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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Destroying Mephistopheles

Some years ago, I came across a very profound thought in a Fantastic Four comic. Superhero comics, at their heart, portray the unending battle between good and evil, and in this particular story, the end is achieved when Mephisto, evil personified is banished from his own realm. Yet, in victory, one of the heroes explains that Mephisto did not create evil, but rather was simply the face of evil and that so long as evil lived on in the world, Mephisto would simply rise again no matter how often they defeated him. It was a lesson that struck a chord with me and I have never forgotten the idea.

I was reminded of this lesson, not once, but many times over the last few months as the Islamic State rose across Syria and Iraq. The sheer barbarity of these murderous hordes seems beyond comprehension, and as they piled on the atrocities, vows to defeat them have poured in from leaders in both the nations that bear the immediate brunt of their violence as well as those further out in the West. Last week, when they posted a video showing the chilling murder by burning of a captured Jordanian pilot, Jordan vowed to destroy the ISIS. And I found myself asking anew: how do you destroy the evil that drives this rabble?

Military power can never defeat the ISIS. To be sure, the armies now bringing their might to bear against this militia can wrest control of the towns and cities that currently lie in silent suffering beneath the black banners, but this is a war that is not really about territory. In some ways, the ISIS obscured the real problem when they set out to establish a physical nation or Caliphate. Now Syria and Iraq and their myriad allies have a tangible target, be it Mosul, Raqqa or any of the many other towns under ISIS governance. And in turn, when the ISIS sought legitimacy as a state, they undertook the very tasks and burdens that had marked the failure of the preceding regimes there and paved the way for the very success of the ISIS. There are reports that water supply and electricity services have seriously contracted under the ISIS and that farms will produce a fraction of what they did under the far from perfect or tender rule of Assad or Maliki.

But in the end, the ISIS is not a real state, no matter its claims. It is the face of an idea, and ideas cannot be defeated by battlefield victories. The ISIS may be destroyed in battle, its soldiers killed or captured and every last leader of note executed, but unless there is a real change in the mindset of an entire people, it is only a matter of time before another entity arises to feed the madness that infects the world. The ISIS did not train or dispatch the killers in Paris, or those who seem to strike near daily in towns across Europe. ISIS, or at least the original ISIS, did not capture the Egyptian Christians who were killed in Libya late last week. It was Boko Haram, not ISIS who stalks the villages of Nigeria, slaughtering innocents and kidnapping children to sell into slavery. The Lord's Resistance Army flourished in Uganda long before ISIS was even dreamed of, and provides proof, if further proof be needed that the madness may wear the face of one religion more often than others, but can in fact exist in any and every absolutist religion and ideology. Twenty years ago, we called that evil the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's worth recalling that two decades of war against the Taliban have brought us no closer to defeating them.

There are certainly steps that can be taken to constrain the rise of these murderous groups. The governments across the region, from West Africa, across the arc of North Africa and Middle East all the way into Central Asia, South Asia and beyond, have long failed their people at so many essential levels. So many of these countries provide less than acceptable civic services, be it roads, electricity or even drinking water; worse yet, the lands groan under a tyranny of corruption, where even basic justice is usually no more than a dream, and victory in the court of law has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with the depth of one's pockets. Be they secular or otherwise, there has been a collective failure that simply leaves the hapless natives willing to turn to any group that promises change. And harsh as the justice system is in the hands of these nominally Islamic parties, it sadly is often perceived as an improvement over the Byzantine and onerous system it replaces. A functioning and responsive government does not guarantee victory, nor ensure that religious fanaticism will never flourish, but it will greatly improve the chances of both and failure to provide such a government will doom the region to more, and viler versions of these butchers and their murderous ideas.

The second step is far harder. We, the world in general and the afflicted regions in particular, need to embrace liberalism, compromise, diversity and education. For seventy years or more, the governments of the Middle East have fanned hatred towards Israel to divert attention to their own shortcomings. Even governments further afield, with absolutely no real link to the Palestinian people, like India, Pakistan and Indonesia, have nurtured hatred towards Israel in an ill-conceived attempt to keep their Muslim populations pliable. But most of these regimes lost control of the forces they'd unleashed a long time ago, and most of the hatred they'd engendered turned inwards, towards their governments or convenient other targets. Israel was never really the issue, neither her real or imagined acts against Muslims, but hatred once released is easily fixated on alternate targets. It is unfortunate that we cannot turn back the clock and so prevent this madness. Instead we can only try to deal with the matured consequences of that juvenile decision. While honesty at this stage would likely gain little, a toning down of the mindless rhetoric would be a first and vital step. Acknowledging the mistakes of the past and especially embracing the rights of the religious minorities would be a crucial step.

Islam has no governing body, but a synod of Islamic scholars and priests would carry great influence, far more than any single leader. Simply because such an act has never occurred in the past does not preclude one in the future. If there is one thing at which religious leaders excel, it is finding new ways to remain relevant in a changing world. A Council of Nicea-style  gathering, and especially including the leaders of both major branches, could provide the only kind of compelling voice that can convince the credulous believers and footsoldiers of the error of their ways. If such a council did convene, it would finally launch the Islamic world onto a path for modernity.

And in the end, only embracing modernity and tolerance can deliver the Middle East from the madness of the ISIS. Killing a soldier of the ISIS, or a hundred or a thousand, means but little in a word where life in cheap, but de-legitimizing the  leaders and their ideology will make all the difference. In the end, it is impossible to defeat, or even permanently destroy the ISIS on the physical field of battle but they can and must be defeated in the realm of ideas.