Disillusioned Jihadi

The 22-year-old from Mumbai went to join ISIS but beat a hasty retreat because of working conditions

There are many lessons that Areeb Majeed can draw from his brief encounter with global jihad. The first is that you need to be on the right side of history. A thousand years ago, if he had volunteered to be part of Saladin’s army as the great Sultan drove the Crusaders out of Palestine, then Majeed would have been a hero. Even in defeat, he could have made a name like those intellectuals and artists who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War against Franco and lost. But because they were in the forefront of a modern liberal world, what they did seems foolhardy but admirable.

Majeed, however, chose to take up arms in service of the most retrograde armed religious terrorist movement in the world, whose ideas are drawn from a thousand years ago. What worked for Saladin will not work for ISIS because it is an anachronism riding on the wings of fanaticism and since such an apparition is a global threat, the whole world will gang up to destroy it. Majeed was lucky or belatedly wise in running away. But all actions have consequences and his problems are far from over. He is now neither a martyr to that side nor trustworthy on this side.

What makes a bunch of youths who meet up after evening prayers in a far-flung suburb of Mumbai talk of a war raging in distant lands and at some point find the chatter turning into yearning? How does a 22-year-old engineering student like Majeed look towards Iraq and Syria, ignore the beheadings and wanton slaughter, develop complete contempt for all that makes society egalitarian, and decide that there is a better world to be fashioned out there? To then, without any guide, wade through the internet and after relentless searching finally find a lead and then craft a plan to reach that scarred, embattled and dangerous land?

He does so believing in a higher calling and that God is fighting along with him. And he does so, like the Communists once did, because he thinks victory is inevitable. That is what makes someone like Osama bin Laden move from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan and fight the Russians when the Soviet Union is one of two superpowers and then fight the United States when it is the only superpower. Majeed’s faith was not so unshakeable. In fact, from May when he set off under the pretext of a pilgrimage, to November when he returned to India, his faith was less than six months strong.

He is now being interrogated by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and news leaked by its operatives are all that we have to go by on what made Majeed turn back. One report says that it was his family that made him come back even though they thought him dead. Another says that he didn’t get to fight and was made to clean toilets and ferry water, something that doesn’t fit in with the ambitions of a man who is out to change humanity’s character. And yet another news report says that he was shot and close proximity to death does make one rethink the promise of immortality. And one more report professes him as not being averse to get back to ISIS.

We have no way of knowing the truth to any of this because these leaks that emanate from the NIA are hearsay and never verified by the media. Majeed is, however, going to be under the scanner of security agencies for years. His life is not going to be easy. One of the charges that is said to have been made against him is waging war on the country.

It is hard to see how that fits, given that he was waging war against Iraq as a soldier of ISIS, which is an occupying force in much of Syria and Iraq. He is technically not a terrorist but someone who took sides in a civil war in another part of the world even if it is the same ideology that fuels terrorism. His present miserable situation at home is much better than his fate as an ISIS soldier where the probability of death is far greater. You could call him a coward, but cowards stay alive longer.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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