I understand Obama’s strategy to not label ISIS Islamic, to say ISIS has hijacked Islam, to say,“These are evil people using Islam.” I get that it’s not a good idea to paint and entire religion with a broad brush. For peaceful Muslims trying to live a normal life in the modern world, calling their religion inherently wrong or barbaric isn’t helpful, and it’s better to deny ISIS of any Islamic authority.
But there’s many out there who day different. That not calling ISIS Islamic is wrong, that it’s not only disingenuous, it’s a mistake that can blind us when fighting our enemy.This article, “What ISIS Really Wants” stresses the importance of labeling ISIS Islamic, mostly due to ISIS’s own Islamic rhetoric, but it never tells us WHY it’s been a mistake to deny ISIS Islamic authority.
I’ve read several articles and looked at a few debates, and it seems to be a right/left debate, with the right demanding we label ISIS Islamic and Islam is to blame, and the left, no surprise, taking Obama’s strategy of trying to deny ISIS’s claim on Islam. But the right’s argument is loud and keeps pounding the drum. My question then, is there any merit to the right’s insistence that Islam is to blame for ISIS? I’m not finding much argument beyond, “Obama is a Islamic sympathizer.”
In order to predict what an enemy nation will do, it’s necessary to understand how they think, as best we possibly can. In order to understand ISIS, it’s necessary to understand that they are Muslims of a particularly radical, apocalyptic stripe.
Now part of Obama’s job is to represent the United States in a diplomatic way, and I think his attempts to separate ISIS (and Al Queda) from Islam in his public statements have been pretty good. Republican reactions to this have been off the mark. But for those who aren’t putting on a public face of our country, but are instead making strategic decisions, it’s important to understand that these groups are Islamic.
Makes as much sense as saying the invasion of Iraqi was a christian crusade for oil. It kind of was but it was mostly weird shit capitalist ideology cooked up by privilaged academics and draft dodgers.
Where were we … oh yes, another bunch of privilaged fundamentalist headbangers, the Saudi Wahhabi Royal Family.
The question is who is the enemy. Are we fighting ISIS? Or are we fighting all Muslims?
If we’re fighting the Muslims who belong to ISIS and not fighting the Muslims who do not belong to ISIS, then why bring Islam into it? Why not just be direct and say we are fighting ISIS?
The enemy? That’s the elephant you won’t hear about, the USA’s great friend, the Saudi Wahhabi Royal Family - you know, the guys that don’t like women driving, who cut of 10-20 heads a month and … who funded ISIS from the start.
ISIS is Saudi Arabian Wahhabi ideology writ large every bit as much as the invasion of Iraq was the manifestation of Christian neo-con ideology.
You do realize many if not most of the neocon intellectuals are secular?
That said, I basically agree with what Little Nemo said. It is Muslims who are going to be the primary victims of ISIS savagery and whose support is both inevitable and critical in destroying this barbarism. However I did appreciate the Atlantic article for its nuanced approach to Islamic theology and moreover that despite the proclamations of certain eager secularists theology matters.
Well for starters, the most influential neocon in the Bush administration Paul Wolfowitz is Jewish, not any sort of evangelical Christian. The same is true with the Podhoeretzs, Kristols, and Krauthammer. The primary basis of neocon ideology is not upon any sort of theological reasoning as opposed to one of strategy.
Bernard Haykel, who is touted as “the foremost secular authority on ISIS’s ideology” (his brand new wiki page uses this article as the cite for that distinction!), is the protege of Fouad Ajami, the neocon go-to academic who supported invading Iraq. I am neither a religious scholar nor a Muslim and I can refute much of what he says with some quick googling.
According to Haykel:
ISIS is to Islam as the KKK and Aryan Brotherhood are to Christianity. Is it considered important to view those groups’ ideology as equally legitimate interpretations of the Bible? Does their theology matter as well?
That’s right, and they are not beyond fomenting Islamophobia to serve their strategy of increasing public support for military action. This article is reminiscent of some of the propaganda pieces put out during the run up to the Iraq invasion.
It raises some good points, but something is off about it, and I am hoping someone with more expertise will weigh in.
As to your first question, what’s a “legitimate” vs an “illegitimate” interpretation of the Bible? As to the second, of course it does. It seems to me that what you quoted, to wit:
is probably right. There’s not some sort of Platonic ideal of "Islam"as an actual thing…there’s just Muslims and the way they interact with and intepret their scriptures and commentaries.
I think it’s really arrogant and rude to try and tell someone that they are not the religion they claim to be… ESPECIALLY if you are not a part of that religion yourself (though it’s not much better for a protestant Christian to say that Fred Phelps wasn’t a real Christian).
If ISIS says they are Muslim, then they are. Period. That’s just the way religion works. If we are supposed to respect people’s religious beliefs, then that means we must respect what religion people claim to be in the first place.
Now I can see why Christians want to distance themselves from Westboro Baptist Church, and why Muslims want to distance themselves from ISIS, but that’s neither here nor there.
I’m not even particularly concerned with respecting people’s religious beliefs (or with disrespecting them–I just don’t think beliefs get privileged or condemned specifically due to their religious content), and I think you’ve got it, here. It’s accurate to say that ISIS is far out of the modern mainstream of Islam, just as Dominion Theologists are outside of the modern mainstream of Christianity. But that article makes a convincing case that ISIS has a well-constructed, detailed, and internally consistent theology, based on an extremely close and literal reading of the Koran. More so than al Qaeda, ISIS is a religious movement.
I wish that, rather than making the dubious claim that ISIS isn’t Islam, the president would emphasize that it’s a twisted, perverted version of Islam that’s rejected by virtually all Muslims across the globe, and that the threat it present is foremost to predominantly Muslim countries, and that Muslim countries are banding together to stop them. I think that’d get across the same subtext (not all Muslims are bad guys!) without the sort of inaccuracy that undermines his credibility.
This is getting to be beyond silly. Why can’t we say we’re fighting “The so-called Islamic State” (one of my preferred references to that group) and just leave it at that. Yeah, it uses the word “Islamic”, but it focuses on the actual enemy, not the rest of Islam.
There is no need to play semantic gymnastics and claim they are “not Muslims”. That just insults the intelligence of the listeners. They practice an obscure form of Islam, rejected by the vast majority of practitioners. We would fight Christians if they were doing the same thing in trying to recreate a Holy Roman Empire complete with an Inquisition.
The fact that an academic supported the Iraq War has little to do with his knowledge of his field.
ISIS is motivated primarily by a desire to reestablish a theocratic caliphate, while the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood are not motivated primarily by religious reasons. A better comparison would be the Khmer Rogue-no matter how twisted one thinks their interpretation of Marxism was, it was what they believed in and its important for us to understand it.
ISIS want’s a holy war, and they’re trying their damndest to make it one. I think they’d probably get more recruits if their slaughter was perceived this way.
Stripping them of any claim to Islam can delegitimize their rampage and help us keep the rest of the Muslim world from feeling the West is at it again, crusading against Muslims. By insinuating Islam, in general, is just a barbaric belief system, and the actions of ISIS come straight from the Koran, we’d be adding to the perception of an all out holy war. Moderate Muslims could turn to ISIS if they feel the West believes the basic tenets of Islam are evil.
I think the Atlantic article rebuts these points. Hardline Muslims aren’t particularly impressed by non-Muslims declaring things non-Muslim. THe pool of recruits for ISIS probably isn’t going to ask for the advice of non-Muslims on whether something is Muslim.
What’s important is for us to agree with mainstream Muslim leaders, that ISIS is a twisted perversion of the religion, and that the Islam practiced by ISIS is fundamentally different from that practiced by most of the world’s Muslims.
So, you are neither “a religious scholar nor a Muslim”.
You many not be, but Fouad Ajami is both and he’s hardly a neocon. Yes, like many Shia intellectuals he dramatically underestimated how severe the internal problems were in Iraq and had thought it was more like Lebanon when he grew up than what it was under Saddam.
Have you read The Arab Predicament or any of his other books?
If so, you’d recognize your characterization of him as a “neocon” is exceptionally stupid.
Which of his beliefs would you classify as Straussian and which would you not?
Please be as specific as possible.
Finally, claiming that you can refute most of the claims one of the highest regarded Middle Eastern scholars by “simply googling” is the very height of arrogance.
It reminds me of the people who insist that they know better than than climate scientists about global warming and can refute them by simple googling.
Since you feel that you more knowledgable than Dr. Ajami(I assume you understand the meaning of his name btw) then please tell us where you got your doctorate, what it’s in, which parts of the Middle East you’ve studied in, and what Arab languages and dialects you can speak.