Shahid Siddiqui, prominent Muslim ‘intellectual’, has been making pretty startling claims about the dead ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Twitter. Today, he claimed that Baghdadi was the ‘biggest enemy of Islam’ in the current century. Most astonishingly, however, Siddiqui claimed that it wasn’t Americans who killed Baghdadi’s ideology but Muslims.
https://twitter.com/shahid_siddiqui/status/1189370142485958656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
To be clear, Baghdadi’s ideology is not dead yet. Not even the terrorist organization he led is dead yet. Therefore, it’s much too early to announce who killed Baghdadi’s ideology given the fact that it’s very much alive and thriving. Another claim that is being made is that 99% of Muslims hated ISIS. That’s simply not true. Although they were viewed as overwhelmingly negative, support for them was not numerically insignificant.
According to a survey by PEW in 2015, 21% of people in Syria supported ISIS. In Libya, it was 7%, Nigeria 14%, Tunisia 13%, Malaysia 11% and Pakistan 9%. These numbers may appear small statistically but numerically, these are huge numbers and a matter of great concern.
Furthermore, it needs to be understood that ISIS isn’t the only face of Radical Islam. It’s one of radical Islamic trrrorism’s many faces. And these numerous terrorist organizations are often fighting each other as well and disagree with each other on several matters. Therefore, a person may not support ISIS but be a supporter of radical Islamic terrorism nonetheless.
Apart from ISIS, some major Islamic terror organisations that share its ideology include the Taliban, Al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab etc. Moreover, there are numerous organisations operating at the local level in various countries.
In Pakistan, for example, where ISIS has the support of 9% of the population, numerous other terrorist organizations thrive and prosper. The country uses terrorism as state policy against India. Therefore, support for ISIS cannot be a metric for favourable attitudes toward Radical Islamic Terrorism. For instance, Kashmir is a hub of Radical Islamic Terrorism but it has very little to do with ISIS. Thus, Siddiqui’s argument is fundamentally flawed.
Shahid Siddiqui was the subject of much ridicule and mockery on social media for his tweet.
https://twitter.com/Sanjay_Dixit/status/1189420941484257280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/iabhinavKhare/status/1189414823752130561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/AndColorPockeT/status/1189419451277443072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/PankajBadola2/status/1189383058593587200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Shahid Siddiqui is known to engage in obfuscation on such occasions. For instance, two days after Kamlesh Tiwari was murdered by Jihadis, he was involved along with others in an attempt to deflect attention from the perils of radical Islamic terrorism and accusing the ‘Hindutva brigade’ of hatred.