Friday, April 14, 2017

What ISIS Shares With Other Die-Hard Islamic Groups

As Alberto M. Fernandez writes, it shares more than you might think, and certainly more than most in the West are willing to acknowledge. The VP of MEMRI says that while ISIS differs from "other rival and contending Islamic entities," they all share "aspects" of the same worldview. One thing they share, for example,
is the ISIS view of the Other, of non-Muslims and of heterodox, free-thinking or liberal Muslims. The hostility ISIS shows for these "polytheists, infidels, and apostates" is often shared by its Islamist rivals and enemies, even if they may not act on this hostility with quite the same bloodlust. 
The ISIS zeal in marking Middle East Christians for slaughter and their communities for destruction, whether in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, or elsewhere, is a case in point. ISIS Egypt's targeting of Coptic Christians at prayer in their churches – most recently on Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017 – may seem particularly brutal and brazen, and it is. 
But the ISIS actions to demonize and eliminate Christians from the region are broadly shared, less bloodily and brazenly but clearly, by a range of political players who are opposed to each other but somewhat similar in this one regard. Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, and related Salafi-jihadis, may all hate and be hated by ISIS but all share some version of a bigoted Islamist supremacist ideology that spews poison against Christians and Jews and against any Muslims too openly identifying themselves as freethinkers or secularists or liberals. 
These regional actors are all part of a broader social and political architecture which normalizes bigotry and internalizes hate, and which – because they are not guilt-ridden Westerners – they largely get away with in the eyes of a West desperate for Muslim allies and uncomfortable with defending Christians.[1]
In other words, the jihadist group perceived to be the worst of the worst at any given time (Al Qaeda some years ago, ISIS today) will suck up all the attention, thereby deflecting attention away from all the other awful Islamist groups. That, in turn, gives rise to the belief--the magical thinking, really--that all will be well if and when we defeat the one entity deemed most terrible. And when we maintain such a narrow focus, we end up ignoring the global nature of jihad, which makes it that much more difficult to vanquish.

1 comment:

gama said...

IS {Islamic-State} is far from being the first or only incarnation of wild-eyed islamism ... Ultra-conservative, uber-orthodox Islamic revivalists are a dime a baker's dozen in Islamic traditions, throughout the centuries, the Islamic holy-jihad was a legacy of forced conversions , imperialism and slavery. Even in this the 21st century, militant political Islam continues to gain traction in the world's failed Islamic states, spreading with calamitous results . The Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood , Al-Queda, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia , Pakistan's Jamaat e-Islami ,the mujahideen { holy warriors} of Kashmir, India, Thailand, Philippines , ISIS in Kosovo and Europe , Gaza's Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Syria's rebel fighters, Bangladeshi Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, ISIS and its sycophants in the West , the sabre rattling of Islamic supremacists in Myanmar,Uyghur's in China 
…. the list is long....... From Afghanistan to Zanzibar violent holy-jihad is on the march. Islamists viciously vying to be recognized as the genuine Islam . The divinely inspired arbiter of who is or isn't a true Muslim , what's the authentic sharia and what is the authoritative holy-jihad that will  implement the sharia worldwide  . The narratives of ideological supremacy weaves tales, a thousand and one tales , of totalitarian submission , the ideology ruled by a bloody-iron-fist. 
Pluralism dies in Islamic states , failed islamic states are just a few blood-curdling Allahu-Akbars away from mass internecine, sectarian carnage.
IS is no mere collection of ideological psychopaths, they are extremely pious and read the koran in a literal and passionate manner. These religious zealots remain insatiable in their genocide against non-Muslims & Muslims seen as not Muslim enough , or to establish more enclaves governed by sharia . IS and it's various mutations through the centuries , follow a distinct uber-fundamentalist flavour of Islam…….