of them 60-70 are women. But the fire of revolt rages on, spreading into popular literature, cinema, video reels and music.
Iran could become the template of women’s revolt across the Islamic world.
7. Free-fall of Pakistan, rise of India
Finally, the meltdown of Pakistan’s economy and polity and the rapid rise of India into one of the major world powers is a huge setback for radical Islam, at least in the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947 as a theocratic State as Islam’s rejection to coexist with the Hindu majority. An overwhelming number of Muslims — even though many stayed back in India to not lose property — had voted for the creation of Pakistan.
Islamists in India and Bangladesh kept looking up to Pakistan as a promised land.
But the spectacular crumbling of the Pakistani economy, food riots, humiliating conditions for an IMF bailout, and being reduced to a vassal state of China has completely discredited the Pakistan model.
All these sobering factors combine to create conditions for introspection. The message is loud and clear: change or face an existential challenge. Islamists may argue that their faith has overcome such adversities and remained unchanged, but they would underestimate the potent mix that technology combined with the human need for happiness and progress can create.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed are personal.
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