UN is dead; a new league of civilised democracies needs to fight ‘Islamic terror’

Representational image. Reuters

What has been the United Nations’ role in the two biggest crises facing today’s world: The COVID-19 pandemic and ‘Islamist terror’?

On the first, it repeatedly lied and did the bidding of China, a regime that brought about the crippling virus.

On the second, the UN has failed to even define terrorism clearly in the last two decades. It has selectively given some of its sponsors like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan a free run while going after Iran, and allowed China to veto Masood Azhar’s designation as a global terrorist till the mention of his attacks against India were removed.

After Islamists carried out a spate of beheadings in France following the re-publication of Prophet Mohammed cartoons by Charlie Hebdo, UN secretary-general António Guterres came out with a “strong condemnation”, tailed by an appeal for “mutual tolerance”. That was all.

But most importantly, the committee of nations which came together to collectively manage the devastating fallout of the fascism and rebuild the world has failed to honestly scrutinise an even more destructive ideology: ‘Islamism’. A few thousands are killed around the world in the name of Islam every year in hundreds of jihadi attacks. Millions of families are destroyed. The most bigoted and illiberal wolves hide in liberal clothes on academic campuses and manipulate popular opinion from the deep background.

But the UN maintains a sterile political correctness. It parrots the Islamists’ and their ally, the communists’, sophisticated chicanery that these attacks are carried out by a lunatic fringe, that true Islam is peaceful and believes in living in harmony.

This despite truth testifying daily to exactly the opposite. Each of the more than 50 Islamic nations have laws that discriminate against non-Muslims. In many of them, blasphemy is punished by death. Several are State sponsors of terror globally.

And this entire ecosystem derives inspiration and seeks legitimacy for their actions from several deeply problematic and violent passages of one book, which is not at the fringe but at the heart of it. It persecutes non-believers, dissenters, atheists, women, lovers out of marriage and homosexuals, often rewarding them with death.

Yet, the United Nations has never challenged this ideology, demanded reform, or debated whether a religion can openly villainise non-believers and strive for their conversion or elimination.

The Nice attack and France’s tremendously courageous stance of not budging from its liberal ethos under the threat of terror, could become the watershed for a new world order outside the United Nations. With the Islamic world jumping in savage anger at mere cartoons, Samuel Huntington’s intellectual prophecy of a clash of civilisations looks more probable now than it did after 9/11.

It is time for civilised democracies to quietly come together in greater cooperation instead of taking unilateral decisions to prosecute and deport. The parasites will simply shift base to another open and prosperous nation, enjoy state benefits, and create the same hell they had escaped.

Instead, nations need to come together to blacklist Islamist extremist individuals and groups collectively, deport them to their lands of origin, hotlist their profiles at all airports and deny them fat legal fees and all other benefits.

All immigration from countries that encourage violent protests or call for genocide on its soil should be blocked.

And all literature that denigrates other religions and calls for violence against their practitioners should be banned.

Only then, we can begin to reclaim a civilised world.

Views expressed are personal