If at all any more perception or evidence was required to the huge constituency across the world which believes that Islam is a religion of violence, it was provided in the manner in which the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed. Of course Islam had nothing to do with either Gaddafi's brutal rule, and even more brutal death, but the fact remains that those who killed him were Muslims.

Hundreds of thousands across the world who watched the gory videos that have been circulating on the Internet saw scores of armed rebels surrounding Gaddafi, shouting, heaping abuses upon him and raining blows all over his head and body. The most disturbing image was of a rebel, dressed in white trousers seated atop of Gaddafi's shoulders, with the Libyan leader's bloodied face soiling the captor's trousers.

Cold-blooded murder

Gaddafi's dishevelled hair, blood oozing from his face, the sound of gunfire, and several rebels zeroing in on the captured man and stamping his body with their feet… this disturbing footage will remain in memory for a long time. If this unverified footage, obtained by Reuters and others, was not horrific enough, the entire drama was made even more horrendous by the triumphant chanting of Allaho Akbar (Allah is great). Took one right back to the Middle Ages, if not pre-historic times.

Gaddafi was a man with overreaching ambitions and his arrogance was compounded by the oil-wealth of the tiny nation at his command. He might have been a ruthless dictator, who simply crushed his enemies, trampled on human rights and was involved in terrorist activities. In the ongoing revolts and revolutions in the Arab world, described widely in the West as the “Arab Spring”, the revolt against Gaddafi has been the most violent. Had NATO not got involved in the fight, Gaddafi's fiercely loyal army might have ultimately managed to quell the uprising. What would have happened to the rebels had they failed is too gruesome for imagination.

In the name of a divine power?

Even taking all this into account, invoking the name of any divine being, or religion, and in any war situation, to so wilfully and violently kill a human being, who was obviously overpowered and overwhelmed, is to defy human sensibilities. What happened to Gaddafi… the kind of death he met and the circumstances under which he met it … is against all laid-down norms and laws relating to war and its prisoners. He should have ended up at the international criminal court in The Hague, but he was actually lynched.

And even after he was killed, the manner in which his body, and that of one of his sons, were displayed for public gloating and cursing — “We want to see the dog”, was one of the chants — in a room-sized freezer used to store meat and other perishables in a shopping complex in Misrata, justifies the spontaneous label — jungli jihadis — (a rough English translation would be ‘wild beasts') that springs to mind for the Libyan rebels. It is now evident that there was a bullet shot through his head and his body had other bullet marks from close-range shots. The manner in which Gaddafi was killed and the gloating that accompanied the heinous act defies all principles of a civilised society or people.

Of course, it needs to be clarified here, that it was no “holy war” that the Libyan rebels, aided by NATO, were fighting. One shudders to think that the men who killed a 69-year-old unarmed man, in such a horrendous manner belong to a group or groups, some members of which will be at the helm of the country in the coming days.

The beginning

Gaddafi came from a humble background; born in a Bedouin tent in Central Libya, he was expelled from one school for “political activities” in his early teens and completed secondary education from another one. In 1963 he joined the Benghazi military academy, and mentored a group of revolutionaries and was the gang leader.

Protests and revolutions were a norm in many Arab nations in the second half of the 20th century, with the 1967 Arab-Israeli war which left the Arabs with a bloodied nose being a highlight of the era. Two years later, in September 1969, the sick and ageing King Idris of Libya was overthrown and Captain Muammar al-Gaddafi, seized power in a little known nation, where oil wealth was yet to be discovered.

Gaddafi who ruled Libya for 42 years, unlike many Arab leaders happy to be puppets of Western superpowers, was like Saddam Hussein; arrogant, defiant and contemptuous of the west. And western leaders dealt with him as their interest demanded. Robert Fisk, a brilliant commentator on West Asia said in The Independent after Gaddafi's death: “We loved him. We hated him. Then we loved him again. Blair slobbered over him. Then we hated him again. Then La Clinton slobbered over her BlackBerry and we really hated him even more again. Let us all pray that he wasn't murdered.”

But this was written on October 21, and it is now evident that he was indeed murdered. Even as the UN and some human rights organisations were demanding an inquiry into his killing, the same issue of the British daily quoted the British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond urging British firms to “pack their suitcases” and head for Libya to secure contracts for its reconstruction.

Added the report: “Trade minister Lord Green has met British businesses to discuss potential opportunities in Libya in the wake of the conflict. There are expectations that the NTC (National Transitional Council backed by western nations) will look favourably on UK firms after Britain's strong military commitment in support of the anti-Gaddafi rebels.”

Well, the story never changes in modern warfare. If the attacks on Iraq were about oil and not those elusive weapons of mass destruction, helping to topple Gaddafi is not very different, is it? Meanwhile, the gruesome murder of Gaddafi remains a big blot on the Arab Spring, and should leave us with sobering thoughts about the future of countries like Libya.

( blfeedback@thehindu.co.in and rasheeda@thehindu.co.in )

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