Monsters

British Prime Minister David Cameron tried to capture in words the immense outrage of all humanity. Of the ISIS militants who staged yet another gory execution, he said: “They are not Muslims, they are monsters.” He was careful to point out that Islam was a community of peace.

British aid worker David Haines was murdered before the cameras a few days ago in yet another gory propaganda exercise carried out by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  Before him, American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were murdered in exactly the same manner.

All three were captured and held hostage for months by the militants. Intelligence analysts believe the militant who carried out the execution is one and the same person speaking with a distinct British accent. The militants describe the gory executions as retaliation for the participation of US warplanes in the effort to destroy the heavily armed columns of the ISIL that swept down Iraq from neighboring Syria a few months ago.

A fanatical and violent movement, the ISIL spawned in Syria in the midst of the brutal civil war raging there. That civil war began with Syrian groups demanding democratization and an end to the despotic Assad regime. At the start, the Syrian opposition was understood as a reflection of the “Arab Spring,” a growing advocacy for more open societies.

Over the course of this protracted civil war, however, the lines of delineation between the opposing forces began to replicate the old communal lines of tribal and sectarian identity. In Syria, the majority Sunni tribes are subordinated by a regime closely affiliated with a Shiite sect. In post-Saddam Iraq, on the other hand, the Sunni minority has been marginalized by the Shiite-controlled regime in Baghdad.

With the growth of the ISIL, the pro-democracy forces in the anti-Assad opposition were pushed to the margins. The extremist Sunni militants, with their immense appetite for bloodletting, began to dominate. As the civil war in Syria settled into a deadly stalemate, the ISIL decided early this year to swing south and take territory.

ISIL forces easily overrun Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and many more key cities on the route to Baghdad. The Iraqi Army fell back in the face of the unexpected offensive, yielding armor and artillery to the advancing militants. The regime in Baghdad, strongly supported by Shiite Iran along with the western powers, had to rely heavily on the militia units of autonomous Kurdistan to break ISIL’s momentum.

  ISIL’s expedition has been marked by blood. Shiite communities were razed. Civilians were murdered en masse. Ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds, faced wholesale extermination. This movement’s bloodlust, which Cameron calls “pure evil,” makes Adolf Hitler look like a Boy Scout.

Threat

The ISIL in now a global threat far more menacing than Al Qaeda ever was. Its leaders threaten acts of terror on Europe and North America.

Intelligence estimates put the number of foreign fighters affiliated with the ISIL at about 3,000. They come from scores of countries, possibly including the Philippines.

It was former president Fidel Ramos who first broke the news that Filipino fighters have joined ISIL in the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. There is word the Abu Sayyaf fighters have enlisted. The BIFF recently announced their allegiance to this bloodthirsty movement.

Our own intelligence services had no inkling this was happening. Now, we are told, our military intelligence is finally looking into the veracity of information.

What is confirmed is that young adventurers from North America and nearly all countries of Western Europe are now fighting side-by-side with the ISIL. The threat posed by these extremists goes beyond genocide in the Iraqi desert. With territory under their control and a war chest that grows by the day, the ISIL could project its influence by sponsoring terrorist attacks across the globe.

ISIL has become the new base for Islamic extremism. It influences other radical movements elsewhere, from the marauding radical militias that overrun cities in Libya lately to lingering groups like the BIFF in Mindanao.

Clearly, this fanatical movement has upgraded its agenda from just overthrowing the Assad regime or breaking Baghdad’s control of Iraq. It has assumed the mantle of global jihad out to exterminate all infidels.

BBL

The horrifying phenomenon that is the ISIL unavoidably casts a worrying shadow over the forthcoming debates regarding the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).

What the ISIL wants to accomplish is the establishment of an “Islamic state” governed according to the harshest interpretation of Sharia law. That political project runs against the grain of the separation between state and religion — the single most important achievement of modern civility.

What the BBL seeks to accomplish is the establishment of an Islamic “substate” governed according to the precepts of Sharia law — whose interpretation may vary according the doctrinal fashions inspiring its interpreters. At any rate, the very idea of establishing political authority on the base of some doctrinal reading runs against the grain of modern civility.

The “Caliphate” ISIL wants to establish fuses temporal with doctrinal authority. The “Bangsamoro” entity, with its own “basic law” and whose boundaries are defined by religious identity, will achieve the same fusion. In the modern era, the only state that fused doctrinal with political authority is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

We need to thoroughly think through the BBL. This could be a Pandora’s Box containing many hideous possibilities.

In an age when extremist Islam has become the fashionable opiate for all the alienated and disenfranchised worldwide, Mindanao could become the new Mecca for radicalism.