HuffPo recounts the tale of Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who, at great risk to his life, negotiated a ten-day stint traveling with members of ISIS. Todenhöfer’s record of criticizing Western incursions in the Middle East didn’t offer him much protection (the same sentiments were held by other journalists who were beheaded by ISIS), and what was worse is that he also had a record of criticizing the Islamic State. There’s no doubt that this is a brave man, a journalist taking the utmost risks to get his story.
And what story did he get? Well, he underscores what many of us already think: ISIS is a severe danger to the Middle East, possibly the tinder that could start a devastating conflagration. But, as per his politics, Todenhöfer blames it on George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq:
On his return, [Todenhöfer] issued a stark warning. “From my point of view this is the biggest threat to world peace since the cold war,” he wrote in a detailed Facebook post. “We now pay the price for the inconceivable folly of George W Bush’s attack on Iraq. The West has no concept of the threat it faces.”
. . . In a separate post, he called the terror group “a child of George W. Bush’s illegal Iraq war.. [bombings] always are terrorist-breeding programs in the Middle East.”
Yes, Bush made a mistake, and therefore we must forever refrain from all bombing, even as ISIS massacres thousands of innocent civilians who have never lifted a finger against Muslims. As ISIS besieged the Yazidis, forcing them into a small, starving enclave, our best strategy would be to do nothing, for bombing would simply breed more terrorists. This is a recipe for capitulating to evil.
One might conclude from Todenhöfer’s words that ISIS is simply reacting to colonialist incursions by the West. But his further reportage shows that he is either ill-informed about ISIS’s motives or that ISIS itself is behaving irrationally if its actions are merely a reaction to Western invasion. For what he found was genuine jihad: a crusade to spread the “true” version of Islam, if necessary by exterminating anyone—even Muslims—who don’t share ISIS’s brand of faith:
The Islamic State, Todenhöfer said, have plans for mass genocide, and the deaths of all atheists, polytheists and religions that are not “people of the book” or Muslims who do not subscribe to their brand of Islam.
“The IS want to kill… all non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists should be killed,” Todenhöfer wrote. “Hundreds of millions of people are to be eliminated in the course of this religious ‘cleansing’.
“All moderate Muslims who promote democracy, should be killed. Because, from the IS perspective, they promote human laws over the laws of God. This also applies to – after a successful conquest – the democratically-minded Muslims in the Western world.
“The only chance of this ‘infidels’, to escape the death, is voluntary repentance and voluntary conversion to ‘True Islam’. IS is supposedly the only representative of this. And only before their countries have been conquered.
Did Hindus or the Yazidi invade Iraq or colonize the Middle East for oil? And what’s ISIS’s beef with the Shiites? How could it be anything other than religion, since Shiites and the Sunnis are both Muslim, share ethnicity and geographic origin, but differ profoundly in who they see as the true inheritors of Muhammad’s message? And remember, Todenhöfer tends to see the whole thing as a reaction to Bush’s belligerence. Once again we see someone forced to defend an increasingly thin narrative in spite of the facts. Todenhöfer’s own words convict ISIS of waging a war motivated largely by religious beliefs.
Even at the end, Todenhöfer sticks to his narrative by claiming that ISIS doesn’t represent “real” Islam:
. . . [Todenhöfer] also called the version of Islam practiced by IS one that is “rejected by 99% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims”.
“As a Christian who has read the Quran several times, it does not make sense to me, I do not know what any of the teachings of IS have to do with Islam,” he said. “I got to know, above all, a merciful Islam from reading the Koran. 113 of 114 Suras begin with the words: “In the name of Allah, the most gracious and most merciful”. I saw none of this mercy from IS.”
Umm. . . can one get more naive than that? (Try Karen Armstrong.) Has he read the verses calling Jews apes and swine, or calling for the death of apostates? Has he even read his own Old Testament in which Yahweh, sometimes described as loving and merciful, wreaks the worst vengeance on people, often ordering his adherents to commit genocide.
Have a look at those supposedly beneficent Suras at Project Reason’s “annotated Qur’an,” where verses are labeled with symbols when their words promote injustice, cruelty, violence, intolerance, and other not-so-peaceful emotions. I’m not sure what planet Todenhöfer is living on, or how he reads texts, but what I see is a scriptural recipe for hatred that begins with a few lame words to propitiate a murderous god.
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I don’t understand how any secular person can think of a “true Islam”. That is a concept for people who believe that Islam is God-given and there is one true version with other interpretations being wrong.
A we really have are various interpretations of a book that is internally inconsistent and full of conflicting ideas. To any adherent, an “extremist” is one who focuses on the parts of the book that the adherent doesn’t.
So why then, when the Bible is also internally inconsistent and full of violent instructions does Islam seem to produce adherents that favor the more violent interpretations?
Students of history know that Christianity is no stranger to horrific massacre in the name of “true” religion: the Albigensian Crusade, mounted against a “heretical” sect in the early 1200s, killed tens of thousands of people; Christians and Jews were slaughtered by Christians many times during the crusades; tens of thousands were tortured, hanged, and burned alive during the inquisition and witch hysteria; the deaths of millions of the inhabitants of the New World were linked directly or indirectly (through disease) to the Spanish/Catholic view of them as being “less than human” since they were not of the faith, etc., etc.
The answer to your question is that affluence seems to have a way of “toning down” religion’s influence, and thus its excesses- a higher standard of living and better education have been linked to greater secularism in societies; religion, especially the “fundamentalist” interpretations of religious tenets and dogma thrives in an atmosphere of poverty and uncertainty, a situation the Middle East has in abundance right now.
Once the “big picture” is discerned through the light of history, it can be seen that things are the way they are right now because of a confluence of events and circumstances that have created “fertile ground” for, in this case, Islamic “absolutism”- given a different set of conditions (say, an economic collapse in the U.S.), the Bible could, once again, easily become a tool to seize power in the hands of those who think they have the “answer”.
As the world population grows and the struggle for resources increases, we’re seeing different versions of this phenomenon emerge: Buddhists that once seemed to only engage in peaceful protest are now turning out in rampaging mobs, killing Muslims and burning their homes; the right-wing Hindu movement is gaining in power, seeking to create an “all-Hindu” India, by any means necessary.
It MUST be remembered that the tenets and teachings of ANY of the world’s major “organized” religions can be twisted to advocate any number of horrific things. Unless “de-fused” by constant critical scrutiny they lay dormant, like land mines, waiting to be activated by the proper circumstances.
Great comment. + 1.
Thanks! Important ideas.
> because of a confluence of events and circumstances
What do you think are the major events and circumstances that have contributed to the use of religious texts and ideas of God to validate and promulgate brutality this time? Is it only economic?
And let’s keep the Taiping rebellion in mind, though one can quibble about the importance of the leader’s belief he was the brother of Jesus, and as in most wars, the greatest number of the 60,000,000 deaths were from famine, disease, etc.
Well, there’s one way. In general, when I or many other atheists do start talking about “true” versions of a religion we never get into the nit-picky little details or accusations of heresy: it’s strictly definitional and a pretty broad definition at that.
For example, there are always some people on the fringe who want to identify with a particular religion without accepting any of the genuinely basic beliefs of that religion and — in some cases — without even being able to claim a cultural background or even any scholarship or understanding. This line too can get blurry but yes, I would argue that the happy clappy spiritual “I am a Muslim and a Jew and a Christian and a Wiccan and a Hindu and a Buddhist all rolled up into one big ol’bundle of precious divine love” advocate … is not following ‘true Islam.’ Meaning ‘Islam at all.’
Obviously. I only mention this bizarre exception because I’ve encountered it often enough to want to mention it. Otherwise, yup, you’re right.
>Happy Clappy Spiritual
too funny!
It seems to me that any self-described follower of any religion selects their beliefs by picking and choosing from relevant holy texts and traditions plus their own personal revelations. After all, Bishop Spong calls himself a Christian while his theses deny almost every component of the Nicene Creed.
So then, similar to gender identity, if someone says “I am a Muslim and a Jew and a Christian and a Wiccan and a Hindu and a Buddhist all rolled up into one big ol’bundle of precious divine love” who is to say they are not? It’s a cool thing to be able to pick and choose like that. We sure can’t do that in any evidence-based field.
It’s called Sheilaism, this tendency to pick and choose according to whim and personal need.
I once put this definition out to a group of my Spiritual friends and they embraced it enthusiastically. None of them could see any problem with it at all. How loving and diverse. It’s what God/Spirit would want.
I know several Sheilaists. That’s an apt description.
But, whoa. “…religion in America has moved from being highly public and unified, as it was in colonial New England, to extremely private and diverse.”
Really?
TIL that most of my friends are Sheilaists! I can’t wait to tell them.
I’m not sure if this is relevant. Forgive me if it is not. I recently went to the funeral for a dear friend who died from mesothelioma. She had never worked in an asbestos-related industry, but had tidied up after the workmen who built an extension to her house about 40 years ago using Hardie Board.
In her youth she had been a Christian and spent time as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. Later she became a secularist. But with her second dose of cancer (breast) about eight years ago she went back to the church. And then came the mesothelioma… In my view funeral was not properly Christian, but a lot of happy-clappy
nicieties, no music that she would have liked, but nor was it a decent secular celebration of her life.
Sorry to vent here…
Sounds like the funeral was not a celebration of her life, but comfort for someone living.
Reblogged this on Shashank Patel.
“rejected by 99% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims”.
So 16 million support it?
And our Brave Reporter apparently doesn’t do much reasearch even then. The polls are out there about what large groups, even majorities of the world’s muslim communities, by country, think of this and that, including imposed Sharia, stoning for adultery, etc. To me it is a vastly greater step from modern western, culturally/historically Christian democracies to mainstream Muslim opinion in many countries of the mideast, Asia, and Afria, than it is from that “mainstream” to the violent fringes of IS.
I’ve read those polls too. Except I took the added step of actually going to the source instead of the articles.
Turns out how you and others use those numbers is biased. I’ll let you do the leg work and find out for yourself, but just one example is those polled tended to ask for justice system that are already in place where they live.
Moreover, what sharia means to a Muslim is not the same across the board, and on closer inspection Muslims in secular countries have a desire for sharia that isn’t focused on death and lopping off body parts.
Always go to to source.
I have often heard that Allah is “all merciful” and so on, but it doesn’t follow from that that Islam is a “religion of peace”. Perhaps the adherents can leave the peace and mercy up to Allah, relieving them of the duty to be anything like that themselves. Peace is also what you have when you have killed off everyone who doesn’t agree with you. The way of achieving peace is more important than claiming to want “peace”.
Reblogged this on My WordPress Notepad.
One problem I have with my secular amigos is that, being themselves irreligious, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that religious motives can actually govern behaviour. Jerry, fortunately, has no difficulty with this. The invasion of Iraq may indeed have fostered many more problems than it solved, but ISIS/ISIL/IS/Da’esh is absolutely driven by its fanatical religious views.
Surely, it is simply that these factors are not mutually exclusive, and that as history has repeatedly shown us, a breakdown of order fosters fanaticism, whether of a religious or a more secular kind – there was a clear connexion, for example, between the American bombing of Cambodia and the seizure of power by Pol Pot and his pals. I have grown tired of both sides in this quarrel: those who blame everything on the ‘West’ and those who suggest that now we have people driven by religious fanaticism about, we can forget about what has happened, and what was perpetrated by our nations even in the very recent past, and blame everything on religion, and on the incorrigibility of people who hold fanatical views. ‘… may have fostered many more problems than it solved, BUT…’ The work that that ‘but’ is being made to do! It can barely take the strain, despite the attempt at playing down the disastrous consequences of the invasion! It surely behooves determinists to take causality, even if it is only historical causality, seriously, and not to seize on one obvious cause in a way that seems designed to let themselves off the hook where other causes are concerned.
I agree with all of this and I share the frustration. It is evident that a proper analysis of the problems of the Middle East is multifactorial. Causal claims based solely on Western involvement or religion are not going to be completely enlightening.
Is there a true Anna Karenina? Why do educated adults have such an adolescent view of these things? I taught literature at an Ivy to freshman, and that’s the sort of thing I would hear from them: what’s the REAL meaning of Gogol’s “The Nose”? Well, kid, there is no real meaning. There might be what the author thought he/she was writing, and there is what the translator thought, then what you think… Z
Only if these people really believe that there was a divine author who perfectly expressed… but then, wait. If the expression was perfect, there would be no discussion. Hm. Let’s see.
And not to flog a dead equine, but I’ve read the Quran, too, and it’s a scary and violent book, like the worst of the Torah without the benefit of rabbinical reinterpretation.
There is a kernel of truth I think to the assertion that “Bush’s War” paved the way for the rise of ISIS in two ways: Sadaam Hussein’s regime snuffed out resistance within Iraq’s borders, including Islamic groups – so the resultant weakening of civil control in Iraq (and probably Syria now as well) has given ISIS the space to organize and grow; and the toll taken on civilian populations by the war and drone strikes makes a convenient target to focus resentment and hate. Then there is the weaponry: isn’t some substantial part of ISIS’s arsenal commandeered from Iraqi armories?
So I can see where there is some truth to the dynamic, but that is not the same as saying the war created ISIS, per se, because, as noted in the post, there is a whole religiously-inspired regime of cruelty and murder that has nothing to do with the war. As if the ISIS people were perfectly civilized mainstream Muslims before the war.
I still think the Iraq war as a terrible thing and a terrible idea from the start, but it’s ironic that ISIS is the beneficiary of the toppling of the Baathist state at least as much as a reaction to the war that toppled it.
I cannot understand why this Todenhfer fellow would go to the risk and trouble of going in there to learn and then report but insist on giving us the same old nonsense. ISIS even told him what they were and what the mission was, and yet he goes back to his own previous embedded prejudices to ignore what they told him. It is first class bad journalism.
If Bush’s stupid jump into Iraq was the reason for ISIS what part did Syria play in this?
Yes, the invasion of Iraq was a bad move that caused more problems than it solved. How this is any justification for the actions of DAESH is beyond me.
One of the things that seems to get little or no mention in the efforts of the PC journalists is that al-Baghdadi (the leader of DAESH) claims descent from Muhammad. He’s a Muslim David Koresh.
Whatever your opinion of extremists within your own religion, doesn’t mean you can deny them. While I understand Muslims not wanting to be associated with DAESH, denial is rarely, if ever, a course that will solve a problem.
I consider the emergence of extremism from Islam to be a direct result of that religion’s failure to recognize the need for reform. As long as so many of its leaders continue to teach hate, they can’t be surprised that that’s what followers will learn.
Well said.
I consider the emergence of extremism from Islam and all other religions to be a direct result of religion defining “reform” as “rejecting secularism in order to get back to living strictly according to the will of God.”
They’re not teaching hate. They’re teaching a hatred of evil. That’s the opposite of teaching hate. Just ask them.
It’s New Puritanism. The belief that simple is good and complex is misleading.
Mentally Amish.
Once again, we’re back to the cognitive dissonance required to be religious.
Every new sect follows basically the same pattern of reinterpreting holy texts the “correct” way. And they always think their interpretation is the correct one, and if everyone just did as they said, everything would be perfect.
Yes. The cognitive dissonance is particularly amusing when the “one correct way” is that “there is no one correct way, you should do whatever works for you.”
“So that’s the one correct way. You’re right about God and they’re wrong.”
“NO — didn’t you hear me? There IS no right or wrong when it comes to God — that’s the genuine way of God! Ways. Many ways.”
Just like how of course Islam is a religion of peace – once all the apostates and unbelievers are dead, and all the people of the Book are living under sharia, we’ll (rather, they’ll) finally be able to live in peace.
. . . [Todenhöfer] also called the version of Islam practiced by IS one that is “rejected by 99% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims”.
It’s always amazed me that people seem to think that to label something as a “version” of a “true” religion somehow negates its being a religion in its own right- what is a “true” religion, anyway? Would it not be the strictest possible adherence to the teachings of that religion’s particular dogma and tenets? I’ve yet to see any rational and well- documented evidence that ISIS is doing anything other than trying to follow Mohammed’s teachings to a much greater extent than the vast majority of those who profess to be “Muslims” (another definition of the word, “profess” is, “to make a pretense of”).
These murdering maniacs have already declared that they fully intend to butcher and/or enslave the majority of people on Earth; what more is it going to take, before the world wakes up?
A caliphate is a religious state governed by a religious leader. I’m not sure what part of this definition does not involve religion.
Disambiguation: No true caliphate fallacy.
Arm, interesting to hear how Karen Armstrong would reply to your query.
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It shows Jurgen Todenhofer is willing to take dangerous risks. But it seems that he needs to read a more books on the early history of Islam. For instance, After the Prophet by Lesley Hazelton, shows that in early Islam, many Muslim leaders attacked and killed other Muslims–including several of the early caliphs. Assassination, beheadings, killing those of different views, etc. Very similar to jihadists today, 1,300 years later.
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I think there’s a fair point to be made about the Bush/Cheney malarky leaving behind a vacuum for the likes of ISIS and that recruiters of jihadists have benefited from this.
Imagine a Muslim nation removing a Christian dictator in a Christian country and their actions were based on manipulation and lies.
Christians around the world would be pissed regardless of their lack of sympathy with the dictator.
Bush/Cheney could not have orchestrated a better excuse for Islamist jihadists if they had tried. Given the upside-down world in which they live, we’d probably all be better off if they had tried. They completely erased any semblance of moral high ground we might have claimed as a democracy. We should never forgive them.
It looks like a house of cards to me. If you go after Bush/Cheney they’ll pretty much tear the whole ting down. At home and abroad. Imo they’d rather start ww3 than be held accountable for their actions.
So I guess the question is, where do we go from here?
Some dark part of me actually wants all-out war with these medieval assholes, but I sure as hell refuse to do it with a cross behind me.
Somewhere down the line I think it’s inevitable that a genuine secular war against religion in whatever form will happen. Not because of ideology, but simply because of a matter of survival.
The religions remain insane and the waepons are getting better.
Exactly. The one thing I find completely implausible is the claim that “Bush made a mistake”.
If so, it was for some definition of “mistake” that describes their deliberately deceptive efforts to manufacture consent for actions that somehow perfectly aligned with Bush/Cheney’s personal and political self-interest.
A mistake?
Pfff. Guaranteed perpetual income for defense contractors!
Bush/Cheney have nothing to do with this latest incarnation of the Caliphate, simply because soldiers under their command defeated its predecessor back in 2007-9 and were not around to re-create it as a territorial power in 2013. The responsibility for the rise of the Islamic State must lie squarely on the shoulders of Obama and Erdogan. These two could have easily destroyed the Islamic State at any time, and still can.
I suspect you are right and am trying to figure out why having the Islamic state develop and thrive is deemed to be in the best interest of the US by the elites in the State Dept.
So what are you both advocating? Another splendid bout of ‘Shock & Awe’? Please tell.
Not at all. I think it possible that those who benefit from exhibitions of shock and awe have had a role in the creation and development of IS.
What, like they easily destroyed the Taliban. Yeah right…
They did, for at least a month. But the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan lacked credibility and Afghanistan’s geography is inherently hostile for weak outsider-dependent governments.
I think our definitions of defeated are somewhat out of whack. Saddam is dead and gone, but project “Insert Government Here” hasn’t exactly panned out as advertised by the WMD Preaching God-fearing Squad of Righteousness and True Democracy™.
I should know. My own Prime Minister was among them.
You can blame Obama for withdrawing troops prematurely and Erdogan for not giving a shit, but to exempt the old guard from responsibility is, pardon my french, downright dumb and a recipe for continuous repeatings of mistakes.
And do you honestly think that the American public is ready to commit to yet another war? Let alone a Holy one.
I don’t blame Obama for withdrawing troops. Those had to come home some day, and better sooner than later. I blame him for not picking a side in the Syrian Civil War and “not giving a shit” about the rise of the Islamic State throughout the course of 2013 and the first half of 2014.
Well, you could argue that Obama was and is trying not to repeat history by funding and arming a whole variety of different people with different agendas once Assad is gone.
Remember the Afghan mujahedin?
It would be extremely shortsighted and pretty risky to pour another load of guns and ammo into the hands of extremists even though their interests may coincide with ours atm.
Been there, done that.
Obama is not a saint nor infallible, but I’m having a hard time seeing how he can resolve this situation.
The Caliphate will disappear when/if Muslim nations start walking the walk instead of just talking the talk.
It’s an Islamic poison and it will require Islamic medicine.
As long as the west is not capable of saying it like it is ( that ISIS very much is Islamic ) we’ll simply create future holy warriors by going to war again.
A western coalition in all-out war in Syria and Iraq may get rid of Assad and large parts of the Caliphate, but then what?
Iraq 2.0 on a wing and a prayer?
-I’d understand that if it was based on a consistent position of nonintervention. But U.S. arms have been supplied to Syrian rebels, and, unsurprisingly, have gotten into ISIS/Nusra hands. “Just enough weapons for the recipients to not win” is not a strategy I agree with in any way.
Me neither.
This standing between two chairs will get us nowhere and the pandering to what hopefully amounts to the vast majority of Muslims worldwide doesn’t get us any closer to the truth.
We have to start making it absolutely clear that Islam has a problem.
And the solution isn’t western Christianity.
The frequent denial of the Islamic State being Islamic is, indeed, annoying (though much less annoying than its very existence).
What the hell is Todenhöfer talking about? No mercy? But didn’t he just write:
See? Isn’t this “mercy?” Isn’t this “tolerance?” After all, Allah (in the form of ISIS) could easily have decided that infidels deserve death no matter what. And instead — what happens? Infidels are allowed to voluntarily repent and convert before they’re conquered.
Damn, if that isn’t most gracious and most merciful then I don’t know what is — given how really, really high and powerful is Allah and all.
Okay, right. The next time someone refers to people who put up billboards and write op-eds arguing that “God does not exist” as “militant atheists”, I say we air-drop them into an ISIS camp and see if they still think rational criticism of anything — even special, precious, beautiful faith — is “militant.”
I was struck by that, too: “113 of 114 Suras begin with the words: In the name of Allah, the most gracious and most merciful.”
Yeah, so what? Did this guy read what followed? That is just habit and style, and constantly said in fear of being punished for not saying it. One can hardly read anything by even “mainstream” mullahs what with all the pbuh crap. Childishly superstitious way of carrying on. Where every utterance is a minefield lest one forget to say the right pbuh and related nonsense at the right times. How do these people stand talking to one another? Like the PraiseJeezus crowd. How can they stand each other? Or when they are alone, do they take off their skin and dance around in their bones, speaking freely for once?
Agreed. It’s astoundingly obtuse “point” by Todenhöfer. We don’t judge people simply on one claim – we look to their actions to see if they support the claim. I can claim all day that I’m the nicest, most honest guy in the world, but that doesn’t mean squat if it’s clear I’m stealing property from everyone around me. Same with an ancient text that may in one sentence claim a God is “Good” or “Just” but who then condones slavery and punishes all mankind for a transgression committed by two people.
And “mercy” tells you NOTHING about the goodness of a person or Being without the context in which it is being used. A serial killer can call himself “merciful” for killing you quicker than his last victim.
Well…thanks! – what a vote for HIS character!
If the concept of “mercy” is that one will only be spared death or eternal torment if one submits, that’s hardly an enlightened ideal.
God rots the brain.
I agree with Todenhofer almost 100%. The vast majority of Muslims aren’t killing people, or we would have noticed. Just as the vast majority of Christians aren’t, say, murdering abortion clinic staff.
ISIS are undoubtedly evil bastards and I’d be happy to see them all dead – the trouble is, a large proportion of ‘ISIS’ troops are unwilling conscripts who would quit tomorrow if they weren’t under threat of death and who certainly don’t deserve to be killed.
The trouble with bombing is, it tends to be indiscriminate. ‘Collateral damage’ (i.e. innocent dead people) is huge. How many innocent bystanders have been killed by drone strikes?
And it IS all down to that religious cretin Bush and his little lapdog Bliar. Because if they hadn’t massively destabilised the whole area by invading Iraq (when the whole world was telling them what would happen), I doubt ISIS would have the unrest or the reservoir of disturbed or grieving and vengeful individuals to draw upon.
“How’s that preemptive war thing workin’ out for you, Dubya?”
” The vast majority of Muslims aren’t killing people, or we would have noticed.” — That’s hardly the standard. The Vast Majority of Nazi Party Members were not “killing people” if by that you mean they personally murdered someone. But then, the meme is Mao “killed” 30 or 50 or whatever million people; and Stalin “killed” 10 or 20 million people. Well, of course not, not personally. But if you are an Indonesian muslim who votes in state elections for those who impose “strict Sharia”, then you ARE a murderer, a maimer.
George Bush and even the profoundly execrable Dick Cheney never killed anyone personally, though Cheney, the effing brute, tried. So if you set policy, vote for it sincerely, implement it voluntarily, or by job choice, or under semi-cumpulsion….
No, half or more of the international Muslim community IS implicated in this because that is WHAT THEY BELIEVE.
You are saying that half of all Muslims support ISIS? Or what are you trying to say?
Curiously enough, I never notice ALL Christians being condemned for the nastier bits in the Bible, or all Jews for the nasty bits in the Torah or the Talmud or whatever. I’ve no wish to defend Muslim ideology but it’s them who ISIS is killing. Bit rich to blame the victims, don’t you think?
“George Bush … never killed anyone personally”. Nor did Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot, so far as I know. In fact it’s really quite irrelevant – if they had just killed someone personally it would just make them murderers, not psycopathic mass-murderers, and we would have forgotten about them already. It’s killing millions that we remember them for. So I fail to see your point.
I’m sorry but that opinion almost sounds like a fairy tail. Invasion of Iraq resulted in ISIS killing thousands of people in Syria and deciding to establish their own country. I’m surprised their flag does not have pictures of Bush and or Blair on it.
How about – this religious nut took the opportunity that developed in Syria with their own revolution within a revolution. They are just another one of many extreme Islamic terrorist groups attempting their own power grab. It should be other moderate groups who eventually fight and defeat them with some help from the west.
To the (American? Western?) left, EVERYTHING wrong in the world is somehow traceable to some action done by the US, and occasionally Europe.
They simultaneously over represent the effect of the US or Israel in particular (or the West in general) to somehow ‘force’ people to behave very, very badly. at the same time excusing or minimizing the effects of the other political axes.
At the same time, they seem to not believe that these ‘oppressed peoples’ have any capacity for morality on their own, that everything they do is because their hands are ‘forced’ by the west.
Enough of this BS. No political mistakes by the US ever forces people to give up decency or morality. No military move by the US makes them (often years later) descend into barbarism.
Just get over it.
Uh…but that’s not the true left.
Ah, those political mistakes… Ah, this knock-down naivetie…
Utter nonsense. I’ve been LEFT and LEFTER and even MORE LEFTER since the early 1960s so don’t give me that shit. You don’t know what you are talking about, and any such generalizations about ANYTHING only paint you as an incompetent thinker who should not be heard to speak about anything. I’d say the same if you were telling me about the Right or the Christians or the Masons. What idiots abound!!
I’m a pretty LEFTER fellow myself. And I hate to say that while Jay goes a tad overboard in the comment that set you off, Chewy, he’s not way overboard.
There is way too much willingness to knee-jerk blame the west for the ills of the world on the left. Much blame belongs there, but the non-west is comprised of humans who are just as prone to idiocy. It is currently reflected in accusations of Islamophobia and racism against anyone who points at the obvious: that Islam is driving the extremism of jihad around the world. This phenomenon is way more visible on the lefter side of the political spectrum. The righter side, not so much, but often for ignoble reasons. Righters tend to fall prey to religious bigotry and xenophobia.
A tad – come on! You’re being far too nice!
Chewy,you’ve gone too far by using this kind of invective on my site. You have one chance to apologize UNRESERVEDLY or you’ll never comment here again. We can have political discussions without insulting commenters (see Da Roolz).
Jay
Some would rather use IS to score grudge points than deal with the situation. I had a friend who in 2001 blamed Ronald Reagan for a batch of diseased meat that fall.
And some would like to understand the situation. It is, I know, not a peculiarly American failing, but I find disturbing the rather too frequent tactic or knee-jerk response of suggesting that when Americans behave less than attractively it is all a well-meaning ‘political mistake’ (as in Chile, Nicaragua, Salvador, Cambodia, Guantanamo…) and therefore somehow innocent and to be quickly forgotten, whereas when others behave badly it is a mark of incorrigible malevolence on the part of a whole people – the thin-skinned Jay’s ‘them'(that is to say, not just on the part of a group of thugs who, like the Khmer Rouge, have exploited the chaos resulting from American failure and the failure of the government it helped to install), and so has nothing whatsoever to do with anything the ‘West’, and in particular the USA, might have done or be doing. Jay might, though of course he won’t, look into the carnage and the displacement of people caused by the West’s foolish invasion, and think about the situation. I remember the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, whom I knew, remarking in an essay written at the time of the more recent Troubles on some Englishman he knew, who threw up his hands and exclaimed ‘These Irish!’ (in front of Heaney), as though Britain and the British government had nothing to do with the situation, either historically or in that present. Quite honestly, to the devil with infantile prejudices about the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ (which is the quarrel that Jay’s as well as others’ comments spring from): what is wrong with trying to see reality as it is, ‘warts and all’?
I see someone above is advocating yet another invasion and blaming Obama for not mounting it. .. It seems to me that by engaging Iran, by giving moral and military support to the Kurds and the Iraqis, Obama is doing the right thing. It is far better if the people of the area deal with ISIS, which definitely needs to be defeated, than that the ‘West’ or the US alone should mount yet another ill-starred invasion.
I think Obama’s doing the best he can with the (lousy) hand he’s been dealt. Although an invasion to fight IS would be entirely justified (unlike Bush’s war), I doubt it would work any better than that one did.
Thank you. The problem with the people we are responding to, as well as certain others on this thread, is that they are fundamentally un-serious, and are interested only in taking sides in the domestic quarrel between ‘Leftists’ and we Patriots – just as Andrew Sullivan did in his disgraceful drum-beating for the invasion of Iraq, in which anyone who disagreed with the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield-Blair junta on whatever grounds whatever was dismissed as being, if not one of them, then at least an ally of the ‘decadent Left’, which ‘in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead — and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.’ I should have been only too glad to see Saddam Hussein removed from power, but ‘Shock and Awe’ and nothing else (as a result of the naive belief that the West would be welcomed and democracy would miraculously come about) was clearly a foolish way to go about it. Sullivan has since apologised, quite profusely, for his behaviour, but I confess I still wonder how sincere the apology was – his behaviour has made it very hard for me to trust him at all. But I bring up Sullivan, because one of the points I made to him in an e-mail was that he was being fundamentally frivolous, as are some commenters here, in the way he saw foreign adventurism and the chaos and suffering it was likely to cause only through the prism of his domestic political prejudices and his desire pour epater les gauchistes – which meant that he was blind to that suffering and to the chaos that was likely to ensue, and has ensued. Or he simply didn’t care about these things. That is why he, and certain commenters here, are fundamentally frivolous people, who are not interested in reality or in serious political thought.
Interesting. I’m a ‘leftist’ – sorta – though I should add that, as a description, it’s about as generic as ‘muslim’ is. Some Left things I agree with and some I don’t.
I have also been known to say rude things about ‘patriotism’, at least of the ‘my country right or wrong’ flavour derided by Dr Johnson. Patriotism has often been used to justify some indefensible things, which is why I won’t call myself one. 🙂
I think it’s fine to be patriotic about the good aspects of my country, and want to defend them, and want to make my country better. As soon as my country starts to go off the rails or perpetrate injustices, I get off the bus.
I think we’re not far apart there.
As a Canadian who frequently comments around the Internet I appreciate your comment about seeing the world through a prism of domestic politics. Too often when trying to have a conversation about, well nearly anything, the American I’m talking to is incapable of thinking of the situation outside the strict confines of their culture. It makes actual dialogue impossible.
I see this in the blog post as well when he presents the false dichotomy of bomb or do nothing. That’s a fine one for the American establishment, since doing nothing is absurd and most people will therefore root for bombing, but it doesn’t reflect the nuanced ideas coming from elsewhere around the world.
I really think maybe before tackling the Herculean task of educating all of America in the finer points of evolution Jerry should first take a moment to educate himself on recognizing personal bias. As should most other people who follow along carrying the banner of atheism or demented American secularism.
Andrew Sullivan is of course British…
Please remember that the US is pretty much evenly divided between leftists and rightists; it’s just harder to get out the former’s votes.
There are millions of us who favor peace and negotiation. Though I’m not convinced that’s a possibility with ISIS.
I’m thoroughly convinced that is not possible.
It is going to take some kind of military action to prevent them from expanding. They may very well collapse from the inside at one point, but the question is if we’re willing to watch them implement their insane rules and punishments carried out while waiting for better times.
I’m not a warmongering kind of guy, but these assholes have proven themselves beyond reason in any form whatsoever and I’m fairly certain that a significant number of them are there for a shot at martyrdom in case their utopia fails.
But I’m at loss too because a western crusade against the caliphate may not exactly be what the world needs right now.
I hope there’s some decent intelligence work going on atm, but frankly I’m not too confident in the west’s various services these days.
@jesper
+1 to all that
I think that before commenting here you should read the Roolz and not insult the host. Your comment is uncivil and gratuitious, and I suggest you find some other site to make “occasional comments.”
I think Diane’s point is a good one, since – certainly to an outsider myself – the US seems to be an extraordinarily polarised nation politically at present, so that it seems to be difficult for many (including Andrew Sullivan, at that time at least) to see things in terms other than that of taking sides and to genuinely and justly address reality – which is, incidentally, something that one would think that people who are interested in science and perhaps have a scientific training (ie, those that read a web-site like this) would feel constrained to do: though the polarisation – particularly on the right (Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Butters, Hannity, Limbaugh et al) – has become so great that attempts at sober realism have come to seem to many as ‘liberal and ‘left-wing’.
And Diane (and Jesper) are surely right in being unconvinced as to the possibility of negotiating with ISIS.
You put it very well, Tim.
Our left (what’s left of it-ha) has its own bunch of loonies, but we’re not acting like school-yard bullies; or babies, throwing tantrums till we get our way. Or calling women sluts (Limbaugh) or making not-so-veiled racist comments (many!).
Just a few decades ago a “good” congressperson was someone who was good at working across the aisle, seeking compromise solutions that at least stood a chance of passing both houses. Now the right just shuts down government.
🐾
I thought it was interesting that the 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber for ISIS, who gave himself up rather than carry through with the mission, listed amongst his reasons that some of the members of the caliphate themselves were hypocritical, to put it mildly.
He now says he was brainwashed. But he admitted that he willingly ran away from home one morning on his way to school and joined a training camp in the desert. For about a month, he was put through military training, and he was taught how to shoot an assault rifle and how to storm a building. He had two meals a day, mostly cheese and eggs.
Soon, though, he said, “I noticed things I saw that were different from Islam.”
Back home he saw the group inflict severe punishments on men who were caught smoking cigarettes, yet in the camp, he said, he saw fighters smoking. He said he saw men having sex with other men behind the tents in the desert night. And, he said, he was increasingly put off by “the way they are killing innocent people.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/world/middleeast/syria-isis-recruits-teenagers-as-suicide-bombers.html
If ONLY we could mount a regiment of True Scotsmen!!
That would be more of a platoon, at best, apparently.
We tend to forget (or ignore) that Saddam’s political party, BAAS, was secular like in Syria and that religious manifestations were forbidden. I still remember when Bush said he was happy to give back religious freedom to the people of Irak…
Of course the US is responsible for the mess in Irak now. ISIS would nave never been able to be there if the US didn’t destroy Irak’s civil and military institutions…
I agree but would go farther. An ISIS is incipient where ever religious fanaticism, when stirred up, can hold sway over liberal views. Bush-Cheney moon-pie proselytism along with American (CIA) abandonment of civilized behavior in the wake of 9/11 sparked extremism with their policy of anything goes. (Did anyone besides me take note of the missionaries flowing into Iraq on the coat-tails of our troops?) Policy in Syria to weaken Assad has also played a role. The US has plotted destabilization and pushed endlessly for regime change. Now that the Russian Federation has declared NATO an adversary and it is clear the US has no intention to expand troop deployment in the Middle East, I suspect Syria will ramp up ‘anti-Western’ activities. Keep tuned.
Like how the Muslim Brotherhood moved in in the wake of Egypt’s “Arab Spring.”
+1
It’s hard to imagine anything more naïve than guys like this presuming to explain “real Islam” to Moslem religious fanatics.
I think you are confusing “reporting” with “proselytising “. If the reporter had made the same error, he’d have been dead many stories ago.
When you are reporting, you try to not antagonise the people you’re reporting on (and often against). You don’t offer your own opinion, particularly if it’s likely to get you killed. That applies in Syria, in a cop-killing cult in Louisiana, amongst the neo-Nazis of Europe, the favellas of Brazil, or Apple’s factories in China (just to list some recent bits of investigatory journalism that I’ve seen recently).
“Unified” as a description of colonialist New England?
I may be somewhat wobbly on this foreign history, but I thought that one of the reasons that the Mayfly Wallflowers emigrated was that they were unhappy with the toleration shown to sub-humans such as Catholics, Quakers and other non-conformists by the state of Britain, and that they expected to participate in some good unrestricted pogroms of the various heretics when they got to the colonies. And they were well ticked off to be told that tolerance was the rule in the colonies too.
What a bizarre bit of reasoning, using introductory clauses to excuse barbarism. “Charming and sauve, Ted Bundy killed another woman.” Well, he’s charming and sauve, what could possibly be wrong with that?