Terrorism and Atrocities of the Islamic State are Inspired and Justified by its Interpretations of...

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The Terrorism and Atrocities of the Islamic State are Inspired and Justified by its Interpretations of Islam

Jeffrey M. Bale Monterey Institute of International Studies

“Which will come first, flying cars and vacations to Mars, or a simple acknowledgement that beliefs guide behavior and that certain religious ideas – jihad, martyrdom, blasphemy, apostasy – reliably lead to oppression and murder?”

-‐ Sam Harris1

As is invariably the case these days in the wake of the terrorist violence, brutality, and atrocities carried out explicitly in the name of Islam by jihadist terrorists, a host of dissimulating Islamist activists, other Muslims in a state of psychological denial, and apologetic Western pundits are now insisting that the actions of the terrorist group calling itself al-Dawla al-Islamiyya (IS: the Islamic State) – which was previously known as al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq wa al-Sham (ISIS: the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria) – has little or nothing to do with Islam.2

1 Sam Harris, “Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon,” Sam Harris website, 10 September 2014, at http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sleepwalking-toward-armageddon . 2 Alas, it is even more troubling that these same false claims are so often repeated, like some sort of mindless cult-like mantra, by Western government officials. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama made the following misleading statement in his 10 September 2014 address to the American people outlining his strategy for dealing with the Islamic State: “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim.” See “Transcript: President Obama on How U.S. Will Address Islamic State,” NPR [National Public Radio], 10 September 2014, at http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347515100/transcript-president-obama-on-how-u-s-will-address-islamic-state . The very last point about the preponderance of Muslim victims is the only accurate part of this statement, but that is because – as is the case with so many Sunni jihadist groups – the sectarian, puritanical IS jihadists regard their Muslim victims not as real Muslims, much less as “innocents,” but rather as “apostates,” heretical “rejecters of Allah,” or “hypocrites,” and thus as de facto “infidels.” For his part, American Secretary of State John Kerry made this no less inaccurate statement during his visit to Baghdad a couple of days earlier: “ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam, but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing to do with Islam.” See Jim Bacon and Kim Hjelmgaard, “Kerry Says World Won’t Let Islamic State Win in Iraq,” USA Today, 10 September 2014, at

2 Alas, it is even more troubling that these same false claims are so often repeated, like some sort of mindless cult-like mantra, by Western government officials. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama made the following misleading statement in his 10 September 2014 address to the American people outlining his strategy for dealing

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Not long ago, many such commentators also argued that the horrendous actions committed by the Nigerian jihadist group Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da‘wa wa al-Jihad (Association of People Following the Teachings [of Muhammad] on Proselytization and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram (Western Influence is Sinful), had nothing to do with its members’ interpretations of Islam.3

In all such cases, however, the perpetrators of these violent actions not only proudly insist that their actions are inspired by the Qur’an and the exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad himself (as recorded in the

with the Islamic State: “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim.” See “Transcript: President Obama on How U.S. Will Address Islamic State,” NPR [National Public Radio], 10 September 2014, at http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347515100/transcript-president-obama-on-how-u-s-will-address-islamic-state . The very last point about the preponderance of Muslim victims is the only accurate part of this statement, but that is because – as is the case with so many Sunni jihadist groups – the sectarian, puritanical IS jihadists regard their Muslim victims not as real Muslims, much less as “innocents,” but rather as “apostates,” heretical “rejecters of Allah,” or “hypocrites,” and thus as de facto “infidels.” For his part, American Secretary of State John Kerry made this no less inaccurate statement during his visit to Baghdad a couple of days earlier: “ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam, but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing to do with Islam.” See Jim Bacon and Kim Hjelmgaard, “Kerry Says World Won’t Let Islamic State Win in Iraq,” USA Today, 10 September 2014, at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/10/kerry-iraq-prime-minister-islamic-state-syria/15376123/ . Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in explaining the adoption of heightened security measures in response to the threat of jihadist terrorism, felt it necessary to opine that “[t]his is about crime and combating crime. This is not about religion…” See Frank Coletta, “Tony Abbott Increases Australia’s Terrorism Threat Level from Medium to High and Warns Australians to Expect Increased Security,” Daily Mail, 11 September 2014, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2753016/Tony-Abbott-increases-Australia-s-terror-threat-medium-high.html . And British Prime Minister David Cameron, in response to the IS’ beheading of a British aid worker, insisted that “Islam is a religion of peace”, that the IS jihadists are “monsters” rather than Muslims, and that their “claim to do this in the name of Islam” is “nonsense.” See Peter Dominiczak, “David Cameron Vows to Hunt Down ‘Monsters’ Who Beheaded British Hostage David Haines,” Telegraph, 14 September 2014, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11095247/David-Cameron-vows-to-hunt-down-monsters-who-beheaded-British-hostage-David-Haines.html . Apparently, these Western leaders imagine that they have more expertise on Islamic doctrines and history than IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the nom de guerre of Ibrahim ibn ‘Awad ibn Ibrahim ibn ‘Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarra’i, who has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad. 3 See, e.g., Dean Obeidallah, “The Boko Haram Terrorists are Not ‘Islamic,’” Daily Beast, 12 May 2014, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/the-boko-haram-terrorists-are-not-islamic.html ; “OIC: Boko Haram has Nothing to Do with Islam,” al-Manar, 6 March 2014, at http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=154669&cid=56&fromval=1 ; and “Boko Haram has Nothing to Do with Islam: Iran Cleric,” Press TV (Iran), 18 May 2014, at http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/05/18/363213/boko-haram-has-no-relation-with-islam/ . Even some American politicians have made this same erroneous claim. See Michael Warren, “Dem Senator: Boko Haram is Not Islamist,” Weekly Standard, 16 May 2014, at http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-senator-boko-haram-not-islamist_792891.html .

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canonical hadith collections), but explicitly cite relevant Qur’anic passages and the reported actions of their prophet to justify those actions.4

Hence in order to argue that jihadist terrorists are not directly inspired and primarily motivated by their interpretations of Islamic doctrines and by clear precedents from early Islamic history, as they themselves repeatedly and accurately claim, one has to pretend as though the perpetrators themselves have no idea why they are actually carrying out such actions, or assert that they are deliberately mischaracterizing their own motives.

In short, one must stubbornly ignore what the actual protagonists keep telling the entire world about their own motives and instead rely on Islamist activists, who are often peddling outright disinformation, or on Western commentators, most of whom know little or nothing about Islam or Islamism, for explanations of their behavior.5 In both cases, these sorts of pundits minimize the central role played by Islamist ideology and

4 Cf., e.g., Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qura[y]shi al-Baghdadi, “A Message to the Mujahidin and the Muslim Umma in the Month of Ramadan,” al-Hayat Media Center, [1 July 2014], at http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/documents/baghdadi-caliph.pdf , wherein the IS’ leader, the self-styled‘Amir al-Mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful), announces the establishment of a new Caliphate and enthusiastically promotes offensive jihad, martyrdom, and world domination (along with ample citations from relevant Qur’anic passages); numerous IS propaganda and recruitment videos citing the Qur’an and ahadith; and the first three issues of the IS’s magazine Dabiq, which likewise contain references to the Qur’an and hadith, promote actions using explicitly Islamic rationales and justifications, and are inspired by Muslim apocalyptic millenarian themes. See, e.g., “Until It Burns the Crusader Armies in Dabiq,” Dabiq 1 [July 2014], pp. 3-5, at https://ia802500.us.archive.org/24/items/dbq01_desktop_en/dbq01_desktop_en.pdf . Indeed, virtually everything produced by the IS in written or video formats is laced with justificatory references to the Qur’an and hadith, as well as events in Islamic history and Muslim eschatological themes. For more on the apocalyptic themes in the first issue of Dabiq, see Timothy Furnish, “New Islamic State Magazine “Dabiq”: Western Forces on the Eve of Destruction,” Mahdi Watch, 14 July 2014, at http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2014.07.01_arch.html . 5 As atheist Sam Harris accurately notes in “Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon,” “there is now a large industry of obfuscation designed to protect Muslims [as well as, it should be emphasized, Westerners] from having to grapple with these truths. Our humanities and social science departments are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other diverse fields, who claim that where Muslim intolerance and violence are concerned, nothing is ever what it seems. Above all, these experts claim that one can’t take Islamists and jihadists at their word: Their incessant declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy are nothing more than a mask concealing their real motivations. What are their real motivations? Insert here the most abject hopes and projections of secular liberalism…” For further illustrations of these types of delusional and self-destructive arguments, in the context of the Boston Marathon bombings and other acts of jihadist terrorism in the West, see Jeffrey M. Bale, “Denying the Link between Islamist Ideology and Jihadist Terrorism: Political Correctness and the Undermining of Counterterrorism,” Perspectives on Terrorism 7:5 (October 2013), pp. 5-46.

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erroneously ascribe the actions of jihadist terrorists to assorted subsidiary causal factors, such as garden-variety political grievances, poverty, lack of democracy, psychopathology, greed, or simple hunger for power.

Using similar logic that would be no less faulty than claiming that the actions of jihadist terrorists have “nothing to do with Islam,” one might just as easily argue that self-described Protestant fundamentalists or Catholic ultra traditionalists who bomb abortion clinics in the name of their interpretations of Christian doctrines have nothing to do with Christianity, that the actions of theocratic Orthodox haredi or messianic Zionist terrorist groups in Israel have nothing to do with their interpretations of Judaism, that the actions of self-styled Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups have nothing to do with communism, and that the actions of self-described neo-Nazi terrorist groups have nothing to do with Nazism.6

Needless to say, most of the commentators who keep insisting, against all evidence to the contrary, that the actions of jihadist terrorists cannot be attributed to their interpretations of Islam do not also argue that the violent actions of other types of extremists cannot be attributed to their ideological beliefs. On the contrary, whenever other types of terrorists carry out gruesome attacks, many of those same commentators are quick to ascribe their actions primarily to their proclaimed theological and ideological beliefs – and justifiably so.

One can easily illustrate this glaring contrast with respect to the analytical treatment of Islamist terrorism by asking a simple question: when was the last time that any more or less respected commentator made the case that Nazi ideology had nothing to do with inspiring particular acts of terrorism committed by self-identified neo-Nazis, or that notions of white supremacy

6 Cf. the broader arguments of Jerry Coyne, “If ISIS is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition is Not Catholic,” New Republic, 13 September 2014, at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119433/if-isis-not-islamic-then-inquisition-was-not-catholic .

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had nothing to do with violence committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan?

Thus it is virtually only in cases of acts of terrorism committed by jihadists, which are nowadays by far the most serious and the most common throughout large portions of the world, that one encounters so much unwillingness to face reality and so much frantic desperation to absolve Islam itself – or even Islamist interpretations of Islam – from shouldering any responsibility for inspiring acts committed in its name.

These constant efforts to defend, excuse, absolve, or whitewash Islam (as well as to mischaracterize the nature of Islamism – a right-wing, totalitarian, theocratic, “infidel”-hating, and Islamic supremacist ideology – as “moderate” and “democratic”) have taken a variety of forms.

On the one hand, there are some academicians who mistakenly minimize the role of ideology as a key explanatory or causal factor in inspiring the violence and terrorism carried out by non-state extremist groups, not just in the case of jihadist terrorism but also in other such cases.

Although these efforts are seriously misleading, since they tend to be based on flawed social science theories (and also, often, on unsuitable or problematic quantitative methodologies) that overemphasize the role of human rationality and “rational choice,” materialistic rather than idealistic motives, personal psychological factors, “really existing” political and economic grievances, or larger impersonal structural forces as causal factors in the etiology of terrorism, they at least have the merit of not employing double standards, i.e., of making an unwarranted and wholly artificial distinction between the causes of Islamist terrorism and other types of ideologically-inspired terrorism.

Indeed, although some have specifically applied such problematic notions in the context of Islamist terrorism, there is no reason to suppose that they regard ideology as being any more important in other terrorism contexts.

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See, as examples, the works of Marc Sageman, who exaggerates the role of social connections whilst minimizing that of ideology in the recruitment and actions of jihadists;7 Robert Pape, who (wrongly) argues that foreign occupation rather than modified Islamic notions of martyrdom explain the prevalence of jihadist suicide attacks;8 Scott Atran, who (rightly) notes that along with religious fervor, jihadists are motivated by a spirit of camaraderie, influenced by group dynamics, and affected by “sacred values” of a cultural nature, but arguably underestimates (like many anthropologists who view religions in a more holistic fashion) the impact of core Islamic religious doctrines;9 Eli Berman, who claims that jihadist terrorists are “rational altruists” concerned about their communities rather than fanatics motivated by Islamic religious doctrines, although these two notions are not necessarily mutually exclusive (apart from the exaggeration of their purported rationality);10 and Alan Krueger, who argues that the suppression of civil liberties is the main cause of terrorism, a theory that fails to explain why most non-state terrorist groups, including jihadist groups, are animated by extremist ideologies that are intrinsically antithetical to civil liberties.11

7 See Marc Sagemen, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004); idem, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008). 8 Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2006); and idem and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012). Cf. the sober, historically-grounded counter-arguments in David Cook and Olivia Allison, Understanding and Addressing Suicide Attacks: The Faith and Politics of Martyrdom Operations (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), wherein the prominent religious dimensions of Islamist suicide attacks are rightly emphasized. 9 Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists (New York: Harper Collins, 2010). 10 Eli Berman, Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T., 2011). 11 Alan B. Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University, 2008). This book does have the merit, however, of demolishing erroneous social science theories that ascribe terrorism to poverty and lack of education.

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Two relatively interesting and insightful examples of efforts to de-emphasize the importance of Islamist ideology, when specifically applied to the Islamic State, are perhaps worth noting by way of illustration.

The first is Josh Marshall’s article “The Rage to Oppose,” wherein he rightly points out that some of the Western citizens or residents who leave their countries to join and fight with the IS are individuals who are so hostile to liberal democracy and capitalism that they looking for any viable ideological opposition movement to embrace.

Since the utopian internationalist ideology of “revolutionary socialism” has been largely discredited (as has, though Marshall does not mention it, the utopian radical nationalist ideology of revolutionary fascism) by its own failed predictions and above all by the sordid, brutal nature and behavior of “really existing” communist regimes and movements, the transnational anti-“infidel” ideology of Islamism has become increasingly attractive to some of those “lost souls” (my term) who are desperately seeking a real alternative to, and substitute for, the “bourgeois” materialism and democracy that they despise.

Yet although Marshall justly notes that these psychologically alienated individuals have effectively converted to the “most extreme, totalizing variant” of Islam, he downplays the significance of this by arguing that some of them have “little more than a passing knowledge of the basics of Islamic ritual practice”, as if that trivial fact has real relevance.12

The second is an article with an utterly misleading title – “ISIL’s Western Converts are Not Motivated by Islam” – by UK American historian Tim Stanley, who claims, quite rightly, that some of the Islamic State’s Western converts have been induced to embrace Islamic fundamentalism because 12 Josh Marshall, “The Rage to Oppose,” TPM, 7 September 2014, at http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-rage-to-oppose . However, Marshall erroneously claims that the majority of the people from Western countries who have gone off to fight with the IS are white Western converts rather than “first or second generation naturalized immigrants from the MENA region or Central or South Asia.” Given that most of these “foreign fighters” from the West are in fact Muslims who fall into the latter category, this tends to greatly undermine his overall argument.

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they suffered from “middle class ennui” and “boredom”, which he later more accurately characterizes as existential “alienation” from grubby capitalist materialism and corrupt, uninspiring democratic processes.13

As many analysts and extremists themselves have long pointed out, mundane daily life in consumerist democratic capitalist societies typically “lacks the romance, the heroism, and the sense of involvement” (as per libertarian Charles Cooke) in a higher transcendental, world-transformative cause that certain individuals find satisfying and inspiring, if not psychologically necessary.

These dissatisfied dreamers are thus often prone to embrace utopian ideologies and join extremist movements, which they imagine will satisfy their cravings for adventure and meaning. Although this is an astute but hardly original observation, and the author also rightly dismisses the widespread but unsupportable notion that extremism is mainly a product of social marginalization, the problem with this article is the erroneous assertion that such people, once having enthusiastically embraced Islamism, are not motivated by their interpretations of Islam.

Like Marshall, Stanley also notes, as per a 2008 British Security Service (MI5) report, that many of those involved in jihadist terrorism are not only lacking in religious zealotry, but do “not practise their faith regularly” and “lack religious literacy”.14 Even if this was true before they became radicalized, which it surely is in some cases, it is no longer applicable to most “born again” reverts or converts after they have embraced Islamism.15

13 Tim Stanley, “ISIL’s Western Converts are Not Motivated by Islam. They are Motivated by Boredom,” The Telegraph, 4 September 2014, at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100285161/isils-western-converts-are-not-motivated-by-islam-they-are-motivated-by-boredom/ . 14 See the summary in Alan Travis, “MI5 Challenges Views on Terrorism in Britain,” The Guardian, 20 August 2008, at http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1 . The rest of the report’s conclusions seem perfectly accurate. 15 In this context a “revert,” as opposed to a non-Muslim who converts to Islam, is a person raised as a Muslim who for a time does not take his or her religion particularly seriously or carry out his or her prescribed ritualistic

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Such arguments thus completely miss the point, for reasons that will be clarified below.

Be that as it may, these analysts are correct to argue that ennui and alienation are important factors that may induce individuals to join insurgent terrorist groups. Indeed, I too have argued for decades (in my introductory terrorism courses) that the only demonstrable psychological common denominator of individuals who join insurgent terrorist groups is a profound sense of alienation from the political, social, economic, and/or cultural status quo.

After all, people who are satisfied or happy with the status quo are not going to be motivated to formulate revolutionary ideologies, organize insurgent movements, join such movements after they have been created, or carry out dangerous and illegal acts of violence, terrorist or otherwise, against their own governments and fellow citizens.

Although boredom may also be a subsidiary factor at the outset, that vague feeling of boredom must be transformed into acute alienation from, and then outright anger towards, the status quo before it will cause someone to embrace an extremist anti-system ideology or join a violent insurgent organization. And, given the decline of intellectual and social support for utopian communist, fascist, and anarchist movements in recent decades, it is also hardly surprising that more and more of these alienated people, especially those who are Muslim, are now turning to Islamism or opting to wage armed jihad.

Where, then, have these commentators gone wrong? First, as noted above, they fail to distinguish between the factors, psychological and otherwise, that may initially induce certain individuals to embrace a radical ideology like Islamism, and the factors that motivate them after they have embraced

obligations regularly, but who then at a certain point becomes enthusiastically pious and devoted to Islam (often to its most literalist and puritanical interpretations).

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that ideology. Second, they simply ignore the powerful impact that the adherence to such an ideology – and to any organized movement that espouses it – will end up having on those individuals.

What they apparently do not recognize is that once such people have become ideologically indoctrinated by or within the Islamist or other extremist ideological milieus, they will thenceforth act in accordance with, and on behalf of, the beliefs associated with those particular theological or ideological doctrines. Indeed, it is precisely that theology or ideology which provides them with the “higher” moral purposes and the “glorious” utopian, world-transformative causes that together serve to inspire them to make sacrifices, risk their lives, and justify their commission of acts of extreme violence against designated enemies.

Ideological extremists should therefore not, except in very rare and empirically demonstrable cases, be confused with angry “lone nuts” with clinical psychopathologies who are carrying out acts of violence for idiosyncratic personal reasons, like serial killers or spree killers. Rather, those extremists tend to become dedicated, committed militants who are actively struggling with like-minded comrades or (to use jihadist terminology) “brothers,” whether in person or in the virtual realm, in ongoing collective efforts, in the case of Islamist jihadists, to create an idealized, all-encompassing, shari‘a-compliant world order.

Hence it is a serious mistake to argue that the overwhelming majority of the people who are inspired to join jihadist groups do not at some point become religious zealots acting on the basis of Islamist theo-political agendas. It is therefore completely irrelevant whether or not those jihadist recruits were previously religiously devout.

Nor is it necessary that these jihadist recruits have a sophisticated understanding of Islamic religious doctrines in order to be strongly inspired

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and motivated by Islamism, as so many Islam apologists and Islamist apologists have mistakenly or disingenuously argued.16

On the contrary, the last thing that the leaders and ideologues of extremist movements want is for their followers to think too much about complex issues or to understand all of the potential ramifications and contradictions of the doctrines they espouse, either of which could conceivably lead to undermining their ideological convictions or result in their inaction after further reflection.

For those leaders, it is actually preferable if most of the people who join extremist movements and/or embrace extremist ideologies have only a simplified, reductionist, and easily comprehensible view of those ideologies, one that is constantly reinforced by inspirational slogans, sound bites, repetitious ritualistic actions, and ceremonial hymns or songs (e.g., jihadist nashids). In that sense, it is irrelevant whether or not most of these "born again" jihadists have, or ever manage to develop, a sophisticated understanding of Islamic or Islamist doctrines, just as it is irrelevant whether the majority of the militants who earlier joined communist and fascist movements understood the ideological complexities of those doctrines, since all they needed to understand were the basic concepts that served as guides for revolutionary action. The same is true of various types of non-Islamic religious extremists.

For that matter, the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims do not have a sophisticated understanding of Islamic doctrines, expertise concerning the interpretation and application of the shari‘a, or a detailed knowledge of Islamic history. Yet no reasonable observer would similarly conclude that over a billion self-identified Muslims with a more or less

16 See, e.g., Mehdi Hasan, “Islam for Dummies: This is What Wannabe Jihadists Order Online,” New Republic, 22 August 2014, at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119182/jihadists-buy-islam-dummies-amazon . This article orginally appeared in the New Statesman.

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rudimentary understanding of their faith were “not really Muslims” or that central aspects of their behavior had “nothing to do with Islam.”

As I have argued elsewhere in the context of elucidating the characteristics of ideological extremism, all political ideologies, including extremist political and religio-political ideologies, are designed to provide simple answers to the following three basic questions:

• First, what is wrong with the world? • Second, who is responsible for those wrongs? • Third, what needs to be done to correct those wrongs?

The first two questions are diagnostic in nature, whereas the third provides a basic guide or blueprint for action.17 In short, the only thing that would-be jihadists need to understand about Islamism is its explanation for what is wrong with the world (“unbelief” [kufr]), who its designated enemies are (“infidels” [kuffar], “pagans” [mushrikun], Muslim “apostates” [murtaddun], and Muslim “hypocrites” [munafiqun]), and what its simplistic, all-encompassing vision for creating a utopian shari'a-dominated world order that is purportedly sanctioned by Allah is (for Sunni Islamists, the idealized image of a global Caliphate).

Needless to say, jihadist recruits come to believe that Islam’s irremediably “evil” enemies must be fought against relentlessly, defeated decisively, and subjected thoroughly in order for the Islamists to be able to establish their imagined utopian world order, even though such a grandiose, imperialist scheme for global Islamic domination is obviously unachievable in the real world given Muslim military weaknesses.

17 Jeffrey M. Bale, “Some Problems with the Notion of a ‘Nexus’ between Terrorists and Criminals,” in The Nexus between Traffickers and Terrorists: The New Clear and Present Danger?, ed. by Russell Howard (New York: McGraw-Hill e-book, 2014), pp. 52-4; and idem, Where the Anti-Democratic Extremes Touch: Interaction and Collaboration between Islamists and Western Left- and Right-Wing Extremists (New York: Routledge, 2015), ch. 1, forthcoming.

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Understanding these basic principles does not require a detailed knowledge of the Qur’an, an awareness of the authenticity and reliability problems concerning the sources for early Islamic history, jurisprudential expertise in the interpretation of the shari‘a, or a full comprehension of the philosophical ideas of brilliant past Islamic thinkers like al-Ghazali (ca. 1058-1111) and Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406).

Similarly, only a similarly naïve analyst would claim that the average communist militant could not really be inspired by communist ideological doctrines and slogans unless he or she had spent time and effort mastering the convoluted arguments presented in the three volumes of Karl Marx’s opus, Das Kapital (Capital).

On the contrary, all communist militants really needed to know was that capitalism was “evil” and exploitive and had to be destroyed, that the “bourgeoisie” were the enemy who must be fought and eliminated, and that the end goal was the creation of a utopian, worldwide “classless” society free of all exploitation and injustice.

To understand those core ideas, it would have sufficed for them to listen to exhortatory speeches by charismatic revolutionary militants or read short polemical pamphlets like Marx’s Das Kommunistische Manifest (The Communist Manifesto) or Vladimir Lenin’s Shto delat’? (What Is to Be Done?).

Shifting from relatively serious but nonetheless flawed analyses that minimize the role of Islamist ideology in connection with the activities of the Islamic State to naïve, polemical, or propagandistic claims by Muslims, especially Islamists, that the terrorism of jihadist groups like the IS has “nothing to do with Islam” itself, or even particular interpretations of it, one could cite numerous examples.

Indeed, the most egregious nonsense about the Islamic State is currently being peddled, as one would expect, by ideologues, spokesmen, and

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activists from Islamist organizations, both in the Muslim world and in the West.

Leading Saudi clerics, Saudi-sponsored and Saudi-funded international Islamic organizations like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and numerous Islamist groups and networks linked to the Jam‘iyyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Society of the Muslim Brothers, better known as the Muslim Brotherhood) or the Mawdudist Jama‘at-i Islami (Islamic Association) party are now belatedly hastening to denounce the IS and to falsely claim that it has “nothing to do with Islam” or that its appalling actions are “un-Islamic” or even “anti-Islamic.”18

18 Unfortunately, many naïve Western journalists have cited these deceptive statements by Islamists in an effort to challenge conservative Western media claims that not enough Muslims are speaking out against the IS. Indeed, those journalists tend to highlight such statements in order to give the impression that lots of supposedly moderate Muslims are publicly opposing the IS, either without actually knowing or without bothering to mention that most of the people and organizations that are making such statements are in fact Islamists who are, as per usual, trying to whitewash Islam and their own brands of Islamism, burnish their own tarnished images and thereby protect themselves, and/or mislead gullible “infidels” in the media. For a representative example, see Michelle Leung and Ellie Sandmeyer, “Muslim Leaders Have Roundly Denounced Islamic State, but Conservative Media Won’t Tell You That,” Media Matters, 21 August 2014, at http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/08/21/muslim-leaders-have-roundly-denounced-islamic-s/200498 . These two authors are seemingly unaware that groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) are all either Muslim Brotherhood legacy (or front) organizations (CAIR, ISNA, MPAC) or umbrella organizations reportedly dominated by Mawdudists (MCB). For further details, cf. Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe, and Laurie Cohen, “A Rare Look at Secretive Brotherhood in America,” Chicago Tribune, 19 September 2004, at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi-0409190261sep19-story.html#page=1 ; Steven Merley, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States (New York: Hudson Institute, [April] 2009), at http://www.hudson.org/content/researchattachments/attachment/1163/20090411_merley.usbrotherhood.pdf ; Tom Quiggin, The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Ottawa: Terrorism and Security Experts Network of Canada, 2014); Investigative Project on Terrorism, Islamic Society of North America: An IPT Investigative Report (Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/275.pdf ; Investigative Project on Terrorism, Behind the Façade: The Muslim Public Affairs Council (Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/358.pdf ; note 22 below for CAIR; and Anthony McRoy, From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain (London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006), pp. 171-3, for the MCB. For official and unofficial Saudi statements, cf. “ISIS is Enemy No. 1 of Islam, says Saudi Grand Mufti,” Al-‘Arabiyya, 19 August 2014, citing comments made by Saudi Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Shaykh (as well as noting the Saudi donation of $100 million to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre [UNCCT]), at http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/19/Saudi-mufti-ISIS-is-enemy-No-1-of-Islam-.html ; and “World’s Top Muslim Leaders Condemn Attacks on Iraqi Christians [by ISIS],” Reuters, 25 July 2014, wherein it is noted that the OIC’s Saudi Secretary General, Iyad ibn Amin Madani, said that actions like the forced deportation and threats to execute Christians by ISIS have “nothing to do with Islam and its principles that call for justice, kindness, fairness, freedom of faith and coexistence.”, at

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They are doing so for two reasons. First, Islamist organizations (like the Muslim Brotherhood) that currently eschew and condemn the use of armed “offensive jihad” (jihad al-talab) – whilst simultaneously promoting “defensive jihad” (jihad al-difa‘) against the invading “Crusaders” (salibiyyun) – for pragmatic (as opposed to deep-rooted moral or philosophical) reasons, and instead assiduously employ a gradualist and stealthy “Islamization from below” strategy, are often the bitter rivals of armed jihadist organizations that promote a violent “Islamization from above” strategy.

Although both share the same long term goals of creating a strict, puritanical “Islamic state” (al-dawla al-islamiyya) or “Islamic order” (al-nizam al-islami), uniting all members of the Muslim “community of believers” (umma) under the aegis of a single political entity, re-establishing the Caliphate (Sunnis) or establishing an Imamate (Shi‘a), resuming the expansion of the dar al-Islam (abode of Islam, i.e.. those geographical territories governed by Muslims in accordance with the shari‘a) at the expense of the dar al-harb (abode of war, i.e., those geographical territories not under Muslim control or ruled by the shari‘a), and ultimately Islamizing

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/07/25/worlds_muslim_leaders_condemn_attacks_on_iraqi_christians/1103410 . Given that Saudi Arabia has for decades been – and still is – the primary worldwide disseminator of one of the most influential and sectarian currents of Islamism, Wahhabism, one can only marvel at the hypocrisy displayed in such statements. It is true, of course, that many Muslims who were first radicalized by intolerant Wahhabi doctrines later embraced even more radical currents of Islamism that identified the Saudi monarchy itself as an “infidel” regime, specifically jihadist Salafism. For radical Islamist opposition to the Saudi regime at home, see Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2010); idem and Stéphane Lacroix, The Meccan Rebellion: The Story of Juhayman al-‘Utaybi Revisited (Bristol: Amal, 2011); Stéphane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2011); and Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New York: Palgrave, 1999). These developments caused the Saudis to adopt various types of “anti-radicalism” policies at home, ranging from increased repression to newly-instituted “re-education” efforts, which did not however stop them from continuing to indoctrinate Saudi students with “anti-infidel” views, from discriminating against non-Arabs, non-Muslims, and women inside the kingdom, or from aggressively exporting Wahhabism abroad. Some examples of Western Islamist claims about the IS being “un-Islamic” will soon be discussed and analyzed.

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the entire world, they vehemently disagree with each other about which means are best suited for accomplishing those objectives.19

The former prefer to resort to proselytization (da‘wa), the creation of an elaborate network of sectoral, satellite, and front organizations, systematic ideological indoctrination, the provision of social services, the infiltration of other Muslim organizations in order to attain “hegemony” over Muslim civil society, and the overt or covert penetration of the state apparatus, whereas the latter primarily favor the use of outright violence and the forcible seizure of state power to facilitate their imposition of a strict, puritanical Islamist agenda.

This is an ongoing, decades-old dispute over appropriate means that has frequently resulted in bitter polemics between rival Islamist ideologues, organizations, and milieus, including between the IS and its Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated critics at the present time.20

19 Cf. Jeffrey M. Bale, “Islamism and Totalitarianism,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10:2 (June 2009), pp. 79-81, for the divisions between rival Islamists over the best means to employ. See also the illustrative quotes from Islamist ideologues and activists, concerning their underlying Islamic supremacist goals, cited in idem, “Jihadist Ideology and Strategy and the Possible Employment of WMD,” in Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, ed. by Gary Ackerman and Jeremy Tamsett (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009), pp. 17-21. For the IS’ fantasies of global domination, note the IS-produced images depicting the entire world under the control of the IS, one of which is reprinted as Figure 2 in Aymenn [Ayman] Jawad al-Tamimi’s useful “Comprehensive Reference Guide to Sunni Militant Groups in Iraq,” Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi website, 23 January 2014, at http://www.aymennjawad.org/14350/comprehensive-reference-guide-to-sunni-militant . 20 E.g., the IS has criticized both deposed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Prime Minister Muhammad Mursi and HAMAS leader Isma‘il Haniyya as tawaghit (i.e., rebels against Allah, idolaters, or tyrants) for employing “deviant methodologies”, thereby alluding to their participation (however cynical) in “infidel” institutions like elections, their corrupt behavior in power, and their general abandonment of armed jihad. See “From Hijrah to Khilafah,” Dabiq 1, pp. 38-9. In turn, the IS has been criticized for its supposed “deviance” and “excesses” by Brotherhood-affiliated clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even by some influential pro-jihadist and pro-Qa‘idat al-Jihad ideologues like the Jordanian-Palestinian Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who had also earlier criticized the IS’s original predecessor organization, Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi’s Jama‘at al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad (The Monotheism and Jihad Group), for its excessive sectarianism and brutality. See, respectively, “Qaradawi Says ‘Jihadist Caliphate’ Violates Sharia,” Al-‘Arabiyya, 5 July 2014, at http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/05/Qaradawi-says-jihadist-caliphate-violates-sharia-.html , although the article does not specify what al-Qaradawi’s theological or legal arguments actually are – elsewhere, however, he is reported to have said that it is “religiously invalid” and “does not serve the Islamic project”, cited in “Al-Qaradawi Considers ‘Baghdadi Succession’ in Iraq as Religiously Invalid,” Shafaq News [Iraq], 6 July 2014, at

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Second, Islamists living in the West who are busily engaged in the aforementioned “gradualist” strategy are anxious to conceal their underlying theocratic, anti-democratic, Islamic supremacist agenda from ignorant and gullible Westerners so that they can pursue that agenda unnoticed and unhindered.

As such, they engage in systematic deception and dissimulation to try and convince Westerners, especially elements of Western political, media, and academic milieus that are already prone to delude themselves or engage in wishful thinking, that they are actually “moderate” and “democratic.” For that very reason, one must subject these claims by Islamist activists to particular scrutiny and skepticism.

Most of these commentators repeat the same one-sided mantras that have been endlessly repeated since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, e.g., that “Islam is a religion of peace” or that “Islam does not sanction terrorism and http://english.shafaaq.com/index.php/politics/10411-al-qaradawi-considers-baghdadi-succession-in-iraq-as-religiously-invalid ; and Jonathan Miller, “Al Qaeda Spiritual Leader: Islamic State are ‘Deviants,’” Channel 4 News [UK], 1 July 2014, at http://www.channel4.com/news/sheikh-abu-muhammad-al-maqdis-salafist-islam-islamic-state . Al-Maqdisi’s reasons for criticizing the IS, cited therein, are quite revealing: “The name (caliphate) and its announcement does not alarm me. All of us wish to return to the caliphate and the breaking of boundaries and the raising of the unification banners and lowering the flags of condemnation. No-one hates that but the hypocrite. But the lesson is in matching the names with the facts and implementing these facts on the ground….Whoever rush[es] something prematurely will be punished by being deprived of it. What interests me very much is what will these people (Isis/IS) do based on this announcement and this name - which changed from a group, to the State of Iraq, then to the state of Iraq and the Levant and then to general caliphate….Is this caliphate going to be a safe haven for all the vulnerable people and a shelter for every Muslim? Or will this name become a hanging sword over Muslims who disagree with them? Will this lead to the abolishment of all emirates (Islamic emirates in Afghanistan and elsewhere) that came before their declared state, and will it invalidate all the other groups who are doing jihad for the sake of God in all fields before them?” For al-Maqdisi’s complete statement, see “This is Some of What I Have and Not All of It,” July 2014 (relevant quotes on pp. 3-4 of the English translation), a PDF of which can be accessed at “Minbar al-Tawḥīd wa-l-Jihād presents a new statement from Shaykh Abū Muḥammad al-Maqdisī: ‘This Is Some Of What I Have and Not the Whole Of It,’” Jihadology website, 27 July 2014, at http://jihadology.net/2014/07/01/minbar-al-taw%E1%B8%A5id-wa-l-jihad-presents-a-new-statement-from-shaykh-abu-mu%E1%B8%A5ammad-al-maqdisi-this-is-some-of-what-i-have-and-not-the-whole-of-it/ . For more on al-Maqdisi, see Joas Wagemakers, A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (New York: Cambridge University, 2012); and Nelly Lahoud, “In Search of Philosopher-Jihadis: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Jihadi Philosophy,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10:2 (June 2009), pp. 205-20. For more on al-Qaradawi, see Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, eds., Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (New York: Columbia University, 2009), although several of the entries therein are overly sympathetic.

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beheadings,” usually without providing any actual textual or historical evidence in support of their claims.

This is all the more peculiar, since if the jihadists affiliated with the IS were in fact egregiously misinterpreting Islam, it should be very easy indeed for their critics to point this out by referring to Islam’s sacred scriptures and the reported words and deeds of Muhammad that would serve to explicitly repudiate barbarous IS actions such as the wholesale massacre or torture of captives (mainly “apostate” Muslims like Alawis/“Nusayris” and Shi‘a, but also non-Muslims like Assyrian Christians and Yazidis), the confiscation of their land and wealth, the enslavement (sexual and otherwise) of their women, the gruesome public beheadings and stonings of designated enemies and “sinners” in order to terrorize others and perhaps also to precipitate the arrival of the Mahdi and the onset of the “end times,” the wanton destruction of places of worship and historical monuments, and the list goes on and on.21

Yet they generally fail to do this, and on those rare occasions when they try to demonstrate that these kinds of activities are “un-Islamic,” usually by citing a handful of Qur’anic passages out of context or by noting a few recorded examples of Muhammad’s compassion, their arguments are weak and unconvincing if not preposterous. The jihadists themselves and certain hardline pro-jihadist clerics have thus far seemingly had little trouble rebutting their Muslim critics’ often specious arguments.

21 Cf. Aaron Y. Zelin, “The Massacre Strategy,” Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 17 June 2014, at http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-massacre-strategy , for the attempt to terrorize. For the possible eschatological significance of these beheadings, see Timothy Furnish, “IS[IS]: Still Beheading Like It’s the End of the World,” Mahdi Watch, 21 August 2014, at http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2014.08.01_arch.html . Other analysts have argued that some of the activities of the IS, including its savage behavior, have been influenced by the 2004 jihadist strategic treatise written by Abu Bakr Naji, Idarat al-tawwahush: Akhtar mahala satammuru biha al-umma [The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the Umma Will Pass], which was first published on a jihadist website but is now available in English translation at http://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-through-which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf . One of the aims of this treatise is to show how jihadist territorial conquests could lead to the establishment of a Caliphate.

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An illustrative example of such sophistry is provided by Nihad ‘Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a key component of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. whose predecessor organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), was accused of providing support to the Harakat al-Muqawwama al-Islamiyya (HAMAS: Islamic Resistance Movement), a designated terrorist organization in Palestine.22

In an opinion piece entitled “ISIS is Not Just Un-Islamic, It is Anti-Islamic,” ‘Awad describes ISIS as a “criminal gang” that “falsely…claims to uphold the banner of Islam.”23 In support of his claim that the group is actually “anti-Islamic,” he cites three seemingly moderate early Medinan-period Qur’anic passages and, as is common for Islam apologists, attempts to redefine the term jihad in such a way that it cannot be associated with offensive warfare.24

22 For a thoroughly documented analysis of the background and agenda of CAIR, which misleadingly claims to be a Muslim civil liberties organization, see Investigative Project on Terrorism, The Council on American-Islamic Relations: CAIR Exposed (Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/122.pdf . Cf. also Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, “CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment,” Middle East Forum 13:2 (Spring 2006), pp. 3-20. 23 Nihad Awad, “ISIS is Not Just Un-Islamic, It is Anti-Islamic,” Time Magazine, 5 September 2014, at http://time.com/3273873/stop-isis-islam/ . 24 The claim that the term jihad does not refer to offensive warfare against the enemies of Islam with the goal of expanding the dar al-Islam until the entire world is brought under the aegis of Islam is blatantly false. Such a sanitized definition of jihad , a noun deriving from the verb jahada, meaning “to struggle” or “to exert oneself,” conveniently ignores the fact that jihad bi al-sayf (“jihad of the sword”) has always been the most commonplace meaning of the term, both historically and at the present time. See E[mile] Tyan, “Djihād,” in Bernard Lewis et al, Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983 [1965]), vol. 2, p. 538: “In law, according to general doctrine and in historical tradition, the djihād consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam and, if need be, of its defence… The notion stems from the fundamental principle of the universality of Islam: this religion, along with the temporal power which it implies, ought to embrace the whole universe, if necessary by force.” Cf. further Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2006); David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 2005); Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (New York and Oxford: Oxford University, 1999); Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Weiner, 1996); and Alfred Morabia, Le Gihâd dans l’Islam médiéval (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993).

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The first of those passages from the Qur’an (2:143) is rather murky and difficult to interpret, given that it seems to promote moderation due to its reference to Muslims as a “community of the middle way” (ummat al-wasatan) but also has the geographic connotation of being in the “center” since it appears in the midst of suras about which direction Muslims should pray towards.25

The second (4:35) concerns arbitration resolution in disputes between the families of the husband and wife and, not coincidentally, appears immediately after an aya that provides theological sanction for patriarchal privilege and an explicit authorization for Muslim husbands to maintain control over their wives (including, after first advising them and then

For a more forthright analysis by Muslims than that of ‘Awad, see “The Reason Why Jihaad is Prescribed,” Islam Question & Answer website, undated, at http://islamqa.info/en/34647 , wherein the following reasons are elucidated (and supported by relevant citations from the Qur’an and hadith): 1) “The main goal of jihad is to make the people worship Allaah alone and to bring them forth from servitude to people to servitude to the Lord of people…”; 2) “Repelling the aggression of those who attack Muslims”; 3) “Removing fitnah (tribulation)” [i.e., internal strife]; 4) “Protecting the Islamic state from the evil of the kuffaar” [infidels]; 5) “Frightening the kuffaar, humiliating them and putting them to shame”; \ 6) “Exposing the hypocrites” [i.e., those who feign support for Islam]; 7) Purifying the believers of their sins and ridding them thereof”; 8) “Acquiring booty”; and 9) “Taking martyrs” [i.e., producing martyrs]. This particular website is supervised by Riyadh-born Salafist Muhammad al-Munajjid, but was later banned in 2010 by the Saudi government for issuing independent fatwas. 25 Surat al-Baqara, 2:143, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/143 : “And thus we have made you a just community that you will be witnesses over the people and the Messenger will be a witness over you. And We did not make the qiblah which you used to face except that We might make evident who would follow the Messenger from who would turn back on his heels. And indeed, it is difficult except for those whom Allah has guided. And never would Allah have caused you to lose your faith. Indeed Allah is, to the people, Kind and Merciful.” However, it should be pointed out that although this accessible online version of the Qur’an usefully provides the Arabic text together with an English translation, some of the actual translations are poorly rendered, grammatically unsound, or unclear. In this case, e.g., the key phrase is rendered as “just community”, whereas in the online Yusuf ‘Ali translation it is rendered as an “ummat justly balanced”. See ‘Abdallah Yusuf ‘Ali, The Noble Qur’an, 2:143, at http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/quran/00217.htm . For his part, Islamist ideologue Sayyid Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi notes, in his famous Qur’anic tafsir (the six volume Tafhim al-Qur’an) that the expression ummat al-wasatan is “too rich in meaning to find an adequate equivalent in any other language. It signifies that distinguished group of people [i.e., Muslims] which follows the path of path of justice and equity, of balance and moderation, a group which occupies a central position among the nations of the world so that its relationship with all is based on righteousness and justice and none receives its support in wrong and injustice.” See Sayyid Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the Qur’ān: Abridged Version of Tafhīm al-Qur’ān (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2006), p. 40, note 44. The problem, of course, is that the terms “justice,” “equity,” “moderation,” and “balance” are not clearly or explicitly defined, which allows for very different interpretations.

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denying them sex, beating them) so as to ensure that they will behave obediently.26

The third (2:190) encourages Muslims to fight those who fight them “in the way of Allah” (fi sabil Allah), but warns them not to transgress any divine proscriptions or boundaries since Allah does not like “transgressors.”27 This is a well-known aya that enjoins proportionality with respect to appropriate levels and types of Muslim violence, and is therefore related to the Islamic just war conceptions to be discussed below.

Unfortunately for ‘Awad, none of these passages provides unambiguous support for moderation, or specifically prohibits the use of extreme violence in cases where it might be considered warranted or “proportional” by jihadists.

This is all the more true since, as will become clear, so many other Qur’anic passages explicitly sanction warfare and brutal behavior. Hence his argument that the behavior of IS is not only “un-Islamic” but “anti-Islamic” should be wholly unpersuasive to anyone familiar with the Qur’an, the ahadith, or early Islamic history.

Dawud Walid, another Islamist activist associated with CAIR who was interviewed during a staged September 2014 protest by “Muslims Against ISIS” in Dearborn, Michigan, cited the Qur’anic passage (5:32) that is invariably referred to by those who are trying to claim that Islam is 26 Surat al-Nisa’ 4:35, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/4/35 : “And if you fear dissension between the two (husband and wife), send an arbitrator from his people and an arbitrator from her people. If they both desire reconciliation, Allah will cause it between them. Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Acquainted [with all things].” (Note that I myself have added occasional words within parentheses for clarification in this and other Qur’anic passages, whereas the words in brackets were previously added for clarification by Muslim translators.) Thus, in his article, ‘Awad has either mistranslated this aya or cited the wrong aya. For the preceding aya, see Surat al-Nisa’ 4:34, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/4/34 : “Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.” This is hardly an illustration of “moderation,” at least by 21st century standards. 27 See Surat al-Baqara, 2:190, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/190 : “Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.”

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inherently peaceful, which he then proceeded to summarize as follows: “Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is like they have killed all of mankind.”28

Like so many others have done, Walid conveniently ignored the fact that this particular aya refers specifically to the “Children of Israel,” i.e., the Israelites, or members of the twelve tribes of Israel, rather than to Muslims, and that it was presented for didactic purposes in the context of Cain wrongly killing Abel: “Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for (killing) a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them (i.e., Jews) with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.”29

Although this message was intended to provide moral guidance to Muslims as well about what was and was not permissible, it was cited in reference to Allah’s supposed warning to transgressing Jews. More tellingly, the following aya (5:33) specifies which categories of people can be legitimately killed, crucified, or dismembered by Muslim believers for their sins: “those who wage war [yuharibun] against Allah and His Prophet” and those who “strive to spread corruption/mischief [fasadan] in the land…”30

28 Natasha Dado, “Muslims Condemn ISIS, Say Terrorist Group Doesn’t Represent Islam,” New America Media, 2 September 2014, at http://newamericamedia.org/2014/09/muslims-condemn-isis-say-terrorist-group-doesnt-represent-islam.php . 29 Surat al-Ma’ida 5:32, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/5/32 . The word “innocent” is found nowhere in this passage, although it is implicit. 30 See Surat al-Ma’ida 5:33, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/5/33 , for the entire aya: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.” It goes without saying that “spreading corruption/mischief in the land” is such a vague formulation that it could conceivably apply to virtually anything that particular Muslims do not approve of. For the evolution of the attitudes towards the Israelites and Jews in early Muslim sources, see Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qur’ān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999).

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Finally, those who cite 5:32 or other ostensibly peaceful passages from the Qur’an (such as 2: 25631) as authoritative fail to mention that, according to the doctrine of abrogation (naskh), the intolerant and bellicose passages “revealed” during the later Medinan period supposedly abrogate many if not most of the tolerant, compassionate passages from the prior Meccan and earlier Medinan period.32

Hence it is all too easy, and not at all unorthodox or heretical, for jihadists to insist that they are enjoined by the Qur’an itself to kill, subjugate, and enslave the enemies of Islam, irrespective of what Islam apologists or Islamist apologists may claim.

For example, another participant at the “Muslims Against ISIS” really in Michigan, Iraqi-American Alia Almulla, made the bold claim that the Qur’an “doesn’t teach terrorism” and went on to say that “[p]eople need to become more educated about Islam and actually read the Qur’an.”33

31 Surat al-Baqara 2:256, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/256 : “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut (false gods) and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing.” Lest anyone mistakenly believe that this passage implies Islam’s tolerance for “unbelief” or “idolatry,” the next aya should disabuse them of that error. See Surat al-Baqara 2:257, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/257 : “Allah is the ally of those who believe. He brings them out from darkness into the light. And those who disbelieve - their allies are Taghut. They take them out of the light into darkness. Those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.” In short, those who are not Muslims will be forever consigned to Hellfire by Allah for their sins. 32 For scriptural support for the doctrine of abrogation, see 2:106 and 16:101. Three types of abrogation were later identified by Islamic scholars, the most important of which in this context is naskh al-hukm duna al-tilawa, “abrogation of the ruling but not the wording,” essentially the supersession of various earlier passages in the Qur’an or hadith by later passages. The standard Muslim explanation for the apparent contradictions in the Qur’an is not that Allah or Muhammad made any errors in transmitting it, but rather that the former intentionally revealed messages to Muhammad and his followers in stages so that they could completely understand them. For abrogation, see esp. John Burton, The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1990). For a good brief introductory discussion of legal reasoning concerning both the Qur’an and the reported words and deeds (sunna) of Muhammad, see Knut S. Vikør, Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law (New York: Oxford University, 2005), chapter 3. For a convenient listing of the chronology of the Qur’anic revelations, which has been the subject of intense analysis and disputation amongst both Muslim scholars and modern historians, see Kevin P. Edgecomb, “Chronological Order of Quranic Suras,” Bombaxo, 2002, at http://www.bombaxo.com/chronsurs.html . 33 Cited in Dado, “Muslims Condemn ISIS…”

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She is absolutely right to encourage people to learn more about Islam and to read the Qur’an, but gives little evidence in her quoted comments that she has carefully read the Qur’an herself.

If she had, she could hardly have overlooked sura 8:60, which is so often referred to and praised by Islamists precisely because it sanctions the use of terrorism against the enemies of Islam: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.”34

That particular passage of the Qur’an has not only been cited favorably by Qa‘idat al-Jihad leader Usama bin Ladin and other jihadist terrorists, but the first two words from it (wa a‘idduwa = “and prepare/make ready/muster”) also appear directly beneath the pair of crossed swords on the bottom of the symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist organization with numerous branches and offshoots throughout the world that nowadays tends to publicly eschew armed jihad for purely pragmatic or tactical reasons but not infrequently advocated and resorted to violence and terrorism in the past.35

Moreover, there are numerous other Qur’anic passages that explicitly enjoin Muslims to wage war and/or slay, capture, enslave, and subjugate “infidels,” “apostates,” and “hypocrites,” such as 8:39, 8.65, 8:67-68, 9:5, 9:13, 9:29, 9:36, 9:41, 9:73, 9:111, 23:1-6, 33:50, 47:35, 48:29, 2:193, 2:216, 3:140-1, 4:24, 4:76, and 5:33.

34 Surat al-Anfal, 8:60, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/8/60 . 35 See “Moderate Islam is a Prostration to the West,” in The Al Qaeda Reader, ed. by Raymond Ibrahim (New York: Broadway, 2007), p. 54. This text was either written by Bin Ladin himself or written under his direction. On terrorizing the unbelievers, cf. also sura 8:12, cited below in note 37.

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Indeed, several of those very passages, especially in the Surat al-Tawba, are believed by many Islamic scholars to have abrogated and superseded multiple relatively tolerant passages dating from the Meccan or early Medinan eras.36

Hence those who cite certain supposedly “abrogated” (mansukh) suras as evidence that Islam really promotes compassion and toleration rather than intolerance and bellicosity towards unbelievers and “insufficiently Islamic” Muslims, can easily be dismissed as egregious “misinterpreters” of Islam, and indeed demonized and targeted as “apostates,” by pro-jihad Islamists.

Even if we limited ourselves herein to discussing particularly gruesome high profile actions such as public beheadings, one can find passages sanctioning this behavior in the Qur’an, such as sura 47:4 and sura 8:12.37 How, then, is it possible to argue – especially if one interprets the Qur’an in a strict, literalist fashion rather than very loosely – that violent actions which are explicitly enjoined in Islamic scriptures are actually “un-Islamic”?

Furthermore, it is not only the Qur’an itself, but also the recorded “customary practice” (sunna) of Muhammad himself that provides ample justification and sanction for much of the barbaric behavior of IS jihadists. In this context, it must be remembered that Muhammad is regarded by other Muslims both as the last of Allah’s prophets and as the ideal Muslim, and that as such his words and deeds are viewed as both exemplary and worthy of emulation.

36 For an attempt to challenge such arguments, see Louay Fatoohi, Abrogation in the Qur’an and Islamic Law (New York: Routledge, 2012), esp. ch. 7, who argues that abrogation is a “myth” and that later violent Qur’anic passages cannot be employed to abrogate earlier peaceful passages. Sadly, many past and present Muslim scholars disagree. 37 Surat Muhammad, 47:4, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/47/4 : “So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah - never will He waste their deeds.” Surat al-Anfal, 8:12, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/8/12 : “[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, ‘I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.’”

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Unfortunately, Islamic sources that are considered authentic by Muslims, such as the canonical hadith collections, the early biographies of Muhammad, and various historical chronicles of the early phases of the Arab conquests, all provide ample evidence – assuming that those sources can actually be trusted with respect to their reliability, which has long been the subject of scholarly debate amongst historians – of the harshness, brutality, and cruelty that Muhammad, his companions, and the “rightly-guided” Caliphs at times exhibited, especially but not exclusively in the course of their military campaigns, towards their designated enemies: the Quraysh rulers of Mecca, their “hypocritical” Muslim supporters and perfidious Jewish “betrayers” in Medina, recalcitrant Bedouin tribes, the Jews of Khaybar, the Byzantines, the Sasanian Persians, and rival or rebellious groups of Muslims.38

38 For a good introduction to early Islamic sources, see Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writings (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998). For examples of such sources, see Alfred Guillaume’s translation of Muhammad ibn Ishaq’s Sirat rasul Allah, as The Life of Muhammad (Karachi and New York: Oxford University, 2006), which survives mainly in an edited recension prepared later by ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham; and the translation by Rizwi Faizer et al of Muhammad ibn ‘Umar Waqidi’s Kitab al-maghazi, as The Life of Muhammad: Al-Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-maghāzī (New York: Routledge, 2011); the six canonical hadith collections, which can be accessed in full or partial translated versions at the USC [University of Southern California] – MSA [Muslim Students Association] Compendium of Muslim Texts website, at http://web.archive.org/web/20070829052559/http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/ ; and the Tarikh al-rasul wa al-muluk of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, translated by various scholars in a multi-volume edition as The History of al-Tabarī = Tārīkh al-rusul wa al-mulūk (Albany: SUNY, 1985-), esp. volumes 6-14. For a detailed older scholarly biography of Muhammad based upon early Islamic sources, see W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad in Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); and idem, Muhammad in Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). For scholarly descriptions of the early Muslim conquests, see Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1981); Walter E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1992), esp. chapters 4-8; and Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008), esp. chapter 3. For a dense, straightforward narrative of Muhammad’s life based on an uncritical use of those same sources, see Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006 [1983]), which in essence reflects the standard Muslim understanding. For an unduly sympathetic account of early Islamic history, see Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims: History and Memory (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). For recent and radically revisionist scholarly interpretations (building on skeptical foundations earlier laid by John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook), which cast considerable doubt on the provenance and reliability of those sources as well as on the standard Muslim account of the origins of Islam, see Karl Heinz-Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, eds., The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009); and Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren, Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003). For a moderately revisionist account, see Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2010). The important point, however, is that devout Muslims regard these sources as reliable indicators of the activities of Muhammad, his companions, and his immediate successors (al-salaf al-salih, the “pious

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It should be emphasized, however, that atrocities of the kind described in these sources were hardly atypical in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, much less restricted to Muslims and Muslim armies. But that grim fact provides very little comfort given that these very same gruesome behaviors, however common they may have been in the ancient and early medieval periods (and even, if truth be told, in the later medieval and modern periods), are still clearly regarded as morally permissible, theologically sanctioned, worthy of emulation, and even emotionally inspiring by Islamist jihadists and their active and passive supporters in the early 21st century.

This remains true despite the extraordinary evolution and transformation of human moral values that has occurred in subsequent centuries, especially in the post-Enlightenment West, and the progress that has been made by the international community since the end of World War II in officially delegitimizing and criminalizing, though by no means always successfully ameliorating, such behaviors.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that many of the activities of the IS violate the letter and the spirit of traditional Islamic “just war” doctrines, since IS jihadists deliberately and often indiscriminately target, abuse, and slaughter non-combatants from “enemy” groups.39

These just war doctrines, which in theory forbid Muslims from deliberately targeting women, children, the aged, and the physically or mentally infirm

ancestors”) during the idealized early history of Islam, and thus as providing an appropriate model for their own behavior. 39 See, e.g., the comments of jihadist researcher Will McCants, cited in Jack Jenkins, “The Book That Really Explains ISIS (Hint: It’s Not the Qur’an”), Think Progress, 10 September 2014, at http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/10/3565635/the-book-that-really-explains-isis-hint-its-not-the-quran/ : “The Islamic State stands apart from other [extremist] organizations…They are not bound by the structures of traditional Islamic warfare.” Sadly, both the title of the article and McCants’ own comments are misleading. As has already been noted, many Qur’anic passages serve to justify the atrocities committed by the IS. As for McCants, he draws an overly sharp distinction therein between the IS and other jihadist groups. Although the IS is certainly more brutal than some other jihadist organizations, many of the latter also regularly violate Islamic just war doctrines. Consider, as an example, the appalling atrocities and indiscriminate brutality of al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya al-Musallaha (the Groupe Islamique Armé or GIA: Armed Islamic Group) in Algeria, whose takfiri leaders had labeled all Algerians who did not support them as “infidels” and then systematically proceeded to target them.

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and, more broadly, from carrying out disproportionate levels of violence, were developed by medieval Muslim jurists on the basis of certain Qur’anic passages and various compassionate acts and instructions of Muhammad recorded in ostensibly reliable ahadith.40

Even so, it is a sad fact that just war notions in various parts of the world have frequently been devised precisely during historical contexts in which such elevated behavioral standards were being regularly or even systematically violated by armies, and the grim reality in practice was that, during the time of Muhammad and his successors, civilians within all of those protected categories were often killed inadvertently or in the normal course of carrying out regular military operations by Muslim troops, especially if doing so was considered necessary in order to defeat their foes.41

The killing of such people in these circumstances was thus regarded as permissible, not only by pragmatic Muslim generals but also by Muhammad himself and by the majority of Muslim jurists, since the survival and ultimate triumph of Islam was their paramount concern and spreading the word of Allah, defeating and subjugating the enemies of Islam, and making the shari‘a supreme throughout the world were the primary goals of waging offensive jihad.

40 For Islamic just war conceptions, cf. John Kelsay, Islam and War: A Study of Comparative Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993); and idem, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2007). See also Fred M. Donner, “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War,” in Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in the Western and Islamic Traditions, ed. by James T. Johnson and John Kelsay (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 31-70. 41 Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, esp. pp. 104-10, wherein he notes (ibid, p. 106) that classical Islamic treatises on war “exhibit a strong inclination toward a position one might characterize as ‘military realism,’” since once a war is determined to be “just,” i.e., initiated to expand or defend the dar al-Islam, their authors were “willing to grant wide latitude to commanders in the determination of appropriate means” even though such latitude was not “total.” Modern jihadists have consistently expanded the parameters of what is considered permissible in this context, not only with respect to jus ad bellum, the right to go to war, but especially as regards jus in bello, i.e., proper conduct in war. For several relevant examples and citations, see Bale, “Jihadist Ideology and Strategy,” p. 55, note 132.

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Hence if they were so inclined, today’s jihadists could claim, however tendentiously, that such brutal behavior was necessary to ensure their success in fighting “infidels” and “apostates” and to enable them to restore the long-awaited Caliphate. In actuality, most of them appear to have few if any moral qualms about deliberately targeting, killing, or mistreating their designated enemies – as do many other types of ideological extremists – and indeed seemingly display an unwholesome degree of bloodthirsty religious fervor or sadistic glee whilst carrying out those acts, since they believe (not without reason) that the Qur’an teaches them that Allah despises and wants to humiliate, punish, or exterminate those enemies.

As German Marxist and Islam critic Hartmut Krauss has justly noted: “What at first glance appears to be the phenomenology of an irrational, psychopathic bloodlust can on second glance be recognized as an articulate and normative procedure systematically derived from the sources of Islam and the historical matrix of Islamic conquests. That is to say, the barbaric and disgusting actions of IS do indeed have to do with Islam.”42

Even so, perhaps it is better to end on a more positive note by emphasizing the obvious point that Islam can be interpreted, and indeed has been interpreted over the centuries, in many different ways by living, breathing Muslims. Although it is neither unorthodox in most respects nor limited to the extremist fringe, the strict, literalist, puritanical interpretation of Islam that is characteristic of the Islamists, including the jihadists, is far from being the only “legitimate” interpretation of Islam, despite what they themselves assert.

Along with secularists in the Muslim world such as Western-style liberals, nationalists, fascists, and socialists, who have typically viewed Islam as a vitally important cultural marker rather than as a divinely-mandated system 42 Hartmut Krauss, “Islam in ‘Reinkultur’: Zur Antriebs- und Legitimationsgrundlage des ‘Islamischen Staates’ und seiner antizivilisatorischen Schreckensherrschaft,” Hintergrund-Verlag website, 29 August 2014, at http://www.hintergrund-verlag.de/texte-islam-hartmut-krauss-islam-in-reinkultur-zur-antriebs-und-legitimationsgrundlage-des-islamischen-staates.html .

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of religious beliefs that must be accepted and followed to the letter, Muslim rationalists, modernists, and even some traditionalists have tended to interpret Islam in less restrictive, punitive, or sectarian ways that are at least partially compatible with modernity and democratic pluralism.

Although in many ways scriptural literalists have advantages over moderates in religious debates, Muslims can nonetheless adopt various modes of argumentation to challenge theocratic Islamist interpretations of Islam.

First, as with Judaism and Christianity, genuinely moderate Muslims can argue that the injunctions in the Qur’an and the commands of Muhammad may well have been relevant and even appropriate during the historical contexts in which they were issued, but that they are not all necessarily applicable in today’s radically different historical context.

Second, they can argue that many of those Qur’anic passages and statements of Muhammad were difficult to understand and thus do not provide clear, unambiguous guidelines for Muslim behavior at the present time. Hence Muslims should not interpret them slavishly, dogmatically, or in an invariably literalist fashion, but rather apply human reason and interpret them, especially if the meaning is unclear, in a more contextual (historically-grounded), allegorical, or metaphorical way.43

Third, they can make a case, with good reason, that many Qur’anic strictures and ideas of Muhammad were relatively progressive by 7th century standards, especially in the context of Arab tribal society, and that

43 For an example of the rationalist (but sadly not always non-dogmatic, non-sectarian, or non-authoritarian) tradition in Islam, which was often inspired by the importation and adaptation of Greek philosophical ideas, see D[aniel] Gimaret, “Mu‘tazila,” Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), volume 7, pp. 783-93; Albir [Albert] Nasri Nadir, Le système philosophique des Mu‘tazila: Premiers penseurs de l’Islam (Beirut: Lettres Orientales, 1956); Richard MacDonough Frank, Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mu‘tazila in the Classical Period (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1978); and Richard C. Martin and Mark R. Woodward, with Dwi S. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu‘tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).

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they therefore embodied a spirit of innovation, pragmatism, and moderation that Muslims today should be aspire to emulate.

Fourth, they can argue that neither the Qur’an nor the ahadith mandate the creation of a theocratic Islamic state or provide a clear blueprint for the organization of such a state, since both the “Constitution of Medina” and the later “Pact of ‘Umar” were not only devised in particular historical contexts that have long been superseded, but also in response to specific and in many ways unique political circumstances.44

Finally, they can simply ignore or reject the doctrine of abrogation on various religio-legal grounds, since that doctrine has frequently been used by some Islamic scholars and militants to justify more extreme interpretations of Islam. Moreover, Islamic jurisprudential experts have for centuries adopted contrasting views towards abrogation, some arguing that it is a mistaken notion, others that it has only a limited application, and still others that it has a very extensive application. Most “regular” Muslims, devout or otherwise, are probably not even aware of abrogation, much less of the complex legal disputes surrounding it.

Nevertheless, it is impossible for any knowledgeable person to characterize the beliefs and activities of IS jihadists as “un-Islamic,” much less as “anti-Islamic,” since Islamic supremacism and intolerance of non-Muslims are all too characteristic in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s sunna. Ironically, the genuine Muslim moderates, official state-supported ‘ulama, and the

44 For those documents and their political contexts, see Michael Lecker, The “Constitution of Medina”: Muhammad’s First Legal Document (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2004); and Mika Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (New York: Cambridge University, 2011). See, more generally, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia University, 2001). Cf. also harsh criticisms by Muslim moderates of traditionalist, revivalist, or Islamist claims that Muslims are required to create a strict, puritanical Islamic state (whether in the form of a Caliphate or an Imamate), e.g., ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq, Al-islam wa usul al-hukm: Bath fi al-khilafa wa al-hukuma fi al-islam (Beirut: Al-Hayat, 1966 [1925]); Tarek Fatah, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Mississauga, Ontario: Wiley & Sons, 2008), esp. chapters 6-8; Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na‘im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari‘a (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2010), chapter 2; and Bassam Tibi, Islamism and Islam (New Haven: Yale University, 2012), esp. chapter 2.

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disingenuous “non-violent” Islamists who make such arguments are themselves effectively engaging in takfir, i.e., labeling other Muslims as “infidels,” a sectarian, exclusionary tendency that is so prevalent amongst the jihadists themselves.45

In both cases, it is factually incorrect and legally inappropriate for Muslims to label their co-religionists who have different interpretations of Islam as non-Muslims, whether in order to discredit them or to target them.

Although they are mistaken and also arguably misguided, such efforts by Muslims are at least comprehensible, since they are reflective of vitally important doctrinal and political conflicts over the “soul of Islam” that are occurring within the contemporary Muslim world.

It remains far less understandable, however, why so many Western leaders and commentators are also peddling the same falsehoods about the IS having “nothing to do with Islam.”

If they honestly believe what they are saying, then they are either hopelessly ignorant about Islam, Islamic history, and Islamism, or are wearing impenetrable ideological blinders that prevent them from seeing reality, or are living in an acute state of psychological denial that borders on the pathological and the clinically delusional.

And if such Westerners do not actually believe what they are saying, then they are fooling themselves that their embarrassing facile attempts to divorce Islam from Islamism will somehow end up being the most 45 For an example of such an argument by a high-ranking state-supported ‘alim, see Patrick Goodenaugh, “ISIL, ISIS – Now QSIS?: Top Sunni Cleric Says Stop Calling Terrorists ‘Islamic,’” Cybercast News Service, 25 August 2014, wherein it is reported that Egyptian Grand Mufti and Sufi Shawki Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Karim ‘Allam, current head of the eminent Dar al-Ifta’ al-Misriyya in Cairo, recommends that the IS be referred to as al-Qa‘ida Separatists in Iraq and Syria or QSIS, at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/isil-isis-now-qsis-top-sunni-cleric-says-stop-calling-terrorists . Although such statements by non-Islamist Muslim religious authorities are certainly to be welcomed, however consistent with the views of Egypt’s current military rulers they may be, ‘Allam’s bizarre suggestion was designed above all to protect the image of Islam from being associated with IS atrocities, and it conveniently ignored the fact that Ayman al-Zawahiri publicly repudiated ISIS and appointed the Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahl al-Sham (Support Front for the People of Greater Syria) as the al-Qa‘ida Central affiliate in the region.

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effective way to rally support from Muslims for various Western foreign policy and counterterrorist initiatives in the region.

Alas, making manifestly false claims about Islamism is not going to win over any “hearts and minds,” especially those of genuinely moderate Muslims and secularists who have long been bravely resisting and struggling against better organized Islamists at home and abroad. Even worse, it has the debilitating and potentially catastrophic effect of confusing, misleading, and intellectually disarming citizens of Western countries about the nature of the threat that they face from jihadists, whose actions are animated primarily by the Islamist theo-political doctrines that they have fervently embraced.

As I have argued elsewhere, correctly identifying Islamists – jihadist or otherwise – as enemies of the democratic West is not going to “offend” any actual moderate Muslims who likewise view the Islamists as intractable enemies, any more than identifying Nazis as its enemies during World War II had the effect of offending anti-Nazi Germans.46 (In fact, many German anti-Nazis were encouraged to flee from Germany and then assist the Allied powers precisely because the latter were openly opposing and waging war against Nazi Germany.)

Conversely, those Muslims who are always so prone to display moral outrage in response to the accurate (and reciprocal) characterization of armed Islamists as enemies of the West are neither the West’s friends nor its reliable allies: they are either Islamists themselves, Islamist sympathizers, or others from Muslim countries who are so resistant to self-reflection and self-criticism and/or so virulently anti-Western that they are willing to

46 Bale, “Denying the Link between Islamist Ideology and Jihadist Terrorism,” p. 19.

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temporarily suspend their own internal disagreements with Islamists on the basis of misplaced tribal, national, or religious solidarity.47

The willingness of so many other Muslims to ignore, excuse, or even defend the brutal activities of the jihadists (or, alternatively, to blame them on imagined “Zionist” or “Crusader” conspiracies), especially in their interactions with non-Muslim outsiders, only furthers the growth of Islamism at the expense of more moderate interpretations of Islam.

Last but certainly not least, one important responsibility of Western leaders, policymakers, and even self-styled security or Islam experts in academia and the media should be to educate the public about the serious national and international security threats emanating from the Islamist and jihadist milieu.

Such people should not be systematically mischaracterizing or minimizing the nature of those threats by promoting pseudo-tolerant “politically correct” fantasies about Islam or Islamism that have little or no basis in reality.

Many of these fantasies are being promoted not only in a laudatory effort to avoid portraying Islam in general and all Muslims as enemies of the West, but also in a misguided attempt to avoid “offending” Muslims who are not Islamists, to convince Muslims that the West is not waging a “war against Islam” (which has obviously never been the case, despite the paranoid delusions of the Islamists), and perhaps also in order to facilitate the forging of an international anti-IS coalition.

Ironically, that international coalition now also includes militarily weak Islamist or pro-Islamist Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, 47 On the last point, cf. Harris, “Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon”: “Many believe it unwise to discuss the link between Islam and the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world, fearing that it will increase the perception that the West is at war with the faith and cause millions of otherwise peaceful Muslims to rally to the jihadist cause. I admit that this concern isn’t obviously crazy—but it merely attests to the seriousness of the underlying problem. Religion produces a perverse solidarity that we must find some way to undercut. It causes in-group loyalty and out-group hostility, even when members of one’s own group are behaving like psychopaths.”

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which have themselves long been either aggressively disseminating extremist interpretations of Islam (Saudi Arabia) and/or tangibly supporting, either quasi-officially or unofficially, Sunni jihadists in various regions – including IS fighters in Syria.48

48 See, e.g., Robert Windrem, “Who’s Funding ISIS?: Wealthy Gulf ‘Angel Investors,’ Officials Say,” NBC News, 21 September 2014, at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/whos-funding-isis-wealthy-gulf-angel-investors-officials-say-n208006 ; and Josh Rogin, “America’s Allies are Funding ISIS,” Daily Beast, 14 June 2014, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html . In the former article, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif rightly described the Muslim participants in the 15 September 2014 “anti-IS” Paris conference as a “coalition of repenters” who now realize that they helped create a monster. According to Zarif, “Most participants in that -- in that meeting in one form or another provided support to ISIS in the course of its creation and upbringing and expansion, actually at the end of the day, creating a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators…So this group has been in existence for a long time. It has been supported, it has been provided for in terms of arms, money, finances by a good number of U.S. allies in the region.” For more on this conference, which included representatives from ten Muslim governments (but not Iran), see John Lichfield, “Islamic State: Countries Meet in Paris to Discuss anti-ISIS Global Strategy,” The Independent [UK], 21 September 2014, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/islamic-state-countries-meet-in-paris-to-discuss-antiisis-global-strategy-9732540.html .

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