A journalist, a free lance photographer and an aid worker. These were the occupations of the three victims murdered by Jihadi John – the subject of an intense manhunt that has brought together the United States, the United Kingdom and a host of nations.

This brutal killer, who conceals his identity by covering himself from head to toe in black and is said to have an English accent, is the mastermind behind the beheading incidents which have been all over the news in the past few days.

It all started on 19 August when a video uploaded on YouTube showed missing journalist James Foley being beheaded after he read a statement criticising US President Barack Obama. At the end of this production, another missing journalist, Stephen Sotloff was paraded and ‘Jihadi John’ threatened to execute him too if his demands were not met. A few days later, Sotloff, another American journalist, suffered the same fate as James Foley at the hands of ‘Jihadi John’. This time the threat was to execute British aid worker David Haines. Again, Haines was beheaded after he read a statement addressed to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Shortly after, ‘Jihadi John’ threatened to execute another British aid worker who was kidnapped in Syria a few months ago, Alan Henning.

Before even going into what comes next after these gruesome murders, I cannot but highlight that I think this situation is a consequence of the war on terror carried out by the United States and the United Kingdom. Without this war, there wouldn’t have been as many ‘Jihadi Johns’, if any. Thus, British and American politicians should stop blaming Turkey, Islam or whatever other scapegoat fires their imagination and take a long hard look in the mirror.

Turning to this despicable terrorist, he thinks he’s defending what he believes is a new state and nation against outside aggression. The new state and his religion for him are one. Furthermore, in his world, the Islamic label is attached to anything that needs to be justified in the ISIS nationalist cause – a cause that tries to get rid of anything that stands in its way. In ISIS’ terms you can either convert to Islam, leave or else die.

Personally, I think that ‘Jihadi John’ or his beloved ISIS has nothing to do with religion. It is a reaction and an extremist devotion to a new country that does not exist, which subjects those who come across its paths to unprecedented humiliation and torture. One must also remember that while ‘Jihadi John’ uses knives to cut off the heads of innocent people, others who aren’t in the headlines are using bombs to blow off heads of innocent people. Ultimately, their crime is still the same but just gets less media attention.

I also firmly believe that this media hype created by ‘Jihadi John’ is a taunt aimed to provoke Western countries and the United States to retaliate. This time, as opposed to previous occasions such as Iraq and Afghanistan, I think that the United States and its allies would be right to use their military might to stop these ‘monsters’. Furthermore, any such use of the military can easily be justified as humanitarian aid, given the atrocities and mass murders carried out by ISIS.

Now that politicians across the board, in the UK, the United States and in many Western countries condemned these beheadings using a variety of adjectives to describe the acts performed by ‘Jihadi John’, the challenge that remains is how to tackle the problem. Then US-led efforts have managed to bring together an international coalition to destroy the Islamic State, with as many as 24 countries meeting in Paris next week to do whatever is necessary to defeat these terrorists. From where I stand, it looks as if no one knows where to start.

 

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