Amen!
Well, letâs ask the âformerâ ISIL members who were able to escape (which was fortunate for them as many who tried to leave were beheaded). They will tell you they felt they joined a noble cause which was larger than themselves and worth fighting for. However, after joining, they later learned just how much of Islam was actually being practiced. Suffice it to say, it was little to none. Their accounts of horrendous acts and injustices committed under the auspices of Islam are enlightening. (Google, if you dare).
I agree with the President; calling ISIL âIslamicâ would only serve to legitimize their bastardized âreligionâ and would be a mistake.
But beyond all that, I must admit I am at a loss as to why this is of such utmost importance. Letâs say the President began calling them Islamic extremists. Please explain how this would alter in any way our strategy and tactics for dealing with them? What would the United States do differently after this name change?
All of this hoopla reminds me of when the GOPosaurs claimed President Obama did not call the Benghazi attack âterrorismâ. They get their panties all wadded up over the least little thing. Mr President, ignore these fools.
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Sorry, but the POTUS, while I understand his reasoning, is wrong both in the most foundational sense on this oneâŚ
Thank you for pointing out the Atlantic article. Itâs well worth reading, but I think youâre misinterpreting it. From the article:
Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isnât 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. Weâll need to get acquainted with the Islamic Stateâs 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.
The article is speaking about developing our private strategic policies through a better understanding of the cultural and pseudo-religious motives driving and sustaining ISIS. Obama is speaking publicly and politically to to the world as a whole and to the 99.5% of Muslims worldwide who would never have anything to do with ISIS. The last thing the world needs now is to turn up the temperature on religious intolerance and persecution, and the surest way to do that would be to conflate the religion of 1.6 billion with a comparatively tiny caliphate intent on catalyzing an apocalypse.
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âGOPosaursâ
Iâm stealing this.
Hello there Ms. TrueGrits. Good to see you. Long time!!
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Brava. Well said
Hey, Chammy! I sure do miss seeing your commentary on here but I have been busy lately.
Hope you are well.
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Please do, as I stole it from someone else. Pay it forward. LOL
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God, having an adult in the Oval Office is driving the Beltway MSM courtiers batshit crazy and theyâre not going to put up with it a second longer then they have to. Itâs simply unendurable, dahlings. Dreary, awful and unentertaining. If only we could have someone like Scott Walker in there. Just think about how much more entertaining their world would be.
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So basically, he is using the NRA logic: Guns donât kill people, people kill people. And so - Islam isnât responsible for terrorism, people are! Brilliant move, Obama.
Nailed it.
He keeps interrupting their endless cocktail parties with all this thoughtful serious stuff, and the Villagers just canât stand it when someone obviously smarter than they sits in the Oval Office.
Bingo. Were we to witness âChristiansâ suddenly rising up and demanding we live by the rules for when and how to beat your wife or slave or when and for what itâs ok to trade your daughterâs virginity for (or whateverâŚI think itâs Leviticus), weâd race to call them âun-Christianâ and every pundit in Amurikkka would be yelling from his soapbox about their dangerously backwards, insane and societally damaging misinterpretations of the Bible and how their actions constitute an abusive slander of Christianity. And yet the same people race to point out that âIsis is only doing what their book tells them to, so itâs inherent in Islam.â
Itâs a deeply offensive and pedantic hypocrisy that can only be described as patronizing in a uniquely Western manner, which all, ultimately, plays right into ISISâs narrative. A billion Muslims cry out that ISIS is not Islam and that ISISâs actions horribly profane their religionâŚand yet in swoops Wood, professional beltway asshat, âtsk tskingâ at them all and WEST-SPLAINING to the world that âsorry, but your ancient book says otherwiseââŚdecrying ISISâs literalist, absurdist, anachronistic misinterpretations of the Quran while simultaneously relying on them to pin ISISâs atrocities on all of Islam.
What more could ISIS (or warhawk conservatives and Faux News) ask for? Heâs basically written a lengthy article decreeing that ISISâs perversions of Islam are, in fact, true IslamâŚjust what ISIS wants everyone to believe, particularly potential recruits.
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I donât disagree entirely. My point is, that trying to make the Quâranic argument that ISIL are somehow not on fundamentalist orthodoxy literalist terra-firms is indeed analogous to offering up apologetics that somehow the WBC is not on firm biblical footing. Itâs a fools-errand because as much as Christian apologetics wants to distance themselves from the bigots of the WBC, the WBC (as textual literalists) are correct.
I see where the POTUS is going with seeking to re-enforce and isolate the broader non-fundimnetalist/literalist umma from ISIL and their ilk, and I donât necessarily disagree with that approach. At the end of the day (pun noted) this is a fight within Islam and must be waged there. Is Islam going to reject literalist interpretation and application (as represented by ISIL) or not?
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Never said they were âthe last wordâ. But it is a very important and insightful analysis. Reading ThinkProgressâ rebuttal now.
How does that paragraph not make sense?
According to whom?
And I agree. And again from The Atlantic piece:
I suspect that most Muslims appreciated Obamaâs sentiment: the president was standing with them against both Baghdadi and non-Muslim chauvinists trying to implicate them in crimes. But most Muslims arenât susceptible to joining jihad. The ones who are susceptible will only have had their suspicions confirmed: the United States lies about religion to serve its purposes.
I read the article. Am I required to agree with everything in it? The author I note is a journalist, not a scholar of islamic religion or middle eastern history and he relies heavily on a single academic source, something that is inherently dangerous. Of course, ISIS is âIslamicâ in that they arose out of an Islamic background. Of course, there are passages in the Koran that they can use to support their positions. There are plenty of passages in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles that could be and have been used to justify all kinds of barbaric practices.
We need to be careful about overstating the threat that ISIS represents. Not overstating their evil-they are evil beyond measure-but overstating their threat. They have stepped into a vacuum and beaten only shadow armies, an Iraqi force that was a sad joke at the expense of US taxpayers and some disorganized rebel groups in Syria. And now they are stepping into the chaos of Libya. When they have taken on Shiite militias in Iraq or Hezbollah and Assadâs armies in Syria, they havenât done as well. Sure they can behead unarmed hostages, but real armies-not so much. So, hold Turkeyâs feet to the fire to stop jihadis from around the world from heading to Syria, encourage the Shiites to take them on with help from Iran and deny re-entry and/or jail westerners who go to fight for ISIS. Not a magic bullet, but time is on our side, not theirs,
PS-I want to add that whatever the theological support ISIS may choose to find in the Koran, the original caliphate was a place of great learning in science and art, and bears no relationship at all in historical terms to the âcaliphateâ that ISIS is running in its slaughterhouses in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
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Of course not. Why set up insipid straw men?
I donât disagree. And given how Islamic countries in the region are stepping up for this fight and being âthe faceâ of it is correct. I posit that understanding where ISIL is coming from (apocalyptic millenarian extremist interpretation based on forming and holding territory as a state) will be their eventual undoing. Such millenarian (cult like) theological foundations will unravel. Particularly as their apocalyptic predictions fail to materialize (a final battle with âthe westâ in Dabiq, etc. etc.).
The theological âpushbackâ against ISIL can and must come from within the umma (Muslim community).
Because your response to several people who disagreed with you was to tell them to read the piece. But one could read the piece and come to a whole range of conclusions. Itâs a magazine article and hardly the definitive word.
Overall, I think far too much energy has gone into parsing what the President of the US decides to call a group of thugs in the Middle East. Itâs like a bad relationship where the object is to get the other party to say âI love youâ, rather than to take a clear-eyed look at what the real situation is. ISIS will collapse not only for ideological reasons, but because power in the modern world requires an industrial base that they donât have. Their weapons are mostly what they have seized from the joke of an Iraqi army that the US taxpayers wasted billions on. They canât beat Assad, with his Russian weapons, nor even Hezbollah with its Iranian ones. They can kill and terrorize unarmed civilians, but unless they make tanks, ships and airplanes, or find someone who does to give them some, they are not a real threat.