The Purification of Islam

Call it radical Islam, call it fanatical Islamism, it is a relic of a tribal inheritance, a religion tailor-made for war-mongering Bedouin who enjoyed nothing better than to set off conflict with one another, on the pretext that honour was being defended, eager for the opportunity to loot and to enslave and to slaughter.  That they could continue doing so in honour of an almighty spirit that would defend them in battle as martyrs to the cause of doing the will of god only inflamed an already engrained culture of bloodshed, revenge and hatred.

That was then.  When the Prophet himself led the way, slaughtering those who refused to surrender to Allah, the desert god whom he introduced to the Middle East and whose demands and fealty he taught his followers to spread so that they might conquer the world for Islam.  Those who chose to deny Islam and to cling to their own religion forfeited their lives.  Islam spread throughout much of the world through the ferocious spreading of human blood over the welcoming soil that absorbed it.

And now, puritan, fanatical Islam has rekindled itself.  Its original demands that all vestiges of other faiths be expunged from the Earth rather than conflict with Islam's right to declare itself the only true religion, has been re-awakened.  It has never in fact faded completely, since there has always been some elements of the faithful that have expounded the need to practise a pure and unrelenting version of Islam reflecting the original.

But in the last hundred years any accommodation that most Muslims have made with the world around them, to accept at face value the co-existence of other religions, or the various denominations of Islam that had arisen in reflection of some groups' worship of other facets of Islam other than what the mainstream declared has been challenged.  The minority sects which had always been declared not truly Muslim have been further marginalized.

Those Muslims who have practised a heritage and a culture within the religion that reflected their geography were held to be heretics and apostates, and they have been oppressed and preyed upon, and attempts made to destroy them.  As the world progressed to a more enlightened version of what had earlier prevailed, Muslims appeared to melt back into the past in embrace of what once was, eschewing any opportunities to meld their religion with modern social thought.

Now, the Wahhabists, the Salafists, the fundamental Islamists are on the upsurge, a renewal that has been a hundred years and more in the making.  And lately, in the last several years, as the order that has been in place through the administration by tyrants and dictators, princes and sheiks and theocracies have been placed in jeopardy through popular uprisings, the Islamists have recognized their opportunities and moved into position.

As they do so, throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa, they methodically destroy all ancient vestiges of what they take to be idolatry, commissioned by the past and the orders of Mohammed himself to do so.  Relics of the sacred order of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, are all endangered as Islamists move into position to destroy them as insults to the only true religion.

In Libya, the Arab Spring brought a malfunctioning state whose government is unable to bring the tribes together and surrender their weapons, so they are allowed to dig up the Sufi saints' graves.  In Egypt, Christian churches are destroyed.  In Afghanistan and Pakistan ancient artefacts are destroyed.  Shiites and Ahmedis, Sufis and Ismaelis are placed on notice.

"They believe they have a duty to enforce good and prevent evil."  These destructive acts take place "when there is a breakdown of law and order".  When law and order are no longer enforced because the agencies that ensured that peace between sects and tribes prevailed, this is when the Salafists, the Islamists make their presence known by destroying the peace, by wrenching the faithful from their beliefs, and enshrining in their place fanaticism.

Al-Qaeda-linked Salafis have destroyed saints' mausoleums in Timbuktu.  In Pakistan the Taliban bomb and stage bloody assaults on Sufi and Shiite sites.  Sufi shrines near Cairo were destroyed after Hosni Mubarak's fall.

Islamists carted off the remains of sages and scholars from a Benghazi cemetery after the fall of Muammar Gadhafi.  In Iraq, Shiite mosques and their faithful have been bombed by Sunni Islamists.

 The fanatical Saudis have much to answer for; their 19th Century takeover of Mecca and Medina initiated the purification of Islam.