PICX901: International Security

PICX901: International Security Essay Research

Essay Research

Description:

The completion of a 3500 word research essays is intended to encourage and enable students to develop core disciplinary knowledge, enhance research skills, show effective communication skills and demonstrate originality and critical thinking. The short essay needs to demonstrate wide reading, critical analysis and objectivity, as well as the ability to construct a logical and coherent argument.

The criterion used to assess the research essay (marking template) is posted on the iLearn site under Assessment.

The essay question is provided below

Summary:

The 3500-word limit can be plus or minus 10%, andincludes footnotes, references and bibliography. Font size should be 12 point with 1.5 line spacing. Use of the Harvard referencing style is mandatory. All essays will be

checked through plagiarism software.

At post-graduate level you must ensure that the argument set out in your essay is based onanalysisand assessment and not only description. Opinionsmustbe backed up with correctly referenced evidence and sources.

Direct quotes should be used sparingly and not fill up the essay.

If no extension is sought and the research essays are submitted late, 5% of the available mark will be deducted for each day the submission is late.

Essay Question

1. Has the eruption of ISIS in 2014 ushered in a new era of religious war? Critically discuss with examples.

Has the eruption of ISIS in 2014 ushered in a new era of religious war?In today’s world controversies are very common and no wonder that thousands of innocent people die every day due to such controversies. There have been so many wars among different countries in the world due to land, water, business, etc. There were some wars among communities but not the serious ones. There were times when every individual was free to follow his religion and nobody could force him to change the religion. But, ISIS has

become so powerful that it is asking people to change their religion otherwise kill them (Jeffery, 2004).The freedom for religion is getting erupted gradually and people are coerced to adopt Sharia. Now the time has come when there can be wars in the name religion. This era of religious wars has been started and is coming with great destruction. These practices have so much potential that they can destroy whole world. The same statement can be justified by quoting the example of eruption of ISIS in 2014 (Holmes, 2014). They have announced open war against so many communities and declared that they will end every community and religion on the whole world and establish jihad everywhere.

The group has been originated in the year 1999 and it has also been in alliance with al-Qaeda. ISIS has also participated in invasion of Iraq (Ghambhir, 2015). In the year 2011 after the outbreak of Civil war in Syria ISIS has also send a mission in Syria under the leadership of al-Baghdadi. It holds a number of Jihad groups worldwide and the goal with which it is working is to establish the supremacy of Sharia community. The major objective of ISIS is not known to anyone but according to so many sources, it wants to establish the supremacy of caliphates all over the world (Crooke, 2014). It works on the principle that its Allah’s will to destroy everything and establish Sharitism in the entire world. For this they have started massive attacks on people who are innocent and depicting world that they are very powerful and can do anything. This group is becoming very powerful gradually and it is creating not only political conflicts but religious conflicts as well.

It was in the year 2014 when a serious eruption has taken place in the history of the world. This is something that has shocked the whole world. It happened when the leader of extremist group ISIS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ushered his supporters to “erupt the volcanoes of jihad” (Thornhill, 2015).He released a video in that he called his supporters to erupt the volcanoes of jihad at every place in the earth. He asked them to “light the earth with fire”. He basically ushered his supporters to destroy the earth with massive bombing. Thus is something that is very inhuman and not only shocked everyone but it took the world into a new era of religious war. This is because of the reason that ISIS is Islamic backed and thus it raised so many questions about doctrine of Islam. This extremist leader also said that “America is weak and powerless” (Sherlock, 2015). There are several examples from the whole world about eruption of ISIS and how they are spreading jihad everywhere.

This video propaganda has started after July 5, 2014 when AL-Furgan media has allegedly shown Abu Bakr aka Caliph Ibrahim who I the leader of Islam state addressing a number of Muslim worshipers at Iraqi mosque (Bradley, 2014).This picture and video has enough potential that it can divide the whole world on the basis of religion and can start wars everywhere on the earth. It was a 17 minutes video message but had an impact for a lifetime. He also said that they would never leave fighting even if a single soldier remains. The video also said that Israel was also a secret partner of this jihad group. The ISIS leader said that they will conquer the whole world and they will fight till their last soldier lives (Lister, 2015). They are against every religion and they are passionate to kill everyone who comes in their path.

The bitter truth behind this reality is that ISIS is Islamic and very Islamic. It has been able to attract so many people from Europe and Middle east .There are many youth who have fascinated with ISIS and joined it and this is still continuing (Allesandria, 2014). As a matter of fact, everything that ISIS does it claims that it is pronouncement of Allah and they are following doctrine of Islam. They say that they are following prophecy of Muhammad. But the irony is that nearly all the Muslims reject Islamic State. Muslims from so many countries of the world say that Islam doctrine does not claim anything like this and ISIS is just insulting the religion. The people also say that it is their trap to denounce the religion and bring disgrace to it. Thus, it is also a mystery that this group is actually Islam or it just claims to be Islam. From facts and figures it seems that the terror group is Islam only. There are several supporting facts for this (Patrick, 2014). One reason is that it only attacks people from other religions and secondly it attacks on the Muslims that are Shiia. Thus this group is Islam as it claims to be, but it is Sunni Islam.

The most relevant example that can be quoted to establish that a new era of war has been started in the world is the statement that IS leader has given in the video. “The agents of the Jews, the Crusaders, their slaves, their dogs and their tails on the ground did not hold against the Islamic State, and [their gains] are not going to last.” (Ruth, 2014).The statement simply suggests that ISIS is targeting Jews and taking its every fight with specific reference to a religion. Here, in this statement ISIS is targeting Jews and they have claimed that is going to finish Jews very soon. Their hatred against Jews is very visible from the sentence that they are not even leaving the dogs. They have warned to kill everyone and everything that belong to Jews. Not only has this but another statement that has been released read that “The Muslims are winning, the advances of the jihadist fighters will continue until they reach Rome, with Allah’s help.” (Masi, 2014)This statement clearly establishes that ISIS supposes Islam to be super power and with the help of it they are going to conquer Rome. It shall be noted that Rome is a catholic country and the next target of ISIS is Christian community. This sentence suggests that ISIS will not stop until it reaches Rome. Reaching Rome aspires to make every Catholic a Muslim otherwise kill them. It shall be noted that Rome has huge population that is catholic thus they are targeting Christian population. In this statement the leader also claims that their Allah is helping them to do this.

Such incidents have posed a great threat to all the religions of the world. This is something that has created terror and people have now started associating Islam with terrorism. This is because of the jihad that ISIS leader is spreading. Many researchers say that it may lead to third world war. Religion can be a reason of wars among so many countries in the world(Crawford, 2014).There is a very fine example of jihad that can be quoted from India. In India Islamic men are marrying Hindu women and this is leading to love jihad. This is considered to be a trap of ISIS and they are doing this so as to increase Islam population. Love Jihad has been a matter of great concern for many countries and especially for India. There is an example from men who lives in Lahore Pakistan and he married women from India who is Hindu. First he trapped her in love by making false promises and married her. After marrying the girl came to know that he only intended to have kids from her so that he can increase Muslim population. Besides that, the man also had three wives already. In this way there were many women from around the world who caught in the trap of Love Jihad (Jeffery, 2004).

There is also an example from western countries where ISIS leader has called on Muslims from western countries for vehicular homicide. This is the most heart wrenching incident that has ever happened in the history of the world in name of religion. In September 2014, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the chief spokesman of ISIS has called Muslims in countries such as Canada and France so that he could find infidel after that smashing his head with a

rock then poison him, after that run a car over him (Fouad, 2014).He did all this to scare everyone with images and tell everyone that he can fell down to any level to achieve his motives. At the same time Adnani also referred John Carry (secretary of state) as “uncircumcised geezer”. After all these what Adnani said is something very illogical. Adnani said that he is following orders of Muhammad to leave crops and water alone; otherwise Islam armies would be in a defensive position (Guthrie, 2015).This vehicular homicide has claimed thousands of innocent lives so far and they upload every picture and recording of this homicide over internet. This is how they are finishing the people from other religions.

In November 2014, Islamic state again released a video that is an infomercial video and its origin has been tracked to bin Laden. This video acknowledged Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi as an immediate progenitor and that he has been followed by two guerrilla leaders (Alice, 2014). He was killed in 2006. Thus ISIS is also connected with alQaeda. The main story starts here, it has so many actors in it .Zawahiri has been hated by jihadists that followed him due to several reasons. It has created a split between Islamic state and al-Qaeda. Here many questions have been aroused with respect to holiness of Koran and the prophecies of Muhammad. There are two sects in Islam that are Shiia and Sunni. There are many acts that have potential to remove a Muslim from Islam (Roggo, 2014). Selling alcohol, wearing western clothes, selling drugs, shaving one’s beard, caste a vote in an election even for Muslim etc are the acts that have potential to remove a Muslim from Islam. Most of the Iraqi Arabs are Shiias and in terms of ISIS it simply means that around 200 million Shiia are on the verge of death (Guthrie, 2015).

The group ISIS has proclaimed in 2014 that it would establish caliphate everywhere on the earth. They also said that they are ready to do anything for that. Since the time when group has claimed itself Muslim and Abu Bakr became Caliph of all the Muslims worldwide ever one has criticized this (Jim, 2014). United Nations and mainstream Muslims from around the world rejected his caliph hood and statehood and his idea of controlling all the Muslims. As per the latest data the group has captured huge part of the world but it has captured Iraq and Syria and it has around 8 million people following Sharia law. In Syria this group has conducted a number of ground attacks on rebel factions and government forces. The estimated number of fighters ISIS has is around 31,000 and majority off them are Syrian nationals (Stephen, 2014). ISIS is very active at social media and is infamous for its beheadings. It beheads people brutally and then puts these pictures on social networking sites.

It is responsible for killings of soldiers, civilians, journalists and innocent families. Not only is this but it also destroying historical sites and cultural heritage. United Nations has held ISIS responsible for abusing human rights and war crimes. On the other hand Amnesty International charged ISIS with ethnic cleansing. After all these acts United Nations designated this group with terror group. Around 60 countries in the world are waging direct or indirect war with ISIS. These countries include US, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc (Fouad, 2014).

To conduct such massive attacks worldwide and spared its territory, ISIS is attracting fighters. US State Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken said that the fighters in ISIS not only belong to Syria and Iraq but many other countries. It has also been claimed that only 30%fighters of the group joined the group voluntarily or are “ideologues” rest all of them have joined it because of coercion or fear (Adam, 2014).ISIS adopts several tactics to make people from other religion join the group. In this way it is preparing its group for bigger attacks. Director of National Counterterrorism Centre Nicholas Rasmussenclaimed that in October 2015 the group has attracted somewhere around 27,000 foreign fighters. This figure includes American fighters as well. There are fighters from Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Jordan, France, Lebanon, Germany, UK, Libya, Turkey, Pakistan and Uzbekistan (See figure 1). Thus majorly the fighters belong to Middle East countries and there are several other countries which are not mentioned in this graph because number of fighters is less than 500 from that country (Crooke, 2014). In this way ISIS has strategically planned everything and is able to attract foreign fighters as well for its mission. Fighters are the biggest asset that ISIS has and with the help of this it can conquer the whole world.

Figure 1: Fighters in ISIS from foreign countries

Source: ICSR, CIA World Factbook

After establishing the caliphate ISIS also claimed that every Muslim is bound to emigrate and renounce the citizenship of any other nation. This is indeed a very scaring logic that clearly states the motto of ISIS. It had also announced that this fight would continue till they will achieve this objective. The leader of ISIS also said that they would gradually attack all the religions of the world and finish everything (Guthrie, 2015). He said that people will have two options, either to adopt Islam or die. This is the centre theme upon which ISIS is working. It also claims that any government do not have potential to control and it is only Islam doctrine that shall rule the world. This has lead to massive attacks on people who are not from Islam religion.

To lead their mission and achieve their objectives ISIS has started with destroying a number of temples and church around the world. It had blown up hundreds of temples of which many were thousand years old. The terror group has recently destroyed a 2000 year old temple and destroyed every piece of art and culture with that in Syria (Ghambhir, 2015). This incident is not just alarming for Syria but for whole world. This is something that is not only eradicating the past but it also has huge impact on present and future of the world and especially on the religions. The people who raise their voices against destructions have to pay for it. The similar incident is traced from Syria where a man has to pay his life for standing against ISIS’s brutal destruction. Khaled al As’ad who was taking care of relics was being killed because he refused to reveal about hidden relics. Thus, a man who was saving his religion had to give up his life. His murder was very painstaking; first they beheaded him and then hung his body in public so that everyone can see what happens to the one who saves religions. Likewise there are so many examples that suggest that ISIS is becoming powerful day by day and it seems that it is getting successful in its mission.

The facts and figures with respect to air strikes also suggest that it is becoming very easy for ISIS to succeed in its mission. The figure 2 shows that till November 2015 it has so many air strikes in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The number of confirmed air strikes in Iraq is the highest and that is around 5401, and in Syria it is around 2761 (figure 2). It has captured this region extensively and will further expand in it gradually. It operates free from Mount Sinjar to Ramadi to Aleppo .Only a little part is governed by Kurdistan government, rest all parts are under the control of ISIS. This is also a matter of great concern and it will not only pose a threat on religion but also on political aspects of the countries.

Figure 2: Confirmed air strikes by ISIS

Source: Institute for the study of war, US central command

Due to the terror of ISIS, people from Syria have started migrating to other countries so that they can save their lives from ISIS. But, now migration is also becoming very difficult for them and many innocent families have to pay their lives for this. The terror group is killing everyone who is not Muslim. In many newspapers and media channels the news about massive killings came on the grounds that all those who are not Muslim will be killed by ISIS. The group has so much potential that it announces war and killings very openly because they know that nobody can do anything to them. This is the reason why the power of ISIS is increasing day by day and it is making lives of people very difficult. This has brought a point in lives of people in Syria that they started feeling that hell would be better than this life (Verina, 2014).According to ISIS this is only starting and it would become worse day by day and year after. A time will come when people will even breathe according to the will of ISIS. All these have been claimed by ISIS leader a few weeks back on internet and on its website.

Every new day is coming up with some news about ISIS and their notorious tasks. This has made lives of people in Iraq and Syria miserable. People in these countries are craving for freedom, children do not know what childhood is, females cant’ get out of their homes, males can’t dare to see above , it is something that is basic for an individual to live in these two countries (Holmes, 2014). All the rights and freedom have been snatched from people. They have to blindly obey the orders of ISIS. Anyone who doesn’t do that has to pay for that. It all evolved just because of the religion. Everything that ISIS is doing is because of the religion. ISIS has eve claimed that gradually they will make every corner of the world like Iraq and Syria and every individual will become miserable. They will not be allowed to follow their religion and they will have to ask ISIS for everything even for Piss. This seems to be very scary and give Goosebumps. If this actually happens then the whole world will become hell.

The above information discussed in the essay suggests that ISIS is becoming powerful day by day and it is affecting the dignity of other religions with its inhumane acts. The time has come to prevent the misdeeds of ISIS and stop it from doing all the crap that it is doing in the countries. The countries have to unite together against ISIS and make plans to destroy it. The consequences of ISIS’s acts so far are very brutal and dangerous (Ruth, 2014). Because of it many countries are living in disturbing environment. It has posed a great threat on religions and can lead to severe war among nations. Every individual is born free and he/she has a right to follow any religion according to the wish. Thus, no one has right to stop an individual from doing that. But, ISIS has dared to that and it has an agenda to destroy Rome, Jews and every other religion which is according to them is hampering the preaching of Prophet Muhammad. This war has to be stopped at the earliest otherwise the dignity of whole world and the religions would be in threat. Every individual has to understand that the biggest religion is humanity and there is no big religion than that of humanity. Thus, fights and wars in the name of religion are creating unwanted killings of those who are innocent. ISIS is also doing this unwontedly in the name of its religion besides the fact that almost all the Muslims around the world are saying that Islam does not claim anything like this. By doing this ISIS is not only destroying the religious beliefs and culture of others but also bringing disgrace to Islam religion since it is doing everything in the name of Islam. The year 2014 has been the worst year so far in the history of mankind because a number of people lost their lives in the name of religion in that year. Thus, ISIS has ushered a new era of religious wars by erupting the volcano of hatred against other religions in the year 2014.