ISIS: Dead-end Fanatics or Islam Resurging?
ISIS: Dead-end Fanatics or New Islamic Surge?
The murderous Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) now has butchered a second Japanese citizen, releasing a video of the beheading of a 46-year-old Japanese journalist who traveled to Syria to report on that nation's devastating civil war. The world had waited to see what ISIL would do, after murdering a first Japanese reporter and reiterating demands for hundreds of millions in ransom from Japan. Certainly Japan negotiated behind the scenes, offering what we don't know, but it was backed by Jordan, who confronted ISIL with additional offers and threats.
ISIS is a terrorist organization, labeled as such by dozens of the world's governments, including predominantly Muslim countries. But it also has become an insurgency, occupying and governing territories in Iraq and Syria the size of the state of Pennsylvania. In occupied areas, ISIL quickly has put government structures in place, providing social services and sources of income, even as it slaughters thousands of Christians, Muslims, and others who do not embrace its truly primitive version of Islam. It rapes and murders thousands, has re-instituted slavery, and robs banks and businesses and seizes oil resources that have made it the world's richest Jihadist movement. It forces into its military boys as young as nine years old. Instituting Sharia law, it beheads, crucifies, or otherwise horrendously murders all who fail to conform to its barbaric demands. ISIL is evil by any standard of civilized conduct; its actions are revolting; its progress is a threat to every decent value of anyone in its path. ISIL is Satanic.
No one supports ISIL. It is condemned virtually universally by nations and organizations of every religion; it is condemned by every international organization from the U.N. to Amnesty International to world Muslim organizations of every kind. Islamic leaders in other countries condemn it as a blasphemy to the Islamic religion. Al Qaeda, where it began as an offshoot, now wants nothing to do with it. Its initial funding seems to have come from Saudi Arabia, though not officially, because its version is Islam is the ultra-fundamentalist Wahabism, which the Saudi ruling family tacitly supports to placate potential religious opponents of its regime.
A coalition of countries led by the United States has formed a military alliance against ISIS, routinely bombing its positions. Iran has sent land-based forces against it.
And yet, ISIS spreads, achieves victories, and solidifies its governance in conquered territories. It has defeated both Iraqi and Syrian ground forces sent against it. With its increasing looted wealth, it has an array of modern weapons. Its command and control are deemed excellent and the morale of its troops--very young Muslims, many recruited, some dragooned--is high.
It is terrorist, but its chief weapon is not terrorism. Terrorism is a method of the weak against powerful regimes and is a weak method because it depends for progress on the reactions of its target. ISIL certainly does engage in terrorist methods, but, for now, it is a successful militia. Its chief method is territorial conquest by force of arms.
ISIL seems superficially like the Islamic armies that during the lifetime of Mohammad conquered the Arabian peninsula and for the next century swept across North Africa conquering nation after nation and establishing Islam from the Iberian peninsula to India. Its forces, imbued with a religious doctrine that called for conquest of the infidel, were unstoppable for a century. In that era, Islam conquered, but also spread an increasingly rich and civilized culture. There is ZERO chance that ISIL will reiterate this civilizing influence, leading to the “Golden age” of Islam.
When Islam was new, its invading armies brought a religion and cultural movement open to growth and change and the inspiration of faith that sent armies across the world also invested in scholarship and art. The empires they conquered were in no sense bastions of freedom and sometimes Islam was greeted as preferable to current rulers.
ISIS, by contrast, is a grotesque reactionary throwback to a period of empires, slavery, and constant conquest--a grotesque anachronism focused on exterminating anything that has changed in the past twelve centuries. Too many news sources, in their headlines about the slaying today, referred to ISIL as the "Islamic State." But there is a widespread agreement among those who understand the issues that this is anything but "the" Islamic State. No Muslim nation or organization or sect recognizes it as the new "Caliph."
What can ISIL possibly accomplish? This is complicated, I think, but I would refer to the essential dynamic of terrorist organizations, which ISIS remains. Their dominant aim and tactic, if they are to succeed, is to extinguish or silence the moderates. Their attack on their target--in this case, governments worldwide--is to provoke an irrational response. What they hope above all is to so outrage their targets--Western nations and their citizens--that they make life unbearable for moderate Muslims. If they do, then the only refuge for those Muslims will be ISIL.
This is the essential dynamic of terrorism. It can make no progress on its own; it must manipulate the powerful (Western nations and their populations) into doing its work. In this case, ISIS wishes the world to respond in ways that alienate Muslims and so boost the recruitment to ISIL that is drawing young Muslims from Europe to join the new Islamic surge.
Without those recruits, ISIL has no source of growth but those it conquers. Notice that ISIL has taken infinite pains to create a propaganda arm that grotesquely produces "slick" propaganda for ISIS, including regular "tweets." What does this indicate if not the push to recruit Muslims worldwide to its ranks?
Its most potent recruiting tactic is terrorism, which will goad nations from France to America to Japan to REPRESS THE MODERATES. In that response lies the hope and future of ISIL and the new Islamic insurgency.
But the targets of terrorism have a choice. They need not react as ISIL hopes they will. Other targets of terrorist tactics, the historical records shows, have understood what the terrorists want and given them the opposite.
More on that later.
I would value your comments.
The murderous Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) now has butchered a second Japanese citizen, releasing a video of the beheading of a 46-year-old Japanese journalist who traveled to Syria to report on that nation's devastating civil war. The world had waited to see what ISIL would do, after murdering a first Japanese reporter and reiterating demands for hundreds of millions in ransom from Japan. Certainly Japan negotiated behind the scenes, offering what we don't know, but it was backed by Jordan, who confronted ISIL with additional offers and threats.
ISIS is a terrorist organization, labeled as such by dozens of the world's governments, including predominantly Muslim countries. But it also has become an insurgency, occupying and governing territories in Iraq and Syria the size of the state of Pennsylvania. In occupied areas, ISIL quickly has put government structures in place, providing social services and sources of income, even as it slaughters thousands of Christians, Muslims, and others who do not embrace its truly primitive version of Islam. It rapes and murders thousands, has re-instituted slavery, and robs banks and businesses and seizes oil resources that have made it the world's richest Jihadist movement. It forces into its military boys as young as nine years old. Instituting Sharia law, it beheads, crucifies, or otherwise horrendously murders all who fail to conform to its barbaric demands. ISIL is evil by any standard of civilized conduct; its actions are revolting; its progress is a threat to every decent value of anyone in its path. ISIL is Satanic.
No one supports ISIL. It is condemned virtually universally by nations and organizations of every religion; it is condemned by every international organization from the U.N. to Amnesty International to world Muslim organizations of every kind. Islamic leaders in other countries condemn it as a blasphemy to the Islamic religion. Al Qaeda, where it began as an offshoot, now wants nothing to do with it. Its initial funding seems to have come from Saudi Arabia, though not officially, because its version is Islam is the ultra-fundamentalist Wahabism, which the Saudi ruling family tacitly supports to placate potential religious opponents of its regime.
A coalition of countries led by the United States has formed a military alliance against ISIS, routinely bombing its positions. Iran has sent land-based forces against it.
And yet, ISIS spreads, achieves victories, and solidifies its governance in conquered territories. It has defeated both Iraqi and Syrian ground forces sent against it. With its increasing looted wealth, it has an array of modern weapons. Its command and control are deemed excellent and the morale of its troops--very young Muslims, many recruited, some dragooned--is high.
It is terrorist, but its chief weapon is not terrorism. Terrorism is a method of the weak against powerful regimes and is a weak method because it depends for progress on the reactions of its target. ISIL certainly does engage in terrorist methods, but, for now, it is a successful militia. Its chief method is territorial conquest by force of arms.
ISIL seems superficially like the Islamic armies that during the lifetime of Mohammad conquered the Arabian peninsula and for the next century swept across North Africa conquering nation after nation and establishing Islam from the Iberian peninsula to India. Its forces, imbued with a religious doctrine that called for conquest of the infidel, were unstoppable for a century. In that era, Islam conquered, but also spread an increasingly rich and civilized culture. There is ZERO chance that ISIL will reiterate this civilizing influence, leading to the “Golden age” of Islam.
When Islam was new, its invading armies brought a religion and cultural movement open to growth and change and the inspiration of faith that sent armies across the world also invested in scholarship and art. The empires they conquered were in no sense bastions of freedom and sometimes Islam was greeted as preferable to current rulers.
ISIS, by contrast, is a grotesque reactionary throwback to a period of empires, slavery, and constant conquest--a grotesque anachronism focused on exterminating anything that has changed in the past twelve centuries. Too many news sources, in their headlines about the slaying today, referred to ISIL as the "Islamic State." But there is a widespread agreement among those who understand the issues that this is anything but "the" Islamic State. No Muslim nation or organization or sect recognizes it as the new "Caliph."
What can ISIL possibly accomplish? This is complicated, I think, but I would refer to the essential dynamic of terrorist organizations, which ISIS remains. Their dominant aim and tactic, if they are to succeed, is to extinguish or silence the moderates. Their attack on their target--in this case, governments worldwide--is to provoke an irrational response. What they hope above all is to so outrage their targets--Western nations and their citizens--that they make life unbearable for moderate Muslims. If they do, then the only refuge for those Muslims will be ISIL.
This is the essential dynamic of terrorism. It can make no progress on its own; it must manipulate the powerful (Western nations and their populations) into doing its work. In this case, ISIS wishes the world to respond in ways that alienate Muslims and so boost the recruitment to ISIL that is drawing young Muslims from Europe to join the new Islamic surge.
Without those recruits, ISIL has no source of growth but those it conquers. Notice that ISIL has taken infinite pains to create a propaganda arm that grotesquely produces "slick" propaganda for ISIS, including regular "tweets." What does this indicate if not the push to recruit Muslims worldwide to its ranks?
Its most potent recruiting tactic is terrorism, which will goad nations from France to America to Japan to REPRESS THE MODERATES. In that response lies the hope and future of ISIL and the new Islamic insurgency.
But the targets of terrorism have a choice. They need not react as ISIL hopes they will. Other targets of terrorist tactics, the historical records shows, have understood what the terrorists want and given them the opposite.
More on that later.
I would value your comments.
