What ISIS Really Wants

[Valin]

The Atlantic:

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

Graeme Wood

March 2015

 

What is the Islamic State?

 

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

 

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

 

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

 

Comments

 

AdeToz 14 hours ago (edited)

Joe put his foot in it in 3:10...Fundamental Christians don't pick up swords to kill or to convert. He was swinging high up until then.

 

[Draggingtree]

State Department blames uptick in recent ritual human sacrifices on global unemployment rates.

 

 

NO. REALLY.

By: Moe Lane (Diary) | February 17th, 2015 at 10:00 AM

Come, I will show you a wonder: Chris Matthews saying something that most of the people reading this will agree with*. Transcript via Right Scoop (video of all of this over there, too):

 

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them [islamic State cultists]?

 

job opportunities for these people…

 

http://www.redstate.com/2015/02/17/isis-state-department-islamic-state-human-sacrifice/

[Valin]

State Department blames uptick in recent ritual human sacrifices on global unemployment rates.

 

 

I saw this vid earlier today

 

 

(Flame On) On one level she's right. That said, if it is possible for her to put this worse...I don't want to know.

[Valin]

On A Related Note....

 

Countering violent extremism? ‘It’s the theology, stupid’

Michael Rubin

February 12, 2015

 

On February 18, President Obama will host a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism” which, the White House promises, will “highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.”

 

A coordinated strategy has never been more imperative. Since the Arab Spring turned hot, “violent extremism” has only grown more severe, with the Islamic State now controlling an area larger than Great Britain; Boko Haram on the rampage in Nigeria; Yemen, Libya, the Sinai, and large parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan ungovernable; and much of the Sahel likewise under a growing Islamist threat. Add to this Shiite extremists in Iran and southern Lebanon, and radical Islamists of one stripe or another may now control more territory than at any time in Islamic history.

 

Unfortunately, Obama’s efforts will fail before they begin, sacrificed upon the altar of political correctness and a diplomatic desire not to offend. Obama seems more concerned with protecting the sensitivities of Islamists than he does the lives of their victims. He walks on eggshells to avoid singling out Islam, and so uses the euphemism “violent extremism.” That condemns any resulting policy to failure: To discuss violent extremism but refuse to define what it means is the equivalent of hosting a conference to cure cancer, but barring any mention of cancer or discussion of tumors or metatheses.

 

(Snip)

[clearvision]

Thanks @Valin

 

Bobby Inman mentioned something about ISIS and Camp Bucca at the talk I heard him give the other day. Said a lot of high level Iraqi military guys were purged and sent there. Shortly after they were let go they either formed, or changed ISIS. They have extensive knowledge of US military systems and that is part of the reason they were so quickly able to use captured equipment.

[Valin]

Thanks @Valin

 

Bobby Inman mentioned something about ISIS and Camp Bucca at the talk I heard him give the other day. Said a lot of high level Iraqi military guys were purged and sent there. Shortly after they were let go they either formed, or changed ISIS. They have extensive knowledge of US military systems and that is part of the reason they were so quickly able to use captured equipment.

 

The last big leader of ISIS was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Remember him? They are carrying on his fine tradition.

 

I'm gonna have to check out some of his talks.

[Valin]

:

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

Graeme Wood

March 2015

 

 

 

'What ISIS Really Wants': The Response

A survey of reactions to The Atlantic's cover story—from think tanks to jihadist Twitter

Graeme Wood

Feb 24 2015

 

My cover story in The Atlantic’s March issue asked, as simply as possible, What does ISIS believe, and what are its ideological roots? I read every ISIS statement I could find, including fatwas and tweets and road signs, and I front-loaded my mornings with execution videos in hopes that by bedtime I’d have forgotten enough of the imagery to sleep without nightmares. I picked through every spoken or written word in search of signals of what ISIS cares about and how its members justify their violence. I also asked a small group of its most doctrinaire overseas supporters for guidance, and they obliged.

 

At the time, the dominant cliché about ISIS was that it was a thrill-kill group that had hijacked Islam for its own ends, and that these ends were cynical, pathological, and secular. The investigation yielded something like the opposite conclusion: ISIS had hijacked secular sources of power and grievance, and was using them for religious ends—ends that are, at least among some supporters, sincere and carefully thought through. They include a belief in the imminent fulfillment of prophecy, with the group in a key role.

 

(Snip)

 

J.M. Berger, also of Brookings, argued that the religiosity of the group matters less than its importance as an identity movement, an aggressive form of defining membership in a group. I’d add that the type of religious ideology ISIS espouses is remarkably well-adapted for brutal enforcement of group membership. This type of jihadi-Salafism, unapologetically aimed at purifying Islam through killing, was obsessively policing its adherents well before the rise of the Islamic State. Understanding that sect is a way to understand its associated identity.

 

Andrew Anderson, who studies jihadists, wrote this fine reflection on the context of the Islamic State's views of warfare, which he places in the medieval period rather than in the early Islamic conquests to which ISIS considers its project the rightful heir. He and my colleague Frank Griffel at Yale both point out how ISIS, which is so keen to emphasize its early-Islamic cred, differs from early Islam in important and substantive ways.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

The Comments are as always most enlightening. By enlightening I mean My head hurts really bad.

[Draggingtree]

Is Islam A Terrorist Religion?

The Islamic State is difficult to comprehend only for secularists who believe religion is an aberration in the modern world. Actually, they are.

By Paul David Miller FEBRUARY 26, 2015

In a widely-circulated article for The Atlantic, Graeme Wood reported on “our ignorance of the Islamic State” and judged “We have misunderstood the nature of” the group, in part because of “a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature.” Graeme then breathlessly revealed, “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.” That the group made andactually believed religious claims was, apparently, astonishing.

 

The same week as the Atlantic story went viral, coincidentally, the Obama administration held a summit at the White House on “violent extremism,” at which all discussion of “Islam” was studiously avoided. The administration’s fundamentalist insistence on political correctness has become a self-parodying punchline.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/26/is-islam-a-terrorist-religion/

[Draggingtree]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/355259.php

[Valin]

ISIL Carries Out A Purge

March 1, 2015:

 

ISIL is putting a senior religious advisor, a Saudi cleric, on trial for openly criticizing the ISIL leadership for executing a captured Jordanian pilot by burning him alive. The cleric declared that such a method of execution was not Islamic and that those who carried it out should be put on trial. ISIL leadership decided to try the cleric on trial instead, for bad behavior, and may execute the man. This is all because in early February ISIL got a lot of publicity when it released the video of them burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot.

 

Outside of ISIL the reaction was generally revulsion and calls for revenge. ISIL seemed to relish that and the use of this form of execution (which used to be popular in the West centuries ago). It was first believed that everyone in ISIL also approved of stuff like this, as well as the use of crucifixion, beheading or stoning for executions. Apparently not and it soon became apparent that there are a growing number of critics to these barbaric methods within ISIL. Many lower ranking ISIL men were put off by this execution. The full extent of this dissent will only be known when more disillusioned ISIL veterans return home. Those lower ranking ISIL men who object to the burning knew to keep quiet about it, because a quick, quiet execution follows discovery of such disloyal attitude among the rank and file. But when more senior ISIL men object, especially if the critic is a religious advisor, one must be more careful. In the few cases so far the offending official was still executed, but the trial enables ISIL to explain why this guy got so high in the organization only to eventually face execution.

 

Internal criticism is not the only problem ISIL faces as the Islamic terror group is not doing well so far this year. They admitted their defeat by Kurds at Kobane and the Syrian Army is retaking ground as well. The Kurds are also defeating ISIL forces near the Iraq border and in Iraq Kurds, Iraqi soldiers and Sunni and Shia militias are both stopping ISIL attacks and pushing back ISIL forces in a growing number of areas. An offensive to retake Mosul is expected before June. Meanwhile air attacks not only continue but are more frequent. This makes it more difficult to stockpile supplies or move large numbers of gunmen.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Lure of the Caliphate
Malise Ruthven
Mar. 1 2015

(Snip)

Though these ideas are not given prominence in most contemporary practice, the leaders of the Syrian jihad are not the first Islamic movement to give them special weight. In 1881, for example, the Sudanese Muslim cleric Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi, conquered Khartoum, and created a state that lasted until 1898. And in 1979, an apocalyptic movement led by Islamist extremists brought Saudi Arabia briefly into crisis when it seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and called for the overthrow of the House of Saud; the group claimed one of its own leaders as the Mahdi.

In fact, there is a strong pedigree for this ideology in classical Islamic thought. Like Christianity, Islam seems to have begun as a messianic movement warning that the Day of Judgment was imminent. The early suras (chapters) of the Koran are filled with doomsday menace, and the yearning for a final reckoning is deeply encoded in some of the texts. A central figure in this tradition is Dajjal—the one-eyed false messiah who corresponds to the Antichrist of the New Testament. The details vary but most versions agree that the final battle will take place east of Damascus, when Jesus will return as messiah, kill the pigs, destroy Dajjal, and break the cross in his symbolic embrace of Islam.

According to Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad in The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (2002), no predictions about precisely when the End will come are provided in either Christian or Muslim scriptures: as the Koran puts it, “People ask you about the Hour. Say: ‘Knowledge of it rest with God.’” However, there are nearly fifty references to “the Hour” or the “Appointed Time” in the Koran and the signs by which it can be recognized are manifold and abundant:

Piety will give way to pride and truth to lies, while licentious practices such as music, drinking of wine, usury, adultery, homosexuality, and the obedience of men to their wives will prevail. Sex will be performed in public places, cousin marriage will give way to extrafamilial unions, and there will be no Imam to lead the faithful in prayer…

For jihadists, such signs are rife in the Middle East today......(Snip)

[SrWoodchuck]

@Valin

 

6 Ways ISIS Is More Humane than the Prophet

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2015/03/02/6-ways-isis-is-more-humane-than-the-prophet/

 

Not long ago, Bill O’Reilly took justifiable flack for his 1950s all-religions-are-nice-and-deserve-respect attitude when he stated:

 

“I don’t believe the prophet Muhammad wanted a world war to impose Islam on everybody. I don’t believe that.”

 

What Bill was trying to do in his own way was to slam ISIS for the bloodthirsty death-loving fanatics that they are. But in doing so, he came close to what he criticizes Barack Obama for when the President says the Islamic State is “not Islamic.”

 

My colleague Andrew Bostom thoroughly debunked O’Reilly’s bowdlerized rose colored glasses outlook here, but recent events have got me to thinking: Is it possible that ISIS is not only a logical outgrowth of historical Islam, but that they are actually more humane and modernistic in outlook and methods than the Prophet would condone?

 

Consider with me a few examples…

 

1. The Prophet Burned People Slowly

 

Sure, burning people in cages is horrific, but at least ISIS uses accelerant. The prophet burned infidels using wood and tinder which takes far longer. ISIS at least is humane—or lazy– enough to use rocket fuel, which means the victim is tortured to death in minutes.

 

Even if these bastards just think the woosh makes for better video, it’s still quicker.

 

2. The Prophet’s Beheaded Bodies Went to Waste

 

When ISIS lines up 21 praying Christians and beheads them—or as Obama would say, 21 Egyptian citizens who randomly ended up in the wrong place and met up with generic really mean criminals—dozens of other lives are possibly spared as a result.

 

Why? ISIS sells organs on the black market to raise cash for their jihad. But who cares about their motives? As liberals love to say—“If only one life is saved…”

 

3. The Prophet Only Converted by the Sword

 

This one is not just a matter of degree. The Prophet warred and pillaged his way across the Arab world, saying convert or die.

 

Sure, ISIS does that too, but at least SOME of their converts are voluntary.

 

ISIS uses videos, magazines and evangelism to spread their word, giving deluded, evil loners a purpose in their lives.

 

And frankly, I’d just as soon let them all go join them—don’t stop them, track them

 

4. The Prophet Didn’t Have a Female Outreach Program

 

When the Prophet’s soldiers needed wives (or temporary wives as he allowed in the Koran) his army just grabbed them up at the next village or city on the conquest list.

 

ISIS at least takes time to woo them from afar.

 

ISIS had produced videos calling for Muslim women to come and join the Caliphate. They show them cooking and cleaning together for their virile warrior husbands. True, the reality is even harsher than that, but every pick up line is a bit of a sales job, right?

 

And oh, yeah, their propaganda doesn't seem to be aimed at attracting 9 year olds.

******************************************************************************************

With Pictures!

 

Via PJLifestyle

[Valin]

@SrWoodchuck

 

 

Yes?

 

Don't get me started on Andrew Bostom. A founding member of the Nuke Mecca crowd.

[SrWoodchuck]

@SrWoodchuck

 

 

Yes?

 

Don't get me started on Andrew Bostom. A founding member of the Nuke Mecca crowd.

 

@Valin

 

Alrighty then.......he's got my vote. [/sarc]

 

You and I may not be around for the final chapter of the last battle of Dar-al-Harb....but this clash of civilizations will end in a terrible world war....especially if Iran gets a nuke.

 

Ask yourself: What would Putin Stalin do? Turning the blood-moon-god's big, square, black rock into glass, would certainly be on the table.

 

Because we arrogantly assume a facade of civilized behavior; we allow outrageous ethnic cleansing & genocide in the Middle East & Africa. Like our civilized posture on the holocaust of unborn children, we have become enlightened eunuchs regarding the casualness of death, torture & slavery.....while sucking our latte's & postulating trivial crap.

 

Nuking Mecca would have made an interesting "nebulous hammer" as a bargaining chip, regardless of how ludicrous it appears to our delicate sensibilities. We don't have to fear losing our heads here in America....but we've been neutered nonetheless.

 

Secular, soulless, testicle-less poseurs.

 

Like the debt we're leaving for our progeny.....we won't have any worries when the bill comes due for our lack of resolve in handling pure evil. Our descendent's won't even recognize it....having watched us yawn in it's face, while we were responsible.

 

BTW: Could you not perceive a whiff of whimsy & satire in the post?

[Valin]

 

@SrWoodchuck

 

 

Yes?

 

Don't get me started on Andrew Bostom. A founding member of the Nuke Mecca crowd.

 

@Valin

 

Alrighty then.......he's got my vote. [/sarc]

 

You and I may not be around for the final chapter of the last battle of Dar-al-Harb....but this clash of civilizations will end in a terrible world war....especially if Iran gets a nuke.

 

 

 

We (probably) won't regardless of whether Iran get's nukes.

 

 

Could you not perceive a whiff of whimsy & satire in the post?

 

 

The problem is people like Bostom actually believe that and say it.

[SrWoodchuck]

 

 

@SrWoodchuck

 

 

Yes?

 

Don't get me started on Andrew Bostom. A founding member of the Nuke Mecca crowd.

 

@Valin

 

Alrighty then.......he's got my vote. [/sarc]

 

You and I may not be around for the final chapter of the last battle of Dar-al-Harb....but this clash of civilizations will end in a terrible world war....especially if Iran gets a nuke.

 

 

 

We (probably) won't regardless of whether Iran get's nukes.

 

 

Could you not perceive a whiff of whimsy & satire in the post?

 

 

The problem is people like Bostom actually believe that and say it.

 

 

Like a Missouri mule needs a whack upside their heads....just to get it's full attention....we have people with aggressive postures on Islamic Jihad.

 

You think you can ridicule into obsequious ignominy, a determined Islamic jihadist (Persian or not)? But it works on a Bostom, a Spencer, a Geller or a Brigitte Gabriel.

 

I'm supposing it will take a fully delivered Iranian nuke....to move a response past "wait, analyze & argue the fine points."

 

After watching the Netanyahu speech today....I'm fresh out of sympathy for quislings.

 

I'm seeing Orwell's '1984' become reality....and believing his quote: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

[Valin]

Violent Extremist vs. Holy Warrior
The consequences of the president’s linguistic dodge
REUEL MARC GERECHT
Mar 9, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 25

Is Barack Hussein Obama wrong to avoid appending “Islamic,” “Muslim,” “Islamist,” or even “jihadist” to the terrorism that has struck the West with increasing ferocity since the 1990s? This question has at least two parts: Is the president historically correct to do this? And is he politically smart to do it?

The president could be a historical ignoramus and yet be strategically right to use the linguistic dodge. If Islam really is a faith that lends itself to hideous violence, does it do any good for a Christian American president, especially one with Muslim forebears, to censure Muslims for their failings? The American right is chock-full of folks who show Christian hubris when they highlight the Islamic world’s manifest problems. Intentionally or not, a presidential bully pulpit could egg them on. Michael Gerson, George W. Bush’s lead speechwriter, recently wrote in the Washington Post a defense of Obama’s and Bush’s appeals for an irenic interpretation of the Islamic faith. In Gerson’s view, an American president just can’t say unkind things about a religion with a billion-plus believers. Gerson may have overlooked Bush’s brief flirtation with—and sincere intellectual curiosity about using—“Islamofascist” to refer to jihadists, but his point is well taken: Bush finally decided not to use provocative, religiously laden language in public to refer to Muslim radicals.

(Snip)

Tocqueville can always help. He highlighted in Democracy in America the intolerant and lethal religious statutes that early Anglo-Americans had established in some of the colonies. He writes:

Among these documents we shall notice as especially characteristic the code of laws promulgated by the little state of Connecticut in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and strange to say, they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ.

“Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord,” says the preamble of the Code, “shall surely be put to death.” This is followed by 10 or 12 enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be expiated by the same penalty. .  .  . The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity .  .  . and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration that he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even death, Christians who chose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own.

Tocqueville goes on to suggest that it was the very power of local, republican government, which had instituted these severe measures, that also mitigated their enforcement. America became the world’s greatest debating society. More often than not, religion in America became a vehicle for liberal, individual empowerment, a complementary, inextricable adjunct to the ballot box. So much of Washington has now relegated the democratic experiment in the Middle East to the trash bin. On the left and right, we find applause for the Egyptian dictator, general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. But we’ve been down that road before. Sisi’s predecessors tried to kill off Islamic militancy, only to help it grow. Egypt, still the pivotal Arab land, is now a society without debate.

In the end, Muslims will have to solve their own problems. American military power will likely be an essential factor—much more than Obama can possibly condone—in ensuring that Islamic radicalism doesn’t create another effective base for terrorist operations against the West. The Western bully pulpit, a tool unused under Obama, could play a big role. But Muslims have to do the heaviest intellectual lifting. The odds are good they can do so only as Westerners did: through the gradual expansion of the rights of man via unrelenting, often brutal, sometimes bloody debates. In other words, democracy, with all its frightful messiness, remains the answer.

[Valin]

What Antidote to Radical Islam?

Daniel Pipes
Mar 3, 2015

 

"Radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution" has been my watchword since 2002, meaning that Islam's many problems will only be solved when Muslims leave Islamism, an attempt to regress to a medieval model, and favor a modern, moderate, and good-neighborly version of their faith.

 

Plenty of people disagree with this analysis, but no one offered an alternate solution. Now, Murat Yetkin editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News in Turkey has done so in a recent column, "Antithesis of radical Islam is not moderate Islam, it is secularism."

 

He finds my solution old and discredited: "As radical Islamist movements started to emerge, politicians in the West … tried to recruit 'moderates'," building them up "without realizing or bothering to understand that they would become the new radicals." Yetkin locates this pattern variously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.

 

The real antithesis of radical Islam, he posits, is not moderate Islam, but rather "separating state affairs from religion." Secularists, the West can rest assured, won't turn against it. Calling for a revival of Atatürk's secularism, Yetkin approves of a recent speech by Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu urging Muslims to adopt secularism as "the antidote to terror."

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

How Islamic Is the Islamic State? Not at All.

What The Atlantic got wrong about ISIS

Mehdi Hasan

Mar. 12 2015

 

It is difficult to forget the names, or the images, of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning and Peter Kassig. The barbaric beheadings between August and November 2014, in cold blood and on camera, of these five jumpsuit-clad western hostages by the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS, provoked widespread outrage and condemnation.

 

However, we should also remember the name of Didier François, a French journalist who was held by ISIS in Syria for ten months before being released in April 2014. François has since given us a rare insight into life inside what the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood, in a recent report for the magazine, has called the “hermit kingdom” of ISIS, where “few have gone . . . and returned.” And it is an insight that threatens to turn the conventional wisdom about the world’s most fearsome terrorist organisation on its head.

 

“There was never really discussion about texts,” the French journalist told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last month, referring to his captors. “It was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion.”

 

According to François, “It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran. Because it has nothing to do with the Quran.” And the former hostage revealed to a startled Amanpour: “We didn’t even have the Quran. They didn’t want even to give us a Quran.”

 

 

(Snip)

 

To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet. Above all else, it is dangerous and self-defeating, as it provides Baghdadi and his minions with the propaganda prize and recruiting tool that they most crave.

 

This article originally appeared in New Statesman.

 

Mehdi Hasan is a presenter for al-Jazeera English and a New Statesman contributing writer.

 

 

 

H/T Brit Hume

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Al6E0fYKqo

 

 

[SrWoodchuck]

How Islamic Is the Islamic State? Not at All.

What The Atlantic got wrong about ISIS

Mehdi Hasan

Mar. 12 2015

 

It is difficult to forget the names, or the images, of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning and Peter Kassig. The barbaric beheadings between August and November 2014, in cold blood and on camera, of these five jumpsuit-clad western hostages by the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS, provoked widespread outrage and condemnation.

 

However, we should also remember the name of Didier François, a French journalist who was held by ISIS in Syria for ten months before being released in April 2014. François has since given us a rare insight into life inside what the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood, in a recent report for the magazine, has called the “hermit kingdom” of ISIS, where “few have gone . . . and returned.” And it is an insight that threatens to turn the conventional wisdom about the world’s most fearsome terrorist organisation on its head.

 

“There was never really discussion about texts,” the French journalist told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last month, referring to his captors. “It was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion.”

 

According to François, “It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran. Because it has nothing to do with the Quran.” And the former hostage revealed to a startled Amanpour: “We didn’t even have the Quran. They didn’t want even to give us a Quran.”

 

 

(Snip)

 

To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet. Above all else, it is dangerous and self-defeating, as it provides Baghdadi and his minions with the propaganda prize and recruiting tool that they most crave.

 

This article originally appeared in New Statesman.

 

Mehdi Hasan is a presenter for al-Jazeera English and a New Statesman contributing writer.

 

 

 

H/T Brit Hume

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Al6E0fYKqo

 

 

 

 

B.S. & Crapola.

 

ISIS quotes accurate verse & hadith, directly from the Quran, to satisfy the requirements of their caliphate.

 

They may be medieval Muslims...but they are correct in their application of their religion....at least, in their minds...which is all that counts when your throat is on the wrong side of their dull Islamic blades.

[Valin]

 

They may be medieval Muslims...but they are correct in their application of their religion....at least, in their minds...which is all that counts when your throat is on the wrong side of their dull Islamic blades.

 

 

 

I have a (small simple) solution to that little problem...2 words Kill Them.

 

"If you are a Muslim who wants to impose Sharia law by cutting off my head, I have a desire to kill you before you cut off my head."

Newt Gingrich

[Valin]

Experts weigh in (part 5): Is quietist Salafism the alternative to ISIS?

William McCants and Yasir Qadhi

April 1, 2015

 

Will McCants: Graeme Wood’s article on ISIS in this month’s Atlantic touched off a national debate about the insurgent group’s uses and abuses of Islam. Over the next few weeks, we thought it would be interesting for scholars of ISIS and political Islam to think through some of the issues raised by Wood, giving him a chance to weigh in along the way.

 

First out of the gate was Jacob Olidort, who responded to Graeme Wood’s idea that “quietist” Salafis who do not engage in politics or warfare represent an antidote to violent, activist Salafi groups like ISIS on the basis that all Salafis—jihadi or not—share similar ideologies. Salafis are ultraconservative Sunni Muslims. Some Salafis engage in parliamentary politics and some engage in revolution (“jihadis” in their parlance). But most Salafis don’t engage in direct political action—earning them the appellation of “quietist” from Western academics.

 

Because quietist Salafis speak the same theological language as the jihadis but reject their violent activism, Graeme thinks they offer “an Islamic antidote to Baghdadi-style jihadism” (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi runs the Islamic State). I’ve pushed a related idea in the past so I understand the appeal of Wood’s argument even though I’ve moved away from it. Such an approach would be akin to tolerating socialists to counter communists.

 

"Undercover jihadi" Mubin Shaikh responded next, writing that nonviolent quietist Salafis are a legitimate antidote to ISIS. Quietist Salafis, Shaikh argued, are better positioned than so-called “moderate” Muslims to persuade at-risk youth away from jihadism and terrorism.

 

(Snip)

 

H/T Will McCants

[Valin]

Is ISIS Islamic, and Other “Foolish” Debates

Amarnath Amarasingam and Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Apr. 3 2015

 

“Do they think we are Jewish now? lol,” responded one ISIS fighter in Syria when asked for his thoughts on the current public debate about whether the Islamic State is actually Islamic. He went on to make an argument, as many of these fighters often do when interviewed, that not only is the Islamic State Islamic but it is the purest and most pristine form of Islam, the kind most in line with what God and His Prophet had intended all along. Another ISIS fighter from South Africa, when asked how he knew that the Islamic State was legitimate, remarked that “I just used my brain.” “The truth is never endorsed by the masses,” he said. “It’s always the smallest groups that are firm in truth. Migration becomes compulsory when a caliphate is established on the foundations of Sharia Law, and Muslims around the world have no valid excuse to remain amongst the infidels in enemy lands.”

 

This line of argument by members of the Islamic State and, to be sure, numerous other Salafi-Jihadi movements creates a major dilemma for Muslim communities around the world. How are they supposed to deal with violent movements within their faith, tiny in number but claiming greater religious authenticity, and greater claim to the truth? While this question and the debate surrounding it has been a persistent undercurrent in Western societies since 9/11 at least, the most recent spike in the conversation occurred after Graeme Wood’s cover story in the Atlantic and the numerous responses that followed. It was a welcome conversation, even if, as Wood himself recently noted, the “debate is mostly foolish.”

 

It is indeed foolish for a few different reasons. Firstly, the debate is largely between an “academic” view of Islam and the divisions within it, peaceful or otherwise, and a normative view of Islam, which seeks to distance the rigid, conservative, and violent forms of the religion from the one practiced by the vast majority of Muslims around the world. To argue that ISIS isn’t “Islamic” in a normative sense is to argue, to some degree, that Salafism isn’t a branch of Islam and that jihad isn’t a noble concept in the religion, arguments that are false and misleading, and severely hinder attempts to understand these movements properly.

 

(Snip)