A terrible death, arson, befell the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh (age 26), captured at the end of December by the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) after his plane was shot down during an anti-IS operation in Raqqa, Syria. The pilot was burnt alive after being shut in an iron cage, and his burnt remains were covered with debris and razed with a scraper. The macabre ritual was shot with painstaking attention to detail into a video spread on the Web to achieve the goal of the extremist of the Caliphate: threatening Jordan and the Gulf States by showing the fate that expects the militaries of the anti-IS coalition run by the US, once they are captured.
The 22-minute video, published online yesterday through a Twitter account known as a source for IS propaganda, also shows the pilot walking near the debris of a destroyed toen and the images of burnt corpses of victims of a shelling, with a reference to the coalition’s air strikes.
The barbarian execution of Moaz al-Kasasbehha caused te decision of the Jordanian government to execute the Iraqi female militant Sajida al-Rishawi, sentenced to death for taking part in the attacks of November 2005 in Amman, that caused 60 deaths. A sort of an immediate revenge against the IS, that carries on the cruel media strategy aiming at sowing terror among the population of the Muslim countries, which is the true goal of the Caliphate, as Domenico Quirico, correspondent of La Stampa, said in this interview with Gariwo.
Quirico came very close to the horror of fundamentalism, as he was imprisoned in Syria for 152 as a hostage of the Islamic State from April to September 2013m and he told about his tragic experience in a book, Il Paese del Male (the country of evil), where he warned people against the great danger represented by the growing power of jihadists. A few weeks ago Quirico published a new book, Il Grande Califfato, (the great Caliphate) for the same Italian publisher, Neri Pozza: a long journey from Turkey to Nigeria through the territories occupied by the "global Islamist totalitarianism". He is an exceptional witness to this conflict that seems to be endless.
After the savage execution of the Japanese journalist a few days ago, you wrote in your newspaper: “I think I know what Kenji Goto, the latest victim of the executioner of the caliph of Mosul, must have felt. I know because, just like him, at a certain point during my imprisonment, even though nothing seemed to change, I felt death was approaching”. Can you tell us what you felt, as you, too have been a prisoner of IS, when you learnt that also this hostage was murdered?
The tales of all abducted peoople, some ended tragically, others like mine which fortunately had a positive outcome, are my own tale. I cannot read about them or listen to them without feeling innerly moved, because every time I experience again my days, hours and minutes in imprisonment. I should leave these things behind, but it is nearly impossible to me as I always feel an echo, a background sound, a noise that becomes stronger and stronger whenever such ordeals happen to others. Unfortunately this means that to me these events always repeat themselves.
What is the purpose of terrorists as they show the cruelty of executions on video?
This is truly a new phenomenon in comparison to the past, when terrorism aimed at frightening people with its deeds, spreading a sense of precariousness and the fear of being hit any time. Today things have changed, the target of these terrifying executions are not Westerner, but the very Muslims from al lover the world who must see this kind of a lesson planned by the men of the Caliphate. The lesson is that the Caliphate is so powerful that it is able to crack down on those who earlier were the masters of the world: the Americans, te Britons, and the Japanese. It is the evidence that there is a shift in the balance of strength in the world. Islam is again strong, a winning player able to execute and punish infidels. This is the message and its targets are not us, nor Obama, nor Cameron, but the Muslims who are bystanders of this horrible show, in which the Islamic warrior slits the throat of the infidel, who is on his knees and faces his fate helplessly. He is the scapegoat and the knife is the instrument of the human sacrifice.
Therefore, even if Western countries opted for a waiver on the broadcasting of such video, there would be an impact in the Muslim countries all the same.
Unfortunately it is a kind of naiveté from Westerners to think they are the targets of these things. It is not us. None of these terrorists cares about what we think of them. They do not read the New York Times, they don’t watch CNN, they do not read the Website of the Corriere della Sera. This is really meaningless to them. We keep on thinking that the world turns around us and gets worried about what we think, but it is not like this. Nope.
Is radical Islam a degeneration concerning a minority or does it reflect a kind of hostility towards the West that is widespread in the Muslim world?
It is a bit weird to talk about “minorities” here. Nazis where a minority in comparison to Germans and unfortunately they ruled over Germany and a big part of Europe until 1945. Bolsheviks were a very tiny bunch of people in comparison to the Menshevik party, but they dominated over Russia and a part of the world for nearly a century.The concept of “minority” is misleading, as there are strongly determined minorities with precise plans and they are better suited for power struggle than majorities made by idle, unenthusiastic people who are only interested in getting by, living the day and not being disturbed; people who accept everything in change for their calm. Dictatorships and totalitarianism are the consequences of this relationship between a minority and a majority. Most Muslim inhabitants, who just want to live day after day, do not think that the Jihadists will disappear, on the contrary they believe they will seize the power. This is the problem.
Do you think dialogue with the Muslim world or at leasr with some of its components is still possible?
Dialogue with whom? What is the Muslim world? Is it the Sh’ias who massacred a part of a conquered village? Is it Iran, that funded international terror for years? I sit the curds, who in 1915 slaughtered a million Armenians? Are these our allies? Ben Alì, former dictator of Tunisia; Mubarak, ex strongman of Egypt; the kings of Saudi Arabia who founded all kinds of terror of the past thirty years; the corrupted rulers of the Arab Emirates? Who are our counterparts in the moderate Muslim world? The leaders of the Sahel States, who fall for a coup after another for corruption and misgovernment? We must decide who is part of the moderate Islam towars which we want turn for help. I feel we hypocritical build unreal worlds in our minds.
Which are the elements that draw the Westerners to enlist in the ranks of the Islamic State, the motives why they have become militants?
Among the foreign fighters of the Caliphate there are people born and bred since a couple of generations in Europe, the West. Most of them are integrated in the society, they are not outcasts for whom putting their lives to risk in a country where they are not even able to speak the local language is an attractive alternative to the nothingness of daily life. This obliges us to ask ourselves more complex questions than the rhethoric read on the newspapers after the Paris attacks, as if they were aliens or meteorites that came to our orderly and happy societies from the deserts of Arabia. The issue is far more complex, because these people are the consequence of the failure of all policies of integration that were carried out towards Muslim minorities. The charm of such extreme an experience such as dying in a merciless war such as the Syrian-Iraki conflict stems from the attraction drawn by a totalitarian choice in a problematic, dim, grey world, which is seen as deprived of the certain values such as their own. Good on one side, Evil on the other, being enlisted in the ranks of good and feeling the vertigo of choosing a right and definite wat. The charm of totalitarianism, that worked also outside the religious realm, up to a certain point at least, in communism: people immolated themselves persuaded that communism was the truth. Islam is the holy cause in a world where holy causes, like the Western values, are not there anymore.
