After a long slumber spent in denial, the UN Security Council has decided to do “something” about the forces of neo-Islam now on the rampage in more than a dozen countries across the globe.
Yet the “something” consists of freezing a few bank accounts and making it hard for a few individuals to obtain visas to Western countries — in other words, gestures like those made fashionable by the Obama administration.
It is a quite simplistic “answer” to the far more complex and deadly threat to the peace and security of more than 40 nations posed by the groups in question.
For over a decade the United Nations has been grappling with how to define terrorism, stuck thanks to that worn cliché, “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” (The truth, of course, is that one man’s terrorist is every man’s terrorist.)
In any case, with these neo-Islamist groups — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (a k a Daesh), the Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shabab in Somalia, the Islamic Victory Front in the Levant — we have moved far beyond terrorism in any of its classical definitions. We need a new term for these monsters.
Before the true extent of their atrocities became widely known, politically correct discourse referred to these as “militants.”
Early in his presidency, Barack Obama labeled the precursors of these groups as “extremists.”
In Western Europe, those who still chase the mirage of multiculturalism suggested an even gentler term: “Islamic fighters.”
So, is “Caliph Ibrahim” of the Islamic State an extremist, a militant, a terrorist or an Islamic fighter? None of the above.
All those labels imply behavior that makes some sort of sense in terms of human reality and normal ideologies. Yet the Islamic State and its kindred have broken out of the entire conceivable range of political activity, even its extreme forms.
A “militant” spends much of his time promoting an idea or a political program within acceptable rules of behavior.
The neo-Islamists, by contrast, recognize no rules apart from those they themselves set; they have no desire to win an argument through hard canvassing.
They don’t even seek to impose a point of view; they seek naked and brutal domination.
A “terrorist,” meanwhile, tries to instill fear in an adversary from whom he demands specific concessions.
Yet the Islamic State et al. use mass murder to such ends. They don’t want to persuade or cajole anyone to do anything in particular; they want everything.
“Islamic fighter” is equally inapt. An Islamic fighter is a Muslim who fights a hostile infidel who is trying to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith. That was not the situation in Mosul.
No one was preventing the city’s Muslim majority from practicing their faith, let alone forcing them to covert to another religion. Yet the Islamic State came, conquered and began to slaughter.
The Islamic State kills people because it can. And in both Syria and Iraq it has killed more Muslims than members of any other religious community.
How, then, can we define a phenomenon that has made even al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Khomeinist gangs appear “moderate” in comparison?
The international community faced a similar question in the 18th century when pirates acted as a law onto themselves, ignoring the most basic norms of human interaction.
The issue was discussed in long negotiations that led to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and developed a new judicial concept: the crime against humanity.
Those who committed that crime would qualify as “enemies of mankind” — in Latin, hostis generis humanis.
Individuals and groups convicted of such a crime were no longer covered by penal codes or even the laws of war. They’d set themselves outside humanity by behaving like wild beasts.
In the 18th century, Britain used the concept to hunt down pirates across the globe, notably in the Caribbean. President Thomas Jefferson invoked the same principle to justify sending an expedition to wipe out pirates in Algiers. (Hence “To the shores of Tripoli” in the “Marines’ Hymn.”)
After World War II, the Allies used the same concept to put Nazi chiefs on trial in Nuremberg.
Over the past 10 years, the United Nations has referred to the same concept in trials of the Khmer Rouge mass-killers in Cambodia — without, however, moving to make it part of international law.
Neo-Islamist groups represent a cocktail of nihilism and crimes against humanity. Like the pirates of yesteryear, they’ve attracted criminals from many different nationalities.
The European Union estimates that 2,000 of Daesh’s 10,000 fighters are citizens of EU states. There are also Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pakistanis and Russians from Dagestan.
Having embarked on genocide, the neo-Islamists do not represent an Iraqi or Syrian or Nigerian problem, but a problem for humanity as a whole.
They are not enemies of any particular religion, sect or government but enemies of mankind. They deserve to be treated as such (as do the various governments and semi-governmental “charities” that help them).
To deal with these enemies of mankind, we need much more than frozen bank accounts and visa restrictions.