Relevance: Mains: G.S paper I: Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism and secularism.
Context:
- The fight against the Islamic State (IS) was won with the help of three major forces on the ground, for the Western coalition on its own would not have managed to do much with remote-controlled bombs.
• These were the Kurds, the Shia militia and ordinary Muslims (Sunni and Shia) who spoke up against the kind of Islam espoused by the IS and its supporters, choking the movement of easy recruits.
• Towards the end of 2019, Donald Trump’s America betrayed the Kurds and abandoned them.
• In early 2020, with the ‘targeted killing’ of Qassem Soleimani, Trump’s America betrayed the second partner.
• The very Shia forces with which the West had collaborated in both Afghanistan and Iraq to fight al-Qaeda and the IS.
Narrow identity:
- At the core of the crisis in the so-called Muslim world is not the U.S. or any other external factor. It is the narrowness of Muslims themselves.
• It is the narrowness of their understanding of themselves.
• By failing to allow other Muslims to believe or not to believe in their own ways, they do not just divide themselves up — persecuting the atheists, Ahmedis, Bohras, Shias, Sunnis etc. — they also cut themselves off from other communities.
• If you cannot allow fellow Muslims to differ openly, how will you accept Hindus or Sikhs who do not believe like you do?
Conclusion:
- This is at the heart of the problem. Religious Muslims need to expand their understanding of Islam in order to embrace — and be embraced by — the world.