ISIS is turning into a complex reality. No longer a bunch of jihadist fanatics but a real structure that increasingly threatens Europe by approaching its borders from the West and the East.
The troops of the Caliphate now face the shores of the Mediterranean from Libya and Syria where they are consolidating their positions having reached the outskirts of Damascus and occupied the refugee camp of Yarmouk where reports of summary executions arrive.
Now we can no longer speak of the isolated threat of groups of fanatical jihadists that can be quickly eliminated by bombarding it from above. Rather, the problem must be analyzed on a global level because the Caliphate is becoming day after day the political and operative reference of other subversive organizations.
An aggregation united by hatred towards the West and in particular towards the Catholic world, which rapidly consolidates on the military level by enlisting sympathizers from all over the world and from a political point of view, coagulating within itself other organizations with a jihadist vocation. first and perhaps most important, Al Qaeda, whose Chief Ayman al-Zawāhirī has publicly expressed his intention to dissolve the old structure originated by Bin Laden and merge into the Caliphate to revitalize the terrorist jihad against the West.
A strategically important decision that could threaten international security and that is, however, followed by other subversive groups, such as:- the Al-Shabaab (the "Youth", a word originating from the Arabic al-Shabāb, The Youth), operating in Somalia, who on April 2nd of the massacre of students on the University Campus of Garissa in Kenya where at least 148 people were massacred, mostly Christian students;
- the Boko Haram (literally meaning "Western education is prohibited"), a jihadist terrorist organization widespread in northern Nigeria;
- Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), a Salafist group for preaching and fighting, born in the nineties, during the Algerian civil war with the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Algeria, already 20 years ago. Terrorist group that played a not secondary role in the civil war in Mali.
The picture of the situation that is emerging becomes, therefore, every day more complex and the latent threat towards Europe increases, which due to its geographical position is close to the geostrategic areas manned by ISIS and possible allies.
A threat that now looms on a global level and refers to extreme principles in which the rule is that the vestiges of the millenary cultures that have preceded us must be erased and the existence of Christians erased with real acts of genocide.
Faced with these scenarios, it is imperative to react not only in words, to defend the Christians scattered around the world and not to allow ISIS to continue destroying the remains of the millenary history of the world and reaffirm the rights earned by humanity over the centuries. First of all, that of choosing one's religion and equal rights between men and women.
If to obtain all this there was also a need for the use of weapons, we must not hesitate remembering that the Catholic Church itself recognizes that “Two effects can follow from personal defense, the first of which is the preservation of one's life; while the other is the killing of the bomber ». "Nothing prevents there being two effects of the same act, one of which is intentional and the other unintentional" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II,).
Self-defense, therefore, in addition to being a right, can also be a grave duty for those who are responsible for the lives of others and the defense of the common good requires that the unjust aggressor be placed in a state of harmlessness.
Fernando Termentini
