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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsISIS is an abomination to Islam
Why ISIS, In Fact, Is Not Islamic
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"Conservatives reacted harshly to President Obamas claim on Wednesday night that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is not Islamic, accusing the commander-in-chief of naiveté and ignorance. What kindergartner briefs the President on terrorism? Ron Christie, a GOP strategist tweeted. ISIS says its Islamic, lots of people say its Islamic, only the president wont, George Will told Fox News shortly after the speech.
But the full context of Obamas remark points to an important distinction between Islam and the extremist ideology thats sweeping parts of Iraq and Syria. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISILs victims have been Muslim, Obama said. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.
"Indeed, even from the viewpoint of a casual observer, ISIS is an abomination to Islam. Explosions tend to capture the medias attention more than peaceful coexistence, and a minuscule minority of extremist groups claiming to be Islamic have exploited this fact as a way to reinvent Islam as a violent religion. But just because you shout Gods name while committing murder doesnt make your actions righteous. Islam, as millions of Muslims can attest, is a peaceful religion that calls on its followers to choose community over conflict, or, as it says in Surah al-Hujurat of the Quran (49:13): O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise [each other]).
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Note how George Will, courtesy of Fox News to advance it all, is able to wrap his pointy head around the concept that the Westboro Baptist Church folk are not Christians but it is beyond his personal prejudice to see ISIS as not Islam.
As the President said, the vast majority of ISIS victims are Muslim, they still hold 50 Turkish nationals hostages when they over ran the embassy in Mosul, for example.
Religious and racial prejudice is why he says such things with such gall and conviction, as does Fox.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/11/3566181/why-isis-is-in-fact-not-islamic/
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)He nailed it.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)They have misappropriated the seal of the prophet in a rather shameful way as their "symbol" too. Very off-putting.
Kind of like the way the KKK snatched up the cross while they're hating on the "wrong" sorts of Xtians.
Anyone who tries to see them as simply some sort of "government" has a lot of learning to do. They are violent, they are fundamentalist, and if they had their way, most of the population of Iran would be burnt at the stake or worse, because they practise the "wrong" sort of Islam.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)MFrohike
(1,980 posts)Why bother with an extremely hard target when the softest one imaginable is just due south?
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)MFrohike
(1,980 posts)Jordan is the most likely target. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's where they started right? Trying to overthrow the king in 2002 and almost getting wiped out?
Oktober
(1,488 posts)JI7
(89,237 posts)ISIS .
yet the media puts on some jackass (usually some brit, aussie, euro etc) who defend ISIS. these guys are fucking idiots . they sound like fucking ALI G and are too stupid to even discuss the religion and debate it.
but it gets ratings i guess.
Igel
(35,270 posts)You know, the guy who speaks for all Muslims on the behalf of Islam?
I thought it was decentralized. Which means that speaking with a single voice is difficult. The best you get is majority rule, and I doubt they had much of an election. Strikes me that we've decided to listen to those we like to listen to, so as outsiders we've anointed spokesfolk for the entire religion. And one of them is Obama, a non-Muslim. Rather like having a Hindu spokesman for Judaism.
It's like Xianity: My church spoke for itself and claimed to speak for Xianity. So does the Pope. They're far from the same thing and the two churches would agree on fairly little apart from a bit of history and verbiage with little semantic content. One has Xmas and Easter and Sunday worship, allows divorce, likes its priests unmarried except in exceptional circumstances (say, if you're a married priest in another denomination and "transfer" to Catholicism). It believes Jesus came to essentially annul the unbearable OT law. The other has Passover and Trumpets and Sabbath worship, doesn't allow divorce and requires its ministers to be married (at the time of ordination, at least). It believes that Jesus was the OT God who gave the law and came to make it bearable, so why would he dispose of it?
To say that either speaks for Xianity is insane, an idiot, or self-servingly manipulative. Believing that either speaks for Xianity can't be manipulative since manipulation requires a non-reflexive argument, so the choices are necessarily more restricted.