Da’ish’s defeat requires a unified response in the media as well as on the battlefield
MUTHANNA JAMIL JABBAR IRAQi MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
Whether war is decided with victory or defeat is based on a set of battles and the data of each battle. The battles we refer to are not only military battles, but also include intelligence, moral, media and geographic battles. They are all as important as a military battle, yet they can sometimes have an even stronger impact on the enemy in terms of breaking morale.
In our war against Da’ish criminals, we see the positive results of military battles opening a way toward victory without the extremely important moral and media support. When we refer to the media in this context, we do not mean the coverage of battles by our reporters; this aspect of the media is based on context and routine practice.
There is no doubt that the way Da’ish conducts war is new and unprecedented. Our Armed Forces are not fighting uniformed forces or a known army, but groups of criminals who are trained to carry out street gang wars under the cover of religion under which they hide. These criminals have come from the jails of various countries. To defeat and break Da’ish, is it enough to cover the news of the battles? Or should we also engage in an intensive media response carried out by all media networks at all levels, including satellite channels, broadcasting stations and, especially and most important, a religious response by Muslim scholars?
This response must not merely be a message that Muslim scholars affix their signatures to and then sit waiting for the awakening of a criminal whose ideologies were provided by a Da’ish leader who himself is a criminal by nature. There is no need to address him or call him an infidel, but we must address and debate Da’ish members themselves because we know for sure that there are many among them who have been misled and deceived and might be waiting for a spot of light or ray of hope to guide them away from criminality.
This debate will definitely not be face to face; we know that Da’ish does not have the courage for such a confrontation. The debate will be merely a media confrontation (one fatwa against another fatwa, one piece of news against another piece of news, one report against another report). We respond to them and explain ourselves extensively — this should be carried out especially by the clergy.
This is the time for cooperation and unity, first on the level of religions, then on the level of sects. This is the time for unity and holding firmly to the rope of God Almighty because Da’ish started as a philosophy of deviant thought before it became a group of armed criminals. Therefore, to defeat them militarily, we also must contradict their sick thoughts. This battle needs comprehensive participation from Arabs and Muslims to root out this philosophy stained by the blood of innocents.
If only we can come together and combine our resources and financial capabilities to support a media battle and produce Islamic movies and stories about the life of our noble Prophet in response to the movies of slaughtering and killing that Da’ish used to terrorize one set of people and attract another. In spite of the ferocity of the battles and savagery of Da’ish, the Arab-language media is still weak compared to Da’ish’s online media. We must unify Arab and Islamic discourse against the crimes of Da’ish.
The Muslim scholars’ discourse should also be unified against Da’ish crimes to provide true support for the results of the military operations. Da’ish is a foreign occupation that targets Arab Muslim existence. It has started in Iraq but its goal is to conquer all Arab Muslim countries. I don’t believe that we will allow them to do that. We will wait to see our scholars’ efforts that will provide solidarity to reveal the lies, arrogance and falsity of Da’ish. When all of Da’ish’s acts are deemed illogical, then it will be inevitable for the correct logic to prevail.
Lessons learned
Ordinary human beings move through life to learn moral and spiritual lessons and examples. For that purpose, God honored man with grace of mind to analyze events and daily interactions, to draw conclusions, and to preserve them in the memory to become a reference for future conduct. It is said that “life is experiences.” As Iraqis, our nation above others has been through all kinds of difficult experiences and tests that built character and style. Maybe one of the most severe and bitter experiences is what we are going through now with these bands of infidels and criminals. Those are the terrorists of the so-called Da’ish, considered the most dangerous and cruel in the history of Iraq because it invented several new and unprecedented types of killing and terrorism, commits blasphemy and abuses the religion of Islam and all other divine religions. It practices many obvious and cruel violations against humanity, Shariah and all humans laws. In the short period during which Da’ish terrorists entered our beloved country, they murdered many innocent and pure lives unjustly, seized cities, tarnished the sanctity of their safe homes and honor, tampered with property and destroyed history in an apparent attempt to obliterate the national identity and erase the products of our honorable ancient civilization.
They will not keep us away from our origins and our true identity that built the foundations of law, culture and knowledge for the whole world. They are also trying to distance us from our religion and its magnanimous teachings by spreading their poisonous thought and philosophy. Da’ish’s ideological invasion is considered more dangerous even than those of the Mongols and Tatars, who made many attempts to destroy the thoughts, knowledge and beliefs of the Iraqi people.
Da’ish’s ideological assault threatens the whole world. It builds its human resources from all over the world and finances itself from several sources inside and outside Iraq. The Iraqi people took it upon themselves to cleanse their land — land is indeed our responsibility. But the main pledge, to destroy Da’ish thought and philosophy, extends to the neighboring countries and beyond. Here lies those countries’ responsibilities: to help Iraq and stand by it in its war against terrorism and eliminate its remains. Threats to property and land are not only aimed at Iraq; the threat of this poisonous thought targets all nations and governments. This is evident because Da’ish recruits from across various identities and genders.
Da’ish has definitely desecrated our land and tarnished our religion, beliefs and civilization. It cost our people their lives and livelihood. Da’ish tried to tear out our national identity, but in doing so, they opened new horizons for us — they may have clarified matters that have been incomprehensible to us before. It presented us with many moral and spiritual lessons, the most important of which is that unity is the ideal solution, and the terrorists’ efforts to differentiate between sects, to create divisions and to destroy cooperation have been exposed. These lessons and many others are important to us as Iraqis so that we unify our ranks, bolster our own efforts, and boost our resolution to reject racism and sectarianism and to depend on ourselves. Once we learn from these lessons, Da’ish will not be able to prevent our victories. We will prove to the whole world that the Iraqi nation is still the same, the nation that rises against injustice and infidelity. It is the same revolutionary nation that confronted all kinds of aggression and spite against civilization and religion. It is the same united people who were, and still are, calling out in one voice for a goal that is greater than all goals: the freedom, stability and safety of Iraq.