Fatwa against Islamic State: Why reform must come from within

It may be symbolic but it's a start. Earlier this week, 1,050 Islamic clerics in India issued a fatwa against the Islamic State (ISIS).

Now a fatwa is not a command but a religious "ruling" - a legal opinion that is obligatory for the faithful but not binding on them.

When Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie on February 14, 1989, following the publication of The Satanic Verses, it was widely interpreted as a death sentence. And several attempts to kill Rushdie were indeed made.

Since fatwas have come to acquire a life of their own, the one issued by a collection of Indian Islamic clerics against the ISIS is welcome. It points to a singular truth: reform in Islam can come only when Muslims - clerics and their flock - embrace it from within.

Islamic clerics in India are not known for their progressive views. But the brutality of the ISIS has pricked the conscience of right-thinking Islamic scholars worldwide. The clerics in India who issued the fatwa say the "killing of innocent people is un-Islamic" which is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. They add somewhat rhetorically that the posting of videos online of beheadings and other brutal crimes by the ISIS is also "un-Islamic".

So where do we go from here? What influence do clerics have on their faithful in India and who exactly are they? Among the Indian Islamic organisations which signed the fatwa against the ISIS are the Ulema Council of Inda, Ajmer Dargah, Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah, Darul Uloom Mohammadiya, Jamiat Ulama-e-Maharashtra, Jamiat Ahle Hadees Mumbai, Raza Academy, All India Tanzeem Ammay-e-Masjid, Aamil Sahab Dawoodi Bohra and Sayed Zahir Abbas Rizvi Zainabya.

This is what the fatwa, translated from Urdu, says: "Publishing images/videos of killings of innocent humans on the internet is absolutely un-Islamic and inhuman. As Allah says, whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption in the land, it is as if he has slain (the) entire mankind. Those who torture innocent people for no lawful reason deserve to be punished. Definitely Allah punishes those who torture his creations in the world. If you be kind to people on earth, then only divine mercy will be bestowed upon you. Allah doesn't (show) mercy on those who are not kind to his creations. The claims of ISIS of Islamic rule are absolutely absurd and accursed. It can't be a rule of Islam in any condition. The un-Islamic and inhuman views and practices of ISIS prove it has no relations with Islam or its teachings."

But then the ISIS is not so much about Islam as it is about money and power. The self-declared ISIS "caliphate" in a swathe across Syria and Iraq has an estimated annual revenue of $1 billion (Rs 6,650 crore). Most of this money comes from oil facilities in captured areas, taxes on the local population, and kidnapping for ransom and extortion. A significant number of ISIS fighters are white - Europeans and Eurasians from trouble spots like Chechnya in southern Russia.

The ISIS would have got nowhere without initial help from Sunni Saudi Arabia which funded it to fight Shia Iran's putative domination in the Middle East. Iraq is a Shia-majority country. Syria's ruling Alawites are aligned with Shia Islam. That is why the Saudis poured money into the ISIS early on to counter the rise of an Iranian zone of influence in the Middle East once Western sanctions were lifted - a possibility the Saudis had factored in years ago.

The ISIS, like factions of the Taliban in Pakistan, has inevitably turned on its patron. For Saudi Arabia, the problem is now two-fold: a rising Shia Iran which it had always feared; and an out-of-control ISIS that could threaten its feudal monarchy.

The war on the Shia Houthis in Yemen led by the Saudis and the Gulf states has not yet quelled the rebels despite six months of airstrikes. During the latest raid by Saudi jets, several Indian civilians working in Yemen are feared to have been killed as they were crossing from Yemen to Somalia in boats. The Americans have made matters worse by not committing more firepower against the ISIS. Though top ISIS leaders have been killed by US precision-guided bombs, the ISIS continues to take over town after town in Syria and Iraq. Arabic-speaking British special forces have responded by infilitrating into ISIS-held territories to hunt down ISIS killers like "Jihadi John" but with limited success.

The ISIS continues to occupy new Syrian and Iraqi territory while Arab Gulf states watch helplessly. It is telling that in the wake of the mass exodus of migrants from the Middle-East flooding Europe, wealthy Gulf states like Kuwait and Qatar have not offered the desperate refugees safe haven. Their silence and inaction is an indictment, if one was still needed, of the malignant role Arab leaders have played in turning their region into the cauldron of brutality it is today.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, September 9, the UAE defended itself: "The UAE has made it one of its foreign policy prioritoes to address this issue in a sustainable and humane fashion together with its regional and international partners. The Emirates is a major destination for guest workers and foreign business people from around the world, including the Middle-East."

The UAE says it has taken in 2,42,000 Syrian refugees since the conflict began in 2011-12. But as wave after wave of Arab refugees fleeing the ISIS overwhelms Europe, the clock on Islamic reform is ticking down. Germany alone is expected to receive 8,00,000 asylum-seekers this year. The video of a Hungarian camerawoman - since sacked by her television network - kicking and tripping fleeing Arab refugees has gone viral and shocked Europe into accepting more refugees.

Islam has been harmed most by its leaders and clerics. As I wrote in my recent book: "Though spiritually tethered to Mecca, Islam - unlike its civilisational counterparts - has not had a centre of gravity since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and the abolition of the caliphate by Turkey in 1924. The West is propelled by American and European values, China by its ethnic homogeneity, India by its ancient religions and philosophy. Each has a clear geographical anchor. But Islamic civilisation, whose worldwide influence is strong and growing, is as much at home in East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) as it is in Arab West Asia, non-Arab Turkey and Iran, the Central Asian republics (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan), eastern Europe (Bosnia, Albania), North Africa (Morocco, Libya) and, of course, the subcontinent. Islam transcends nations - both a strength and weakness."

India's 172 million Muslims could represent that strength: they are cut from very different cloth and have little in common with their Arab co-religionists. Few have joined the ISIS. Moderate Muslims in India must now reject the politicians and clerics who have kept them poor and backward for over six decades.

If Islam is to be reformed into a progressive, forward-looking faith, that reform must come from within. The alternative is a spread of the ISIS virus from the Middle-East across the larger Islamic world.