“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.
Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable, but the Islamic State’s countlesspropaganda videos and encyclical are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable.
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.
We are misled by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature
In fact, much of what IS does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. The religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.
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.
The Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection
Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks.
Many refuse to believe that IS is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest.
In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics who pointed out that calling Muslims “ancient” was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil.
Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul.
It’s hard to overstate how hamstrung the Islamic State will be by its radicalism. The modern international system, born of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, relies on each state’s willingness to recognize borders, however grudgingly. For the Islamic State, that recognition is ideological suicide.
If we had identified the Islamic State’s intentions early, and realized that the vacuum in Syria and Iraq would give it ample space to carry them out, we might, at a minimum, have pushed Iraq to harden its border with Syria and preemptively make deals with its Sunnis.
Some observers have called for escalation, including several predictable voices from the interventionist right, who have urged the deployment of tens of thousands of American soldiers. These calls should not be dismissed too quickly: an avowedly genocidal organization is on its potential victims’ front lawn, and it is committing daily atrocities in the territory it already controls.
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.
They [IS] believe that they are personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives, and that merely to be swept up in the drama, on the side of righteousness, is a privilege and a pleasure—especially when it is also a burden.
That the Islamic State holds the imminent fulfillment of prophecy as a matter of dogma at least tells us the mettle of our opponent. It is ready to cheer its own near-obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the Prophetic model.”
In een looooooong longread op The Atlantic legt Graeme Wood haarfijn uit wat IS in werkelijkheid is (een verzameling islamitische zeloten die hun leven wijden en offeren aan een extreme interpretatie van de Koran en zich daarbij laten leiden door middeleeuwse opvattingen) en hoe het westen IS voortdurend gevaarlijk onderschat door maar niet te willen accepteren dat het wel degelijk een kwestie van ‘de islam’ is. Islam, religie, het verlangen naar de dood en de apocalyps. Wegkijken en iedereen behalve IS zelf de schuld geven is, kortom, geen optie.
Een ontluisterende maar ook verhelderende longread, waarin wordt uitgelegd hoe kruisiging, genocide, slavenhandel en veelwijverij ten diepste islamitisch zijn, hoe het kalifaat de pijler onder het uitvoeren van de IS-ideologie is, hoe de apocalyps een leidraad is en waarin bovendien ideeën worden aangedragen over hoe we IS het beste kunnen bestrijden in de jaren die, hoe dan ook, nog voor ons liggen waarin we IS als onze gevreesde vijand zullen vinden.
Wie van politiek-correcte verhandelingen over vrede en tolerantie of van zalvende D66-taal over ‘ongelijkheid’ en ‘ja maar wij in het westen’ houdt, wordt afgeraden het complete artikel te lezen. Of om het juist wél te lezen: IS tenslotte is één van de gevaarlijkste en meest onderschatte vijanden die de westerse vrijheid ooit heeft bedreigd.
In de quotes hierboven alvast een sappige samenvatting.
