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The desperate leaders of Isis remind us how retribution must always give way to the sane pursuit of justice

Islam is a peaceful religion and remains defiantly so in spite of efforts to pervert it by the likes of Isis, or any other death cult for that matter – most of whose victims are other Muslims

Tuesday 19 March 2019 20:24 GMT
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New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern vows not to say Christchurch shooter’s name

The terrorist responsible for the deaths of 50 people and for injuring 50 more in the attacks on mosques in New Zealand probably wouldn’t wish to be thought of in the same way as Osama bin Laden. And yet the parallels are apparent.

Both used the technology available to them in the most effective, high-profile manner they could. Both chose “soft”, under-defended targets. Both realised the power of political propaganda and how to tie a message to an act of mass murder. Both had an acute understanding of the modern media, and the culture of 24-hour digital news.

Both wanted to start a war – to do something so outrageous and hurtful that it would attract retaliation and feelings of retribution and a quest for revenge. That might be from national leaders who should know better and realise they are being manipulated.

In that respect this latest episode has, in the terrorist’s terms, had only partial success. A few isolated incidents of religious or racially motivated assault have been recorded, but nothing more serious. Even the murders in Utrecht appear to have had nothing to do with events in Christchurch.

And yet, of course, there is always a deathmonger ready to take advantage of an atrocity and use it for their own ends, more or less willingly taking the bait. The desperately cornered leaders of Isis, holed up in their last territorial redoubt, have thus eagerly grasped the opportunity to call for revenge for the attacks on innocent Muslims.

They will not succeed, just as they have not done so before. The relatively small number of jihadis and “jihadi wives” who travelled from the west to side with Islamic State, of whom Shamima Begum is the most famous figure, are a tiny minority of the Muslim population anywhere, and often too young, naive, brainwashed or misguided to fully understand the enormity of what they were doing.

Islam is a peaceful religion and it remains defiantly so in spite of efforts to pervert it by the likes of al-Qaeda, Isis, the Taliban or any other death cult for that matter – most of whose victims are other Muslims. Islam is a religion that respects others and places sanctity on human life. It is as much use blaming Christianity for the actions of the murderer in Christchurch, or Anders Behring Breivik, or Thomas Mair, who assassinated MP Jo Cox.

There’s one thing that the hard men and women of terror wish for more devotedly than to provoke others to fury and retaliation. In the modern jargon, and even before the audio message about revenge appeared on Isis channels on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, experts had warned that the Christchurch massacre could be used for “reciprocal radicalisation”.

The very medieval bestiality of their methods – including, as in New Zealand, random killings – is designed to extract the maximum emotional rather than rational response. From 9/11, in this modern chapter of the long history of terrorism, the better response has always been to unite, and to pursue the perpetrators through “police” action wherever possible, intelligence-led operations that will, eventually, take the authorities to the leaders of these groups.

The worst thing for the authorities or anyone else to do is to allow murder to beget murder, and to lash out in search of pure retribution. Justice means finding those responsible and making them answerable for their actions, not bombing or shooting indiscriminately.

It is, also, a sign of the acute weakness of Isis that it has chosen to react in the way it has, in an effort to bring itself some form of support from an Islamic world that has long rejected its methods.

Soon it will lose the last piece of its once vast caliphate, and become once again a disparate guerrilla force. It will still be dangerous, and still ruthless and determined. But it can be pursued and brought to justice, not by barrel bombs but by the usual, quieter and more delicate arts of the security services. That, after all, is how Osama bin Laden was eventually discovered – not by bombing every mountain in Afghanistan.

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