I haven’t really weighed on this specific issue among the many issues from the Middle East. We’ve been engaged with a struggle that involved Islam, if not directly then certainly indirectly, since 2001 (or earlier depending on if you accept Osama Bin-Laden’s declarations of war against the US back during the Clinton years). Now, even with groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and of course al-Qaeda active in a variety of issues, the new growing threat of ISIS has become dominate with beheadings and the claim to a restoration of the caliphate. What does it all mean?
Well, The Atlantic just published the deepest article I have read about it by Graeme Wood. I first heard about it from my Internet friend Michael Metzger who wrote about an aspect of Wood’s expose. Metzger focused on the fact that ISIS is, in fact, at war with modernity and even suggests that where ISIS is strongest is in its devout attention and focus on fulfilling Islam’s holy writings, something modern Christians fail to do. As Metzger writes, “They get this part of the story correct. Any way you slice and dice it, modernity has created faith communities where the autonomous self rules the roost. How else do we explain anemic giving levels while claiming to adhere to the Bible? How else do we explain anemic church attendance when the Bible is quite clear about sharing in the sacraments? The best explanation is that Western Christians do what they want to do, when they want to do it. Period.”
Metzger though has only scratched the surface of the deep and penetrating article that Wood provides. You simply must read it in full. But note, what you read will, for many of my readers, cut against what you have wished. What you wish is what President Obama continues to incorrectly exclaim, to wit, that ISIS is not Islam or is (as he said recently) merely al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team.” What so many of my friends, mostly non-Christian, wish is that ISIS in no way has interpreted the Koran properly and that they are some sort of perverted or radicalized group…perhaps upset about their government or their economic status. Nothing could be further from the truth….but don’t take my word for, take the word of Wood and especially the experts and adherents he consulted. Take a read of some of the most penetrating parts.
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.
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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.”…. [Haykel] 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.”
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Anjem Choudary [leader of London-based banned Islamist group called Al Muhajiroun] took pains to present the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict.
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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. Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.
Bottom line? What I have said since 9/11 is that these people are NOT the ones who are misinterpreting the Koran, but are correctly interpreting, defending it from others (especially Western Muslims) who have accepted modernity. Back to Metzger’s point…these people in ISIS and other Muslim groups are simply trying to live out what the Koran tells them to do, and they have no intention of trying to collaborate with Western notions about the freedom of women or the tolerance of all views when their Prophet has already spoken against such.
Wood has little positive to say about our situation. As long as the President and others vainly hope that these people will come to see the world his way (and most of our way…discussion, collaboration, give-and-take, moderation), we will not find a successful path forward. You have to read the full article to see how ISIS perceives the next few years are going to roll out. Wood’s only suggestion would be to hope that Islam’s other most “devoted to the book” people, called Salafis.
These quietist Salafis, as they are known, agree with the Islamic State that God’s law is the only law, and they eschew practices like voting and the creation of political parties….. [they are] just as uncompromising [as ISIS], but with opposite conclusions. This strand has proved appealing to many Muslims cursed or blessed with a psychological longing to see every jot and tittle of the holy texts implemented as they were in the earliest days of Islam…. Their first priority is personal purification and religious observance, and they believe anything that thwarts those goals—such as causing war or unrest that would disrupt lives and prayer and scholarship—is forbidden.
Let’s just hope that there are more quietist Salafis than activist ISIS.