{"id":5208,"date":"2015-02-26T21:33:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T02:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5208"},"modified":"2015-02-28T15:16:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T20:16:24","slug":"what-we-want-isis-to-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5208","title":{"rendered":"What We Want ISIS To Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cover story in the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic is entitled “What Does ISIS Really Want”. I have the issue on my kitchen table (yes, a old-school paper magazine), but haven’t read the article yet. However, I did come across a good summary today on the Atlantic web site<\/a> by none other than the article author himself, Graeme Wood. <\/p>\n

If I’m reading him right, Mr. Wood is trying to drill down past the “western enlightenment” analysis regarding the social and economic conditions that arguably lead to political extremism and violence, and see just how serious ISIS is about its religious ideology. He seems to be saying that we do in fact need to take seriously the notion that ISIS finds its inspirations in existing (if not entirely mainstream) strains of the Islamic tradition. Although the Islamic mainstream is peaceful and tolerant, the ISIS viewpoint was not made up on the fly for entirely political and sociological reasons; Mr. Brown says that it is not a laughable misrepresentation of historical Islam. And that fact makes it all the more dangerous and powerful.<\/p>\n

Of course, many intelligent people here in the US want to think that this really isn’t about religiously-inspired belief. We just can’t believe that anyone in the modern world would accept the notion that God demands an extraordinary level of purity, one that requires violence and death to achieve. In order for the many to be saved, some (“the wicked”) need to die. No, it just can’t be that anyone living today would think that . . . it has to be poverty, historical exploitation by the west (motivated by oil), brutal dictators who were supported by the US and its European allies . . . Recall the recent TV interview statement<\/a> by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, who asserted that a primary motivation for people to join ISIS is the lack of job opportunities in Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n

Good old Tom Friedman, the self-appointed Middle East guru of the NY Times, today weighed in on what ISIS is, and what problems need to be solved in order to stop it. In a column entitled “ISIS Heads to Rome<\/a>“, Friedman takes an “all of the above” approach. He asserts that ISIS is led by a small vanguard of true believers, but is filled out and kept alive by those looking for better alternatives to the lives they currently live. So, we have to both promote social justice, while at the same time encouraging mainstream Islamic voices to reign in the extremists and keep the extremist message from spreading (is that even possible in a world of Twitter and YouTube?). And realistically, we may well have to get bloody with them (although if no other Islamic forces stand with us, our bloodshed would probably be in vain). Friedman seems to grudgingly accept that Western military action is going to be part of the mix.<\/p>\n

OK, sounds reasonable. But let’s not think that another “hearts and minds” campaign by US armed forces can do any better for us than in Vietnam — or to be honest, in Iraq or Afghanistan (the leaders in those wars may have learned from our Vietnam mistakes, but still left a lot to be desired). And at the same time, let’s not put our heads in the sand and think that no violence will be needed. If you could time-transport an army from medieval Europe into the present, you couldn’t change their mindsets. They believed in blood or victory, and you’d have to take them up on that. Because they would definitely take you up on it.<\/p>\n

Surely a 21st Century Internet-savvy ISIS isn’t like that . . . well, don’t be so sure. Brown ends his article with a quote from an ISIS supporter who commented on his feature article. Here’s what the pro-ISIS guy says: <\/p>\n

What stands out to me that others don’t seem to discuss much, is how the Islamic State, Osama [bin Laden] and others are operating as if they are reading from a script that was written 1,400 years ago. They not only follow these prophecies, but plan ahead based upon them. One would therefore assume that the enemies of Islam would note this and prepare adequately, but [it\u2019s] almost as if they feel that playing along would mean that they believe in the prophecies too, and so they ignore them and go about things their own way. … [The] enemies of the Muslims may be aware of what the Muslims are planning, but it won’t benefit them at all as they prefer to either keep their heads in the sand, or to fight their imaginary war based upon rational freedom-loving democrats vs. irrational evil terrorist madmen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t agree that ISIS equals Islam, and I don’t accept the implication that the western opponents of ISIS are “enemies of Islam” or “enemies of the Muslims”. But if you replace those phrases with “enemies of ISIS”, you will see that this guy is in effect doing us a favor. We had darn well better read that script from 1400 years ago and take it seriously. It’s way past time to talk about curing this crisis solely with democracy and and infrastructure projects and constitutions guaranteeing human rights and job training and industrial investment. Friedman is right, those things will be needed to bring the Middle Eastern body back to health. But for now, there is a cancer that needs to be excised. (Not entirely unlike the virulent social cancer that sprung up in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, along with the slow-death cancer that overtook and dominated Russia between 1917 and 1991, which might not have been entirely excised as Mr. Putin seems to demonstrate.)<\/p>\n

Oh, and PS — Friedman supports Brown’s contention that ISIS’s “fanaticism” isn’t as non-Islamic as the Obama White House paints it. Tom F repeats the well known fact that Islam does not have anything like the Pope and Patriarchs of the Roman and Eastern Catholic faith traditions, who enforce a fairly strict definition of what the Catholic faith is and isn’t (much to the chagrin of many liberal and educated western Christians). Given the lack of a highly centralized command structure akin to the Vatican and a canon of written doctrine, a wider variety of Islamic interpretations live side-by-side, each claiming ultimate authenticity. <\/p>\n

So, even if the more radical versions of Islam capture the loyalties of only a minority of those professing the way of the Holy Book and Prophet, there is no general authority in the Islamic world to assert their heresy. The White House can try to do this itself, but will certainly not get much traction on the “Muslim street”. The only real authority would be the “voice of the Ummah<\/a>“; and until the Islamic majority starts speaking up loudly and forcefully against the radicalists, the latter group’s claim to spiritual legitimacy will continue to make some sense to many of those whom they are trying to impress (i.e., the masses in Pakistan and Egypt and Jordan, etc.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cover story in the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic is entitled “What Does ISIS Really Want”. I have the issue on my kitchen table (yes, a old-school paper magazine), but haven’t read the article yet. However, I did come across a good summary today on the Atlantic web site by none other than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5208"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5225,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208\/revisions\/5225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}