Time to reclaim Islamic State?

No, it’s not about Islamic state per se but the term ‘islamic state’. We often deliberately ignore or just circumvent significance a term carries, especially when it’s attached to an ideology or a creed. In recent past we have lost much, let us see how.

A term can represent a positive or a negative thing but in some borderline cases ie ideologies, attribution of meaning to a term plays a decisive role. Communism is such a term. Its proponents boost it as an unavoidable dialectical system which will unchain proletariats and create equal economic opportunities for all. Capitalists on the other side, call it a system which creates authoritative role for state to control people money and curb freedom. Both sides vied for attribution of such a meaning to ‘communism’ which they supported and we all know which side won. Western propaganda machine successfully convinced world that Communism is not a right alternative to status quo. Resultantly, very term of ‘communism’ has lost charm what it once expounded.

Same is true for us. After fall of USSR, guns have turned towards Islam. Today many western social strategists are calling for tackling islamic radicalism (which is, for them, not different from ‘Islam’) on the same lines, ‘Communistic Aggression’ was tackled. Don Philpott and Robert T Jordan in their book ‘Is America Safe?’ tried to draw similar analogies between two different ideologies. What were those lines and what was that strategy? Answer is self-evident if we’ll examine some of the terms we once fervently ‘revered’. ‘Jihad’, ‘Jihadi’, ‘Shariah’, ‘Caliph’ and likes are the terms which now popularly mean as ‘relentless act of non-muslims’ killing’, ‘religious fanatic and murderer’, ‘brutal code of life’ and ‘dictator or father of religious fanatics’ respectively. Go back in time, merely three decades, we will see US openly lauding Afghan ‘Jihad’ and ‘Jihadis’ because they served their purpose at that time. Now we can’t even mumble such words in our own countries because we fear international backlash against those misunderstood terminologies. We all know Zakir Naek’s ordeal after a misquoted definition of ‘terrorism’. It should be taught to world that negativity should not be posited towards our religious terms. Fault is on our side too, as most of us solemnly believe ‘Jew’ means a ‘Shrewd Exploiter’. We should all collectively denounce this smear campaign.

Now ‘Islamic State’ was never meant to be like the one al-Baghdadi controls. We all know it is not an Islamic state so we should not call it one. For past few months not only western media but our own media continuously refers to ISIS - or Daaesh - as simply IS (Islamic State). Just google ‘Islamic state’ and you’ll have myriad of horrendous, hurting and intimidating results.

For sake of argument one can readily point out that ISIS itself has used this term for their representation, so media will automatically borrow it. But this argument is utterly fallacious and repugnant to international practices.

·         When Yugoslavia disintegrated, one of its seceding states Serbia & Montenegro proclaimed herself as a continuation of Yugoslavia because they wanted to grab sympathies and nostalgia attached to term ‘Yugoslavia’ but World didn’t recognize this claim and declared Yugoslavia as an extinct state.

·         Taiwan to this date calls itself ‘China’ but World does not recognize this claim, therefore media never refers to Taiwan as China.

·         Ted Kaczynski, an American terrorist, proclaimed his organization as ‘Freedom club’ because he wanted to entice distressed American youth but media always named it as ‘Una-bomber’ because his organization (which turned out to be non-existent) was not a ‘Freedom Club’.

All is true for ISIS which wants ‘Islamic state’ to harvest muslims’ religious sentiments around globe but world does not recognize it as a valid or de-jure state so there is no justification for headlines like ‘Islamic State has taken two hostages’.

Effect of carelessly attributing ISIS as Islamic state is three pronged.

1.      It fuels half-baked minds of young muslims or converts to believe it as a real utopian Islamic state which muslims always longed for.

2.      It seconds ISIS’s stance of declaring themselves as an Islamic state.

3.      This practice is gradually turning this term into another misnomer, which is being linked to a diametrically opposite and wrong connotation.

If we can’t help ourselves calling it an Islamic state, can’t we at least use phrases like self-proclaimed or self-styled with it? If we fail to take down ISIS’s gimmick and West’s ‘terminological’ onslaught we will lose intrinsic ‘sacrosanctness’ of one more term. Do we want Islamic State to be a synonymous of ‘terrorist state’? Time to reclaim Islamic State is now otherwise it will be lost forever in smokescreen of misunderstanding and who knows ‘Islam’ could be next!