In terms of the name, I mean. Based of the Voltaire quote “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
Egypt has issued editorial guidelines;journalists were advised not to use language to describe terrorists that “tarnish the image of Islam as it falsely attaches the horrendous acts of these extremist groups to the Islamic faith.”
British PM David Cameron is on board with this, telling off the BBC over the term;
*"I wish the BBC would stop calling it ‘Islamic State’ because it is not an Islamic state,” he told the Today programme.
“What it is is an appalling barbarous regime that is a perversion of the religion of Islam and many Muslims listening to this programme will recoil every time they hear the words.”*
So…is it as Islamic and State-like as the Holy Roman Empire was Holy, Roman or an Empire?
They are obviously a state; they provide the essential functions of a state, such as the rule of law and the sovereign control of territory. The claim that a state is a polity that is recognized by the international community is an obvious lie made up by internationalists to marginalize those they don’t like. Sovereignty or lack thereof is an objective measure of reality; the perception or opinion of outsiders cannot change reality.
ISIS is also obviously Islamic in nature; their actions and beliefs stem directly from their interpretation of Islam. Those who reject ISIS as un-Islamic are largely falling prey to the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy and are using modernist viewpoints to interpret what should be eternal metaphysical truths.
People who claim that ISIS is neither a state nor is Islamic seem primarily to be composed of Muslim apologists and their progressive fellow travelers. I don’t give their statements much credence.
It is Islamic…in a hellishly perverted sense. It’s like calling David Koresh a “Christian.” Yeah, technically speaking, kinda, if you squint hard enough. A big gulper of rum helps.
But it ain’t a state. No borders, no government, no citizenry (some captives, but no citizens,) no ambassadors, no recognition from other states. Does it even actually have a leader? Who’s the Big Boss Man? Or is it a junta? How many? Where do they meet? Has anyone ever taken minutes at any of their meetings?
The Navajo and Hopi are a lot more like states than these jerks! (And, with respect to both, the Navajo and Hopi are not formally states, only semi-autonomous internal regions with limited self-government. But they have borders and citizens, at least!)
There isn’t a single definition of “Islamic”, so that’s a coin toss. They certainly think that they are Islamic. Mainstream Muslims probably agree that they don’t act in a way that is accepted by Islam. It just depends on who you ask.
The state part is a little clearer. If nobody recognizes you as a state, you aren’t. Anyone with a few guns and a couple bureaucrats can play “let’s pretend to be a country” in a war zone. But if you can’t enter the world of international diplomacy, it doesn’t amount to much.
Yea, I tend to more or less go with whatever people self-identify with as their religious label. The alternative is a rabbit hole of theology and semantic arguing that ends up being pretty meaningless. So Islamic State is Islamic, but of that doesn’t mean everyone that claims to be Islamic believes the same thing the Islamic State does, anymore than all Christians believe the same things as esposed by, say, Positive Christianity*
“State” seems more debatable. They’ve never had a strong hold on any of the territory that they claim, outside of Al-Raqquh their attempts to provide gov’t services is reportedly pretty haphazard and no other country recognizes their legitimacy.
*(a branch of Christianity created by the Nazi’s and other rightwing German groups pre-WWII).
I’m okay with calling them Islamic as well as saying they aren’t: it just depends on what you mean by the term, the same way some people will call people who don’t really practice the teachings of Jesus “non-Christians,” even if they self-identify as such.
I agree with the others that they are not a state. They only call themselves one because they want to be one. Even if you don’t think external recognition is required, they fail in the ways mentioned earlier.
Personally I am partial to the term “Daesh” (officially used by France, by the way) which is formed by the Arabic initials of their purported name and has the additional goodness of being an insulting word.
The comparison to the criticism of the Holy Roman Empire should illustrate why ISIS comes out better in my opinion. Holy is not a religion, but a description of virtue that wasn’t there. Roman is either a location (which they were not in) or a style of culture/government (which they were not using). Empire is a type of state with certain characteristics and they didn’t have all of those.
Looking at ISIS, they are clearly Islamic. Call them some subset or derivation of Islam if you will but they’re still Islamic.
It’s hard to judge right now whether it is a state, because the fighting is still going on, and everything ISIS would claim sovereign control of is also claimed by another state. We can argue that they’re only temporarily in control (I hope so), but if that control were to last indefinitely, we’d have to eventually agree that it is sovereign control. Still, they at least aspire to the term state, which is such a broad term compared to Empire.
ISIS is definitely Islamic. It fulfills some of the functions of a state, but the key point is, it controls the lands it’s on. That’s what a state is, basically: no one else is in control. Want ISIS to stop being a state? Throw em out! Otherwise, admit they are in control.
Most rebel groups and insurgents control some kind of territory. Are we really ready to call FARC and Azawad and the SPLM-IO “states”? There are lots of ungoverned and contested areas on this earth.
The real test, IMHO, is being able to transition from merely controlling territory to entering the international diplomacy system. Given that it’s a system with a pretty low bar, I don’t have much respect for the claims of sovereignty by people who can’t achieve the basic legitimacy that even oddballs like North Korea and Nauru and Somalia have achieved.
It may be Islamic, not that important one way or the other because- It isn’t a modern nation-state in any sense of the word. No more than Al Capone was the mayor of Chicago. It is a criminal organization ruled by despotism, violence, and terror. And the term ‘modern Holy Roman Empire’ is kind of an oxymoron. It did not and could not exist in the modern world.
Yep. Lots of groups control land, but that doesn’t make them a state. If Daesh didn’t self-proclaim being a state, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
I’d be happy if we could just agree on a name for them. I don’t care how much sense it makes. There must be six or seven different monikers in semi-regular use.
Sort of the opposite of Al-Queda, where every group with even the most tenuous similarity was labeled “Al Queda”. With ISIS/ISIL/ISSS/Islamic State/Da’ish/DAESH, just the one group has a different name every other week.
So I’ll vote “not a state”, since even the most dysfunctional states seem to be able to get organized enough to come up with a single name and get other people to use it.
