That is good
thanks for posting it. A couple of observations.
Anybody with a computer and the ability to point and click understands that ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda; and al-Qaueda grew out of the notion that the Muslim areas of the world were not "Islamic enough" which grew out of the Islamic resurgence of the last part of the 20th century which grew out of a number of factors including Israel and the humiliating military defeats at the hands of the Jews. At the same time, a Pakistani Cleric (whose name I can't find) provided the intellectual and religious fundamental teaching for the resurgence. The evolution of the resurgence is more fundamental and more violent as time moves along.
The first point worth underlining from Wood's piece is this:
We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as "Sheikh Osama," a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda's heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group's priorities and current leadership.
We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State's medieval religious nature.
There is no "we" to this misunderstanding. This misunderstanding is 100% on the Obama administration. Most all Americans knew that ISIS was not part of Islam in general, but a particular militant and violent strain of Islam. Yet Obama specifically, and his administration in general, steadfastly refused to understand the Islamic religious nature of ISIS despite overwhelming evidence otherwise. Given the resources available to President Obama about world events and the causes of those events, his J.V. team reference underscores how dangerously naive and incompetent he and his administration is. It is the President who sees Islam and a monolithic organization as he smugly declares certain groups to be "un-Islamic" and not part of the "true nature" of Islam. This craziness continues to this day as the White House terrorism summit does not include any notion that ISIS is an Islamic and terrorist organization.
Another point is the ISIS endgame. The "end of days" part of its propaganda has become very fashionable in recent weeks. Wood:
In broad strokes, al-Qaeda acts like an underground political movement, with worldly goals in sight at all times-the expulsion of non-Muslims from the Arabian peninsula, the abolishment of the state of Israel, the end of support for dictatorships in Muslim lands. The Islamic State has its share of worldly concerns (including, in the places it controls, collecting garbage and keeping the water running), but the End of Days is a leitmotif of its propaganda.
The "end of days" theology is certainly part of the Islamic picture. As they say, that is in God's hands, not man's. So in that view ISIS is not an "end of days" instrumentality but instead sees its message as preparing Muslims for the end of days. Part of this is to return Islam to its medieval roots and to "prepare the world" for the end of days whenever it comes. This is done by establishing the caliphate, and by returning the Islamic world to Islamic ancient roots.
What do we do? Will we can't harf the problem with a jobs program. The first step is to recognize what the issue is, and it seems obvious to me, that ISIS is simply the latest product of the Islamic resurgence of the 20th century. President Sisi sees the problem. There must be others who agree but haven't been as visible. We need to understand that the ISIS threat is a bigger problem than Sisi's heavy handed governance. The doorway to dealing with the issue, beyond killing all of the ISIS militants we can, is to through Sisi's calls for an Islamic reformation.
This post was edited on 2/18 11:17 AM by CO. Hoosier
