dronald–thank you for the poll links. I had used the Pew poll for letters to the editor and various internet postings, but you had some polls I wasn’t aware of.
This thread brings up a lot of issues, some of which I’ve been thinking about for over 20 years.
First, what do we name these people? If you call them ISIS or ISIL, you are giving them legitimacy by calling them what they call themselves. The French and some Arab countries call them Da’ish–the Arabic acronym for their name in Arabic, but with a slight change, ‘s’ instead of ‘sh’ at the end, it also has another meaning–‘crushed, stepped on’. I have seen Kharijites (khawarij in Arabic), used, and that’s good. I would think zanadika (sing. ‘zindik’) would be good too–a heretic whose teaching becomes a danger to the state. Zanadika certainly fits.
The problem is that it may be too late–everyone should have gotten together 20 years ago and decided on a name for these sorts of people. But certainly we should avoid names that legitimize them (like ISIS and ISIL).
A related issue is whether you should attach the word ‘Muslim’ to them–‘Muslim extremists’ or ‘Muslim fundamentalists’. Muslims who don’t believe in what these people are doing don’t want to associate themselves with them and are insulted if you use the word ‘Muslim’. The Obama administration has taken this view–therefore they will never use the word ‘Muslim’. I certainly understand that point of view. And to call the non-Khawarij Muslims ‘moderate Muslims’ or ‘Westernized Muslims’ or something like that is condescending and patronizing, and I can see why they would resent it. They consider themselves ‘Muslims’ pure and simple, and the Khawarij ‘non-Muslims.’
I would be very happy calling them Da’ish, Khawarij, or Zanadika and leaving it at that.
However…and it’s a BIG however…there are two issues no one can ignore. First, the Khawarij claim to be the ‘true’ Muslims. Their web sites, all their videos, all their propaganda, everything they do is linked to Islam. When they kill someone, they don’t say “Give us better jobs,” they say “Allahu akbar! This is in revenge for….[some religious reason].” This is not a tiny, insignificant movement. Even in terms of active fighters, we’re talking perhaps 30,000. Supporters–or those who hold similar positions–number in the tens if not hundreds of millions, as the polls above show. This is not some Jim Jones or David Koresh with a couple hundred followers and no outside support. This is big.
To compound the issue, since the death of Muhammad, Islam has been split into factions. Each faction of course claimed it was the ‘true’ version of Islam. If this happened in Catholicism–if you had some international group terrorizing everyone in the name of the Catholic Church–you would immediately have the Pope condemn them, a Church council condemn them, and you could quote the catechism or Church council documents to prove they were not Catholic. There is no equivalent in Islam–there is no authority all Muslims accept as supreme. So if they say they are Muslim, who’s to say they’re not? Furthermore, a Catholic terrorist group would be hard pressed to find any New Testament verses to justify themselves. Unfortunately, although not all Muslims are terrorists, Islam can BE USED to justify terrorism–the Khawarij quote the Qur’an, Hadith, the biography of Muhammad, Muhammad’s actions themselves, etc. Now we can certainly argue with their interpretation, but the fact is that those sources exist and are being used to justify terrorism.
The second problem with not calling them ‘Muslim’ is that virtually every terrorist has been a ‘moderate Muslim’ up to some point, and then flipped, rather quickly. Major Nidal Hasan is an example. So are the Tsarnaev brothers. Tamerlan’s wife didn’t even know he had flipped! Another recent example are the two women arrested in NY last week. The father of one was interviewed on TV, and he said, “No, they must be wrong! My daughter didn’t believe any of that!” Well, she did. So the barrier between a Muslim who would oppose terrorism and a Muslim who would commit terrorism is a bit pourous.
And tempted as I am to re-fight the Crusades, I’ll leave them alone. RIP. Let’s just say that both sides fought exactly as you would expect 11th-13th c. armies to fight. No surprises.
As for the accusation that the West is somehow to blame for all this chaos, there’s a certain truth to it. The various dictators throughout the Middle East were keeping a lid on things. And before them, the British and French kept things under control. And before them, the Ottomans kept things cool from 1517 on. And before them the Mamluks from 1259…and so on. Then the US and its allies came along and poof, Saddam was gone, and the lid was off, and then came the Arab Spring, and whoosh, the lid blew.
So yes, I would blame the West for lifting the lid off the boiling pot (or Pandora’s Box, if you like that analogy better), but to argue that all this chaos is in some way retaliation against the West is nonsense. I know this argument well: when I lived in Saudi Arabia, you could ask any Saudi who was to blame for anything that went wrong (disease, traffic accidents, the weather, whatever) and the answer was always the same: the West. That’s nonsense. We are to blame in the sense we inspired them with the idea of revolt, and probably there is some degree of revenge motivating some people, but overall, that’s not what’s going on.
