Tuesday, November 17, 2015

"The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic."

"Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”..."
Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent.
According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”...
It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State “a problem with Islam.” The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate’s practices written plainly within them. (read the whole thing)

13 comments:

AllenS said...

Well, that was reassuring.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

While the media and the democrats stumble over semantics and political correctness - Paris.

bagoh20 said...

I really don't think this is as important as it seems from the fight it's creating, and that fight is a distraction. I don't care if some people including the entire Democratic Party can't bring themselves to say that Islamists are in fact Islamic, and I don;t care if it insults Muslims when we do. I just want the Jihadi assholes dead and destroyed, because that's the only way to prevent them from killing innocent people. If tomorrow ISIS announced that they are now all Catholic, but still want to kill us, then I still want them dead.

Everybody knows who they are, whether we call them Muslims or not. Let's just bring them to desert ambient temperature and sort it out later. If you're near an Islamist, and you're not one, then get the hell out of there, because it's gonna rain hell. If you can't get away, then you're as good as dead anyway. We're just gonna make it easier on you.

bagoh20 said...

The truth is the Islamists are the most Islamic people on earth.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

It is funny to hear Obama refer to Islamic Jihadists (radical extremists/ -whatever) as "those people."

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I think Obama's strategy is one of containment. But he can't call it that because Paris and other attacks prove how futile the idea of containment is.

ISIS is not like the Soviet Union.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

It's war against cancer.

You just keep fighting. It keeps popping up - you blast it.

ricpic said...

Hussein has allied the United States with Iran. ISIS is an agent of Iran. Hussein has no problem with ISIS.

Hussein is a hard leftist. He is in the business of sowing chaos. ISIS is a natural ally from his standpoint.

Needless to say all of the above will never be stated and would be vehemently denied if a mythical Republican with balls were to make the case.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Oh man, I just realized why Bernie Sanders mentioned climate change when talking about ISIS.

Obama doesn't consider ISIS the biggest threat because taking civilization back to the 7th Century aligns with Climate Change goals.

Bernie is not the only one btw.

ricpic said...

You're probably right, Meth. What confuses me is that the Saudis want, or appear to want to get rid of ISIS and Iran wants ISIS to remain. And it's mainly a question of the Saudis and Qatar wanting to put an oil pipeline through ISIS territory and Iran trying to block that pipeline. This is of course primarily a moolah (and power) issue, not a religious schism issue. I think I'll go take a nap now.

edutcher said...

It doesn't really matter.

You kill them and anybody associated with them until the rest get the message.

The word jihad is a quick way of committing suicide.

Methadras said...

Ed, no, you just kill them all and anyone associated with them until nothing is left of them. Don't leave any behind. Annihilation is all they know and we should give it to them.

JAL said...

Now the leaders of the free world (including his royal highness) are referring to ISIS as "DASH" (sort of a acronym for something which does include the word 'Islam,' but one would never know it.) Apparently it makes ISIS mad not to be referred to by their chosen name.

But the reasoning is that ISIS aren't real Muslims and they aren't a state.

And De nile is not just a river in Egypt.

The name they dare not speak.