Actually no, let’s not. The religions are simply too different. ISIS is not Islamic. There isn’t fully a Christian parallel, which is not a value judgement on either Christianity or Islam.
A) The Amish living in PA are American by self-identification.
B) America is not Amish.
The whole is not defined by the specific characteristics of a small part thereof, but by the general characteristics shared in common. Any discussion of ISIS which involves applying the specific characteristics of ISIS to Islam is fundamentally wrong unless it can be shown that these are also general characteristics of Islam as a whole. The Venn diagram of ISIS and Islam only has a partial overlap.
I agree with your Venn diagram analysis, though probably not your conclusion. I don’t like the territorial analogy though. The Amish are American pretty much by virtue of where they happen to be located, and their (automatic, involuntary) citizenship status all but can’t change. Membership in Islam is an ideological standard, one which must account for some diversity of opinion and belief, sure. But the ideology of ISIS clearly is not the ideology of Islam, by its own rules (the Habukkuk “test”) in a crucial way, namely: godlessness.
Very good. But you are hardly a captive audience, you can see the words for yourself and see what they mean.
Maybe I am mixing up religions a little here (but so are you!), but it is also said, “You shall know them by their fruits.” Does what ISIS stands for really align with the Five Pillars? Take almsgiving, for instance. ISIS is built almost entirely on plunder. Their income is largely derived from selling stolen oil. And how does genocide help the poor? How are the poor served by systematic rape and sex slavery? If they put a lot of energy into helping the poor, it must not be getting any press because I have seen zero evidence of it. Frankly, I’d like to see anybody argue that ISIS’ behavior is anything but the opposite of charitable.
Which of the Five Pillars is represented by the high production-value snuff films that are ISIS’ own propaganda about themselves? What happened to “there shall be no compulsion in religion”? I’m sure somebody can make Islamic-sounding, tortured arguments to justify ISIS’ actions through the Koran, but that brings us back to the Habukkuk “test”. They can be identified as godless, and that alone disqualifies them from Islamic identity. Therefore it just. doesn’t. matter. what Islamic noises they make to the contrary, or what Islamic trappings they wrap themselves in.
So they’re bad people and crappy Muslims. That doesn’t mean they’re not Muslims. You’re playing ISIS’s game here. They’re the ones who write people our if Islam because of doctrine
I’d agree with you, if not for the “Habukkuk test.” I think that amounts to a line between “bad people” and “not part of this faith anymore.” If I am playing their game, looks like I have an actual (that is, consistent with Islam) reason to declare them outside the faith. I don’t think their reasons rise to that standard, and people might benefit by being educated about the difference.
Again, if I were Muslim, I’d find a westerner like you pretending to be a Muslim scholar highly offensive. Habbakuk shmabakuk - neither you nor I are even remotely qualified to make any ruling on the subject.
So they aren’t really Muslims because, in your judgement, they don’t meet an arbitrary standard you’ve derived from a Jewish holy book?
I stand chastised, somewhat, although I didn’t mean to imply that ISIS is not rooted in Islam (since it clearly is). A recent book I read, authored by a former Islamist, was pretty adamant that there is a distinct difference between being Islamic and being an Islamist, at least as far as philosophy goes.
The religions are no different. Jesus is mentioned in the come Quran!
And it doesn’t even matter that the religions are different, as long as they are religions!
There is more Haggis in this thread then in all of Scotland.
Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk
Actually, ISTM that what T2BC is doing is attempting to use ISIS’s tactics against them. ISIS supporters say “All you people who aren’t beheading infidels for jihad aren’t real Muslims!”, and T2BC says “Nuh-uh! It’s you guys who traduce Islamic doctrine with your barbaric violence who aren’t the real Muslims!”
Which, you know, props for standing up for positive ideals of Islam in opposition to bloodthirsty extremists and all, but doesn’t really get us any forrader in terms of supporting positive ideals of Islam without denying political and cultural realities of religious identification.
The people who are actually “playing ISIS’s game”, on the other hand, are the Islamophobes who promote and endorse ISIS-type views about the essential nature of Islam being violent and oppressive. ISIS supporters say “All you people who aren’t beheading infidels for jihad aren’t real Muslims!”, and Islamophobes say “See? See? Islam requires its followers to behead infidels for jihad!” If they acknowledged the existence of less fanatical and bloodthirsty ideals of Islam, they wouldn’t be able to hate Islam as an undifferentiated hostile entity as fervently as they want to.
ISIS is Islamic by self-identification.
Every time I see this thread I also see the Nicholas Cage “you don’t say!” meme in my head.
Shmabakuk? I am getting chuckles out of your wordplay in this thread. You on vacation or something?
My answer to this objection is the same answer I gave you last time: you don’t need to be an Islamic scholar to know that you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit. A quick study of what ISIS has done and what they stand for should be enough to convince anyone that they are not genuinely religious. Have you seen the (NSFW) video of ISIS soldiers burning that pilot alive?
I get it that they are making a case for revenge here, but can you imagine something like that coming out of the Vatican? Can you imagine any religious group you take seriously as sincere ever producing something like that, and it being received as the work of genuinely godly people? Along with all the other such material they’ve produced, to me, they look more like a violent hate cult than Muslims. It takes a lot to get me to reject a religious self-identification, but ISIS has done it.
Maybe that answer isn’t satisfying though. If it is authority you want, I have already pointed out that Obama shares my opinion. Few people have more authority than him, and he generally isn’t regarded as some kind of idiot. As an American, why should I disregard US policy, especially since I agree with it?
The Old Testament prophets are accepted by Muslims. I am frankly not surprised if nobody cares about my personal opinion, and that is why I am stressing Habakkuk- he provides an example of a prophet judging a group as not godly, from inside the Muslim tradition. The reasons he lists amount to a kind of standard- other groups that fit that description (like ISIS) ought to be considered subject to the same judgement.
It is a tough standard to meet. It doesn’t capture every religious criminal and maniac, no, to meet it requires quite a lot of organized crime. ISIS meets the standard, therefore they aren’t followers of YHWH/Allah/Jehovah (same thing).
From the perspective of an outsider, I think it isn’t too hard to study history and see the Islamic traditions that arise and gain prominence, as well as the widely held beliefs and practices of people calling themselves Muslim. Allowing small heterodox groups to claim their place in that tapestry doesn’t change what’s historically been mainstream. And it doesn’t add to the persecutions they might face. Thus my compromise: A definition with a clear center and fuzzy edges 
I’m also lazy and do not relish the prospect of having to come up with a definition of Muslim that isn’t based on self-identification and that excludes NOI, Baha’i, most but not all Druze, and militants while including Ahmadis, Alevis, Alawis, and the various progressive Muslim groups popping up here and there. And that doesn’t even get into history – what of the Kharijites or Qarmatians?
Well, it’s not like earlier Caliphates were established with sit-ins. And like the Crusades, they aren’t emerging out of an especially peaceful environment.
Islamism is a modern movement in that it accepts the state that is constituted by law and asks that that law be “Islamic”, however they define it. ISIS’s move to reject that model and re-declare the Caliphate is extremely controversial within Islamist circles.
I disagree with your argument but I appreciate that you are trying to engage with Islam as it is, rather than trying to make it fit into a Christian-modeled box.
What if you asked the chef for coffee and he served you boiled water brewed with weasel shit?
Unfortunately, President Obama is not in a position where he can be nuanced. Granted, I can’t say for sure if he even has a more nuanced view, but I do think he is probably choosing the best of a host of poor options. There is a huge amount of bigotry directed at Muslims.
Some studies have shown that most recruits to terrorist groups like ISIS are from the fringes of society – often once having been petty crooks, gang members, drug users – and consequently did not exhibit the standard religious practice and education that was a marker of status in many mainstream Muslim societies. Many of the leaders of ISIS are former generals of Saddam. But that doesn’t make their religious identity fake. The fact that they are a very modern phenomenon doesn’t either. Liberal Muslim movements are also modern movements, and many progressives of different religions are not necessarily practicing or especially knowledgeable about history but still strongly identify.
I have a Master’s degree from Harvard in religion and politics that focused on Islam. I did most of the reading I also have work experience analyzing religious extremism.
As I have pointed out earlier in this thread, mainstream Islam does not see Jewish and Christian records of prophets as reliable. The prophets are accepted, the Old Testament is not.
It’s about the larger issue of who has the authority to order what. Muhammad and the early Muslims raided caravans, killed people and did plenty of plundering. They smashed idols. They took sex slaves. IIRC, they didn’t make children fight – which is something that ISIS does. But the thing that makes ISIS so radical isn’t their actions so much as their religious-based claim to have the authority to do those actions. Focusing on the argument that what they have done is unjustifiable assumes that they have some legitimate authority.
The distinction I’m trying to draw on here is like the difference between 1) the argument that President Bush’s actions WRT Iraq were unjustifiable and unamerican war crimes, a brutal misuse of his legitimate authority to make war; and 2) the argument that the Confederacy’s war against the North was unjustifiable because they were not a legitimate government, even though they happen to also have been morally bankrupt because of what they were doing in their war efforts and in their society.
Your fundamental error here, to adopt your own metaphor, is believing that only the chicken salad qualifies as religious, while the chicken shit somehow doesn’t count. This is an idiosyncratic and logically unjustified view of religion.
Goodness knows I’m not trying to bash religion, either in general or in particular. AFAICT I’m one of the most theism-accepting atheists on these boards, and I sometimes get whaled on by fellow atheists for that. But the concepts of religion and religious identity are pretty much socially and culturally meaningless if you refuse to accept self-identification—even self-identification by some truly loathsome and horrible people—as the basis for them.
And that means that in order to make any sense as a social/cultural category, religions have to be considered to include their bad adherents as well as their good ones.
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive]
Have you seen the (NSFW) video of ISIS soldiers burning that pilot alive? […] I get it that they are making a case for revenge here, but can you imagine something like that coming out of the Vatican?
[/quote]
:dubious: Dude, you have got to be trolling us here. Are you seriously claiming that you’re unfamiliar with the history of the Catholic Church burning people alive?
As terrible as those acts were, and as much as they would be rejected and condemned by the average decent Catholic individual, there is no denying that the people who committed them were Catholics, and that their repressive fanatical cruelty counts as part of the history of Catholicism.
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive]
Can you imagine any religious group you take seriously as sincere ever producing something like that, and it being received as the work of genuinely godly people? Along with all the other such material they’ve produced, to me, they look more like a violent hate cult than Muslims.
[/quote]
They are a violent hate cult, specifically a violent hate cult which is a small and extremist subset of Islam.
Again, your error here lies in your illogical insistence that a violent hate cult that identifies with a particular religion can’t be considered part of that religion, merely because most of that religion is not a violent hate cult.
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive]
If it is authority you want, I have already pointed out that Obama shares my opinion. Few people have more authority than him, and he generally isn’t regarded as some kind of idiot.
[/quote]
Your argument is absurd, being founded on a conflation of two different senses of the term “authority” that is so naive that, as I said, I have some difficulty believing you’re not trying to troll us.
Obama is not in any way a theological authority on Islamic doctrine, nor does he have any authority to define or promulgate approved doctrine in Islam as, say, the Pope does in Catholicism or (to a lesser extent) the Dalai Lama does in Tibetan Buddhism. The fact that Obama has a lot of “authority” in the sense of political clout and military might, and that he’s personally intelligent, has absolutely jack-shit to do with “authoritativeness” in any theological sense. (He’s a Protestant Christian, FFS: he may have a Muslim background but he’s not an “authority” on Islam in any way, shape or form.)
Look, nobody’s disagreeing with you that ISIS are a bunch of diabolically evil shits who disgrace the name of Islam. But that does not somehow disqualify them from still being part of Islam.
this seems to me a sterile conversation.
I can say in a way we consider the DAESH unislamic, but not in a sense of saying they are not Muslims.
What the American president, a christian says about them in a political context I do not see as relevant. no more so than the opinion of the Grand Imam of Al Azhar on a roman catholic’s excommunication.
The Takfir is a hateful act and we have seen the modern takfiri salafisme has done enormous evil in the overturning of the traditional deep reluctance to allow any human authority to declare takfir.
Your right. The Vatican would never be ok with burning their religious enemies alive. That would just be completely horrific.
I think part of the problem is that the OP thinks that history is something that happened in the past.
He’s also confusing “member of the religion” with “representative of the religion as a whole”.
Actually, no. I’m saying their actions mark them as godless as per the “Habukkuk test”, such that they aren’t Muslim at all, whether or not they wrap themselves in Islamic trappings. There is a point at which religious talk and identification becomes meaningless when accompanied by behavior in stark contradiction to the message of the religion. I am saying ISIS has crossed that line, and their claims of being Islamic are a self-serving con.
Holding up ISIS as an example of Islam generally is a whole 'nother thing, usually done (IMHO) to make people feel good about some other religion or political group by comparison. Condescension, essentially, and I have tried to be careful to avoid that impression.
I have a big day and may not be able to come back till tomorrow. I will return to address the rest. Yes, I admit I haven’t been able to craft a response yet to weasel-crap coffee, among other points.