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Looking Down (from Our “High Horse”) on ISIS

By Walter Donway

February 10, 2015

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At a National Prayer Breakfast, February 5, President Obama sought to put into perspective the atrocities of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), by saying:

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Then he added:  “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Many were horrified. Former Republican governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore, said: “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime. He has offended every believing Christian in the United States.” (More offensive than any president’s comments? In his whole lifetime?  Either Mr. Gilmore has been sheltered or he listens to presidents only at Prayer Breakfasts.)

Rush Limbaugh, and many others, frothed at the mouth—in the most predictable way—over the President’s remarks.

It appears that the President’s remarks were prepared, not spontaneous. What speech writer set him up with these comments, I wonder?  Whatever the source, we have witnessed, not for the first time, by any means, the vexed problem of “the uses of history.”

Give the President the benefit of the doubt, the best spin on his remarks. The actions of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which declares itself the new worldwide Islamic caliphate, are viciously evil; the actions of moral monsters, not even justified by the original pronouncements made by Mohammad on Allah’s behalf 13 centuries ago (as Muslim leaders worldwide have protested). Mr. Obama, it seems to me, was making the routine but true observation that although Islam is being used to justify the horrors perpetrated by ISIS, Islam is not the only religion that has been used to justify horrors. And that is undeniable as applied to Christianity, which throughout so much of its history bred war, persecution, and, yes, crusades that made no distinction among Muslims, Jews, and other non-Christian sects, conducting equal-opportunity massacres of all. In particular, in response to the immolation of the Jordanian pilot, Muslim clerics have protested that punishment by burning was strictly prohibited by Allah and cite chapter and verse to that effect. Well, the Church of Rome had no such message from God and for centuries favored burning at the stake above all other means of murdering its enemies.

Ask of a seeming folly, even a hideously anti-human folly, only what it accomplishes.

But returning to ISIS: Ask of a seeming folly, even a hideously anti-human folly, only what it accomplishes. Crucifying and beheading prisoners; reinstituting concubine slavery and the sale of slaves; adding the rape of female prisoners as an enticement to young recruits; robbing banks and any other business to fund its crusade; murdering not only Christians but Muslims of sects not to its liking; and, most recently, immolating in flames a captive pilot: What has that gained ISIS?

ISIS has provoked and enraged every possible ally, bringing one country after another into the military coalition against it. The ISIS strategy cannot be understood outside the context of the aims of terrorism.

ISIS has provoked and enraged every possible ally, bringing one country after another into the military coalition against it. And yet, ISIS is widely known for its sophistication in getting out its message, in exploiting the “social media,” and creating and disseminating quality videos. We know therefore that the provocation is calculated, intended to outrage a worldwide audience, turning it against ISIS—and against Muslims.

The ISIS strategy cannot be understood outside the context of the theory and aims of terrorism. Terrorism is a strategy of the weak adopted by militant groups against governments far too powerful to attack by force of arms. It is also a weak strategy because it depends for success upon how its target reacts. The aim of terrorists is to provoke their powerful target–usually a national government—into a response that will weaken and undercut it—and gain the terrorists supporters.

The goal of ISIS is to make life intolerable for ordinary Muslims who are minority citizens in countries around the world.

The goal of ISIS is to make life intolerable for ordinary Muslims who are minority citizens in countries around the world, but particularly in Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. The truly overwhelming majority of 1.6 billion Muslims in countries around the world are simply living their lives: doing their jobs, raising their children, trying to make life more secure, trying to find some moments to enjoy themselves. How can these great sleeping masses be stirred to rage and mutiny in the name of the religion that ignited North Africa in the Seventh Century and swept from Spain in the West to India in the East, creating the Golden Age of Islam?

That can be accomplished only by governments and populations, their media and political organizations, their police and internal security forces. As ISIS provokes and outrages nation after nation—France, Japan, the United States—its intention is to make life unbearable for their Muslim populations. To incite public attitudes and political reactions—especially in police forces and intelligence services—that will alienate Muslim citizens, ensure that they are not assimilated, and goad many among the always impassioned and excitable young to retreat into militant Islam. When ISIS murders and brutalizes Muslims of other sects, they put citizens of Muslim countries who are Sunni, and especially who are of their puritanical Sunni sect, under the same type of pressure.

Since 1979, when the secular government of the Shah was toppled in Iran by the Shia cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, bringing Shia fundamentalism to one of the region’s great powers, antagonism between Shias and Sunnis (represented by Saudi Arabia, the other great power) has steadily become more venomous and deadly. Sectarian rivalry, involving a return to fundamentalism, has become violent across the region. That has involved the break-up into smaller, more fanatical and militant sects.

ISIS is such a group, the most appalling to date, its goal allegedly to cleanse Islam–its members identifying with the ultra-reactionary Wahabist Sunni sect allied with the House of Saud—-to prepare the way for the return of the messiah. To do so, they must convert the mass of their co-religionists to their viewpoint. Terrorism in every instance exists because a given religious, racial, or ideological minority is unable to persuade the mass of moderates among (as they see it) their potential sympathizers to take a militant stand. So they turn to terrorism as a tactic for provoking or manipulating governments and the larger population into doing the job for them by making life intolerable for the moderates. At the same time, they may murder or terrorize into silence moderate leaders who might persuade the mass of moderates to reject the call to militancy. (One classic example of this was the horrific Algerian civil war.)

Mr. Obama tried to make the point that condemning 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide for the actions of a few thousand ISIS jihadists is no more rational than condemning Christians today for the brutalities of the Crusades and the Inquisition. I believe that that was the message of Mr. Obama’s speech writers and that, in its intention, the message is right.

But when Mr. Obama (or his staff) turned to history to make the point—and it is so tempting to do so—they stumbled into an old common trap. The European Christian crusades occurred during the late middle ages, beginning in 1095 when Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade to reclaim the Holy Land from Islamic countries. But can the actions of the Latin Roman Catholic Church 1000 years ago cause Christians at the White House Prayer Breakfast to get down from their “high horse” about the grotesque, murderous, sadistic actions of ISIS done today in the name of returning to fundamental Islam? Christians today being murdered by the forces of ISIS can have no conceivable guilt for what adherents of their religion did 1000 years ago. And no Christian can be made to soften condemnation of ISIS because Pope Urban II proclaimed a crusade in 1095.

But Mr. Obama was not making the point that actions during the crusades balance the atrocities of ISIS. He was making the point, which must be made repeatedly, including by political leaders, that Islam and Muslims today cannot and must not be tainted by the actions of ISIS. It is unfortunate that Mr. Obama made a statement so easily misunderstood, or easily twisted, as seeming to excuse ISIS. But after all, Mr. Obama is on record clearly and repeatedly condemning ISIS in the most uncompromising terms—using, indeed, a favorite expression of philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand: “morally bankrupt.”

At the prayer breakfast itself, he called ISIS a “brutal, vicious death cult.” The terminology, however, is slightly disturbing because “cult” is too general a term for ISIS, which is a renegade Sunni Islamist army. It does have roots in Islam, its Sunni branch, Wahabism, and the persistent sectarian violence of modern day Middle Eastern religion. It is not a favor to Muslims to distance them from ISIS with the generic term “cult.” Muslims must deal with ISIS and whatever it may reveal about Islam.

ISIS must be crushed militarily, which by right ought to be undertaken by the 22-member Arab League expressing unanimity of determination to cauterize the virulent infection that threatens their region. This will not happen because Sunni governments like Saudi Arabia will not join Shia governments against a Sunni movement, even ISIS. Shia Iran, for obvious reasons, was first to join the United States in attacking Sunni ISIS.

But apart from military action, nothing is more important in defeating ISIS than refusing the terrorist gambit. If we permit the sadistic savagery of the ISIS “public relations” campaign to turn us against Muslims, including those who have chosen life in a non-Islamic country, then ISIS wins.

In that sense, Mr. Obama was right to speak out and should do so regularly. The blow-up over the crusades remark may teach him a better way to make his point. That probably will not help with the many who rushed to distort his meaning, but he does not have to give them so easy a target.

 

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