Sunday, 3 July 2016

ISIS
I was asked to write a post on ISIS.
Frankly, I have little idea about it. All I could gather about it is from the internet and the media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant
It is said to be a fundamentalist Muslim organization, which has set up a Caliphate. But the Caliphate was a reactionary, feudal institution, which was abolished by the great Turkish leader Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, whom I admire, in the 1920s. Attempts to revive it are reactionary and stupid. I wonder who finances them, supplies them weapons, etc, and directs them from behind ?
I am always suspicious of religious leaders who enter into politics, and movements which have a religious colour, e.g. the Sanyasi movement in the late 18th century in Bengal ( depicted in Bankim Chandra's novel ' Anand Math ' ), the Khilafat movement in India ( which Gandhi supported ), Umar Mukhtar, Ayatollah Khomeini and Muqtada al Sadr, whom I regard as feudal minded idiots, and ISIS. Such leaders and such movements weaken the people by dividing them on religious lines, and tend to take people backwards into the middle ages, instead of taking them forward into the modern age. They are therefore usually enemies of the people, while posing to be fighters for freedom

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