islamic-state

To the heads of the new Islamic State, their God was money and power on earth.

ISIS was not particular about how their soldiers made it to Jannah, so long as they inflicted maximum damage..

The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers_ paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today__ jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a __hem or us_ vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the __ther'.

I will follow anyone...And remind everyone...Of enslaved Yazidi women...Raped...And forced...To donate blood to ISIS men...

I will follow anyone... And tell everyone...How grateful I am...To the Western nations.

Apostasy was the major justification for terminating internal opposition throughout the history of Islamic empires. That is why we have heard of whole tribes and groups being eradicated for apostasy. Muslim philosophers, mathematicians and scientists were killed or exiled for apostasy and thus, the Muslim world stood still in all scientific and aesthetic fields.

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest."Their skepticism is comprehensible. In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics__otably the late Edward Said__ho 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__he bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil."Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn__ matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he__ doing so for religious reasons.

Invasion was never a holy war in Islam, but it was holy in political Islam and the Islamic states and empires; after all, what is better than religion to drive people to war?!

The Islamic State or The State of Islam are the titles under which ISIS and the like are committing their evil deeds and legalizing their crimes. Oddly, there are no such titles through the history of political Islam; we have heard of an Omayyad Empire, an Abbasside Empire, an Ottoman Empire, the Ayyubid State, and other states which made use of religion to expand their territories and control peoples_ minds and lives. These states held the names of the ruling dynasties but never Islam.

It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State 'a problem with Islam.' The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. 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__ practices written plainly within them.

The Islamic State__ ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life__ hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else.

Be-patient for what was written for you was written by greatest of writers