The non-judgment of ISIS thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You’ve heard the advice: “Judge not.” “Love thine enemy.” Well, what if the enemy is ISIS? What does one say?

I can think of points like: these are mostly young guys, under 30. Plenty of them have lived through wars and chaos, now they Are the chaos in the form of war induced mass psychosis.

Don’t get me wrong here. The point isn’t to make them out as something the’re not or pretend their crimes never happened. I hope nobody derails things by accusing me of being a sympathizer or ranting against them instead. I don’t think I’ve heard this discussion: How does one love and not-judge ISIS?

2

The problem is not so much the fighters; it is the religious conservatives that control them.

In my opinion, ISIS as a group should not be loved. Yes, that’s a judgement. The individual fighters, the brainwashed fanatics, can grow up and calm down – but not as long as ISIS as a group exists.

3

Im not sure religious conservatives control them. They are revolutionary…wanting to overthrough the old order and create a new visionary government. Many of their leaders are ex Saddamites who are trying to co-op the passion of youth to create a state of their own. Also, religious conservatives usually are kinda intolerant of rape and murder.

4

I don’t know. On the front page of the NYT a couple days ago was the story of an ISIS fighter praying prostrate before and after raping a 12-year old. Is there a loophole, or perceived loophole, in Islam that allows for strict adherence along with amorality?

5

How many politicians have been caught in affairs and just declare that God has forgiven them?
Same loophole.

6

IMO its just evil men using ideology to justify their actions.

7

Is it that simple? Are they all evil? How would one go about not judging evil??

8

Um, no. I’m not a christian and I have no interest in loving my enemy.

ISIS stands for a complete rejection of western ideals, and a return to the most brutal kind of medieval theocracy. Their leaders are no doubt in my mind just completely immoral power seekers using the facade of religion to attract naive youngsters. I’m plenty fine with judging them.

9

You may be correct, but you are kind of missing the point of the thread. I had trouble answering the question myself, which is why I brought it up.

10

With great difficulty, if at all. The barbarity of their actions makes it really really hard to love and not-judge them.

11

Just why the hell would u not wanna judge evil? It almost makes u complicit in evil.

12

Given that (almost) no one thinks of himself as an evil person, fundamentally, both ISIS’s leaders and followers are doing what they think is in the best interests of mankind. In their own eyes, they’re like Peace Corps, out there trying to save people.

13

Jesus tapdancing Christ, are you for real?

14

Yes, I agree with coremelt: I judge ISIS, and I judge them as evil.

But the “answer to the question” is that ISIS (and Hitler, and Pol Pot, and the Middle Passage, and assorted lesser but still horrific evils like serial killers) are why I reject what some interpret as one of the core moral teachings of Christianity. To look at a group like ISIS and say “Well, judge not…gosh-a-roony, I’ve done bad things too!” is–to me–completely absurd.

15

I’m sure that is what they were thinking when they were raping 12 year old girls, hey, this is just like the peace corps!!!

16

I imagine that the thinking was more along the lines of, “Well hey, I’m working this hard, risking my life, etc. Why shouldn’t I get rewarded for it?”

17

I understand that belief to mean judge yourself as harshly as you would others. And the forgiveness part is if you should be wronged.

18

Fuck Isis. Just shoot the bastards and be done with it. I’m not going to love Isis or withhold judgment of them any more than I would the Nazis in 1942.

19

I am perfectly capable of genuinely neither judging nor seeking revenge upon a group, whilst still being able to kill them all on general principles.

They never would be missed.

20

I’m still not a Christian, but if “Judge not, that ye be not judged” just means “You will be judged by the same standard by which you judge others”, then I don’t have a problem with that. I actually at least try to follow that–for example, if someone does something boneheaded in traffic, I get pissed off. I don’t try and run them off the road, or even shoot them the finger, but I get annoyed, and maybe I cuss in the privacy of my own car. But I will at least try to stop and tell myself “Well, hey, you have surely done equally boneheaded things–if not that particular boneheaded thing, then some other boneheaded thing–so, relax, no one got hurt, your car didn’t even get dinged–not worth worrying about”. Ditto for various other petty annoyances and irritations. We’re all human, none of us is perfect, we all let a door slam shut in someone’s face, or “cut somebody off” in traffic, or snap at our significant others in the morning because we haven’t had enough coffee yet.

However, if I go out and dismember a family of four, I would kind of expect to be judged pretty harshly by my fellow human beings, and (since I’m not an axe-murderer) I don’t have any problem with that, and I don’t think I’m a hypocrite for being pretty judgmental about axe-murderers. I’m also pretty judgmental about people who brutally murder other people and kidnap and enslave women and girls on account of their victims’ religious beliefs. I think Islam is fundamentally bunk, but I don’t go around raping and murdering Muslims and vandalizing mosques.

But it’s not at all clear what the literal words of Matthew 7:1 were actually intended to mean, and the OP would seem to show that the idea that you should never judge anybody is actually held by at least some people as being allegedly morally exemplary. Which, again, makes no sense to me.