As bantered back and forth in recent blog posts, there is ample question on how best to tackle the current crisis. The Intramuralist has been respectfully concerned with Pres. Obama’s unwillingness to be specific in his terminology, refusing to call out the perpetrators as “radical Islamic terrorists.” The administration intentionally avoids associating terrorism with Islam. Contrasted with Obama’s frequency of specifically calling out other persons and religions — especially Christianity — I find his lack of willingness to be specific in this area concerning. I am not attempting to be critical. I am simply concerned about the ambiguous motive behind his ambiguous terminology.
In an attempt to understand the ambiguity (as opposed to any of us being seduced into simply adopting a partisan stance), I’ve been reading much, including the President’s own words. Arguably the most insightful piece I read was from Graeme Wood in The Atlantic. (Thank you to the several who suggested it.) The piece is excellent, informative, and long. Today I offer an edited portion of his perspective…
“What is the Islamic State? Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers… In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as ‘not Islamic’ and as al-Qaeda’s ‘jayvee team,’ statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.
The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.
Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned… We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.
The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.
We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it… We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature…
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. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal…”
As the conversation continues, let’s figure this out… be respectful… call it what it is… and avoid political correctness. Let’s do nothing to strengthen the terrorists. And let none of us be seduced into simply adopting a partisan stance. This is not a partisan issue.
Respectfully…
AR
Thank you for the inf.