Jump to content

Why We Can’t Defeat ISIS


Valin

Recommended Posts

why-we-cant-defeat-isisThe Federalist:

John Daniel Davidson

December 10, 2015

 

 

The mass shooting in San Bernardino last week should have confirmed what many Americans still refuse to accept: we can’t defeat ISIS.

 

That doesn’t mean we couldn’t destroy ISIS as an organization. A modest deployment of troops and materiel in Syria and Iraq would be sufficient. President Obama, in his determination to secure a legacy as the president who got us out of Iraq, refuses to do this. But it could be done.

 

That still wouldn’t solve the real problem, which isn’t ISIS’s territory but its ideology. ISIS would give way to another group, perhaps a resurgent al-Qaeda or maybe something worse. From the many-headed hydra of Islamic extremism would come a new threat, aimed at the West and at moderate Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere, and we would once again be debating whether to deploy troops abroad.

 

The violent interpretation of Islam that animates groups like ISIS—and individual Muslims like Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino shooters—is not going away simply because we defeat ISIS on the battlefield, or proclaim, as Obama did Sunday night, that it “does not speak for Islam.” Our president is no more qualified to decide which Muslim groups espouse a correct interpretation of Islam than is our Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Sunday called members of ISIS “apostates.”

 

No. American political leaders, like pundits, are not in a position to weigh the doctrinal merits of ISIS. If ISIS is going to be defeated, Muslims themselves must do it—not just with bullets and bombs, but with a version of their faith that rejects political Islam and jihadist violence once and for all.

 

Many Muslims Aren’t Moderate

 

That won’t be easy, because the virtue of radical Islam, and ISIS, is disputed among Muslims across the world. True, the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims might reject Islamic supremacist ideology of the kind ISIS preaches, but there are tens of millions (perhaps far more) who embrace some version of it.

 

(Snip)

 

 

One might compare what faces Islam today to what Christianity faced in the fourth century in the form of Arianism, a teaching that denied the full divinity of Christ and held that Jesus was not God by nature but a creature susceptible to change. By denying the Trinity and positing a rational relationship between the Father and the Son, Arianism had a certain political appeal for a string of Roman emperors who were more concerned with preserving the unity of the church—and therefore the empire—than with theological distinctions about the nature of Christ.

 

It would take centuries to purge Christianity of the Arian heresy. At one point, it officially dominated the Roman Empire. But in the end, Trinitarian theology prevailed, in part because Christian leaders knew the Arian teaching that Christ was merely an exalted creature would ultimately destroy the gospel. The opponents of Arianism, in other words, knew they were fighting for the very soul of their religion.

 

So too with Muslims today. ISIS isn’t just fighting for territory, it’s fighting for Islam’s future. If moderate Muslims have a different and better vision for their religion, * they’d better start fighting back.

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

* Actually they are, just most of the time it doesn't make the US News.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • 1711718347
×
×
  • Create New...