By Eliana Benador
I have to push away my tears as I begin to write this article. I have bowed down to God before even beginning, praying for inspiration. Looking at that picture of 21 men in orange uniforms, each walking with their executioner behind them, breaks one’s heart at the malignancy of the human being. And the feeling of sadness is rightfully overpowered by a feeling of revolt because there is only one solution to this drama.
In the story of the Muslim world, there have been some places where other religions have silently coexisted among them, though never in huge numbers, but there has been a true conviviality among Christians, Jews and Muslims, in such countries as: Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and a few others where things turned more difficult as years went by. They mingled indistinctly and respectfully within one another.
Those were the times, not too long ago, where no one paid attention to who was a shi’a or a sunni, and neither did the majority mind that such Jewish, Christians, Coptic minorities quietly and unobtrusively existed in their midst.
Suffice to prove this, to mention that in the aftermath of the liberation of Iraq in 2003, Baghdad got a Kurdish president, a shi’a prime minister and a sunni ambassador in Washington, D.C.
The well-educated Iraqis were among the cream of the crop among the Muslims, until the West intervened.
The above gives a background to what is unraveling in the Muslim world as we speak.
Less than two weeks ago, the Islamic State burned alive a Jordanian pilot. And while there are many speculations about it, let us stick to facts.
The Jordanian King was in America at the time meeting with President Obama when he learned of the gruesome execution. He immediately told U.S. lawmakers that he would pursue the terrorists responsible until Jordan’s military runs “out of fuel and bullets.” This strategist would have advised His Majesty to say, “until none of them is left.”
“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., told reporters after the private meeting. “He mentioned Unforgiven and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.” He vowed that there would be a terrifying response of earth-shaking proportions.
True to his word, Abdullah II King of Jordan, went ahead and did exactly what he had promised.
The first act of the Jordanians took place a few hours later when they hang two terrorists in their custody, including a woman, and for whose release the Islamic State terrorists had been bargaining.
Thereafter, they began an air campaign. During the first days they flew more than 5500 sorties and destroyed 56 Islamic state targets.
According to the Jordanian air force chief, Gen. Mansour al-Jabour, about 7,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed since the beginning of the coalition airstrikes – with the promise of many more to come. Just imagine. Obviously, now we are talking.
Naturally, Jordan has taken a leading role in conducting air strikes against the group in Syria and Iraq this month.
Islamic State terrorists have seemed unstoppable. However, in improving their mastery of evil, they are pushing the limits of tolerance from their victims’ countries that, ahem, happen to be Muslims as well. As we have seen in the above mentioned case of Jordan.
Yesterday, a new video from the Islamic State did the rounds on social media via the Twitter feed of a website that supports them, it begins with a “Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.”
The video shows the gruesome mass execution by beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts they had kidnapped in Libya, where they were working.
The 21 men can be seen being forced onto their knees before they are cowardly and cruelly beheaded by the militants standing behind them.
In the aftermath of the carnage of his compatriots, His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el Sisi, in a somber mode announced that: “Egypt reserves the right to retaliation and with the methods and timing it sees fit for retribution for those murderers and criminals who lack the slightest humanity.”
As a real human being, the Muslim president of Egypt did not even mention any other detail pertaining to the victims. They were Egyptians, his compatriots, his people. The 21 victims of the Islamic State were, simply put, part of the President of Egypt’s large Egyptian family. Period.
On the other hand, Egypt’s Coptic Christian pope was among the various public figures who backed Sisi when he, as army chief, ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 after the mass protests that took place in Tahrir Square.
True to his word, just like the warrior King of Jordan, the strongman of Egypt has sent his country’s air force to drastically and relentlessly bomb Islamic targets inside Libya early today.
The Egyptian dawn strike hit militant camps, training sites and weapons storage areas in neighboring Libya, where civil conflict has plunged the country into near anarchy.
Besides that, Cairo is believed to have provided clandestine support to a Libyan general fighting a rogue government in Tripoli. Now the mass carnages have pushed the Egyptian president in the open, as he expand his war against Islamist terrorism.
Egypt, which is the most populous Arab nation, has not taken part directly in the U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State bastions in Iraq and Syria. They were rather focusing on the increasingly complex insurgency at home.
To complicate things even more, Intelligence sources have identified that the IS terrorists based in Libya have now ties with Sinai Province, yet another terror group operating from Egypt’s vast Sinai Peninsula that has pledged allegiance to, you guessed it, the Islamic State.
By now, the terrorists from Sinai Province have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police since Sisi toppled Mursi and launched a crackdown which killed hundreds of Islamists and jailed thousands of other terrorists.
Thus, the president has made progress against the terrorists from the Islamist State in the Sinai.
These fully testosteroned leaders, the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt, talked and acted. As simple as that. Now their wrath is literally falling from the sky upon the coward terrorists who relish in abusing, torturing and killing in the most horrendous ways their innocent, disarmed victims.
In fact, the Muslim world does not need help from the international community with their vested globalist interests that mostly are devoted to help the bad guys from their midst, the bestial barbarians from the Islamic State.
While in the West there is much talk about, and support for, their beloved Muslim “reformers” living in the comfort of the West, these days are throwing in the faces of those defenders of said reformers, the fact that real “reform” of any sort if any, can and will only come from inside Islam, from the heart of the Muslim world.
For a change, it is refreshing to see leaders who know what is wrong.
May we wipe our tears when we see real leaders defend what is by the will of God, right.
©ElianaBenador
Eliana Benador is a strategic risk consultant, adviser, opinion writer. Her website is www.elianabenador.com. Follow her at @ElianaBenador on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.