The Islamic State has made sure that images of its horrific deeds continue to spread all over the world via YouTube and social media. President Obama, David Cameron, and various TV pundits claim that there is no justification in Islam for these actions. The common meme is: “ISIS does not represent the true Islam”.
However, it is absolutely clear that the Islamic State is carrying out the core instructions as recorded in the Koran. Dr. David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics lays out the top ten verses from the Koran that can help us understand the actions of the Islamic State:
John Kerry needs to read the koran before he starts kissing their feet
Should we conclude from this that non-violent Muslims are being bad Muslims?
Moreover, how does Wood account for why ISIS seems sanguinary in equal measure regarding Shia Muslims as it is regarding Christians and Yazidis?
Is it not true that among our best allies in defeating Islamism are moderate Muslims themselves? (By “Islamism” I mean both terror supporting Islam and stealth-Jihad imposition of Sharia on Western liberal democracies). Does not labeling Islam as both monolithic and intrinsically violent simply alienate them? Are the Kurds not our friends? They seem very pro-American. And pro-Islrael.
Questions above posed somewhat as Devil’s Advocate. They’re of the essence of questions put to me over the years by Claire Berlinski. And I’m not sure I have an effective answer…
I had answered each of your statements/’queries, but the page disappeared on me. Twice. One of the hazards of being forced to be in bed…Consider this a place-holder until I can rest up and try again.
Clare Berlinski spent a lot of time in Turkey, no? I can understand her puzzlement if she didn’t read the Koran AND The Reliance of the Traveler before she left. A Western template popped onto a cosmopolitan city…
Thank you for taking the time to respond- and I regret that your comments disappeared. I do want to hear them.
Yes, Claire Berlinski has spent a lot of time in Turkey, having recently fled (to Paris) in light of Turkey’s growing Islamist transmogrification.
I certainly have my issues with CB. My differences with her seem to descend from the fact that she’s a foreign policy realist — all nations are essentially alike in that their objectives can be summed up as “interests defined in terms of power.” But if one believes that, then one must believe that nations are essentially interchangeable and that incentives are essentially interchangeable and have universally predictable effects. But what are, say, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority doing with regard to Israel? Are they acting in terms of interest defined as power? No. They are behaving in a way that can be explained only in terms of of ethnic and religious hatred.
I think this has something to do with why CB so vehemently rejects the notion that there is anything intrinsically violent in/about Islam. Instead, she claims violence represents but “strains within Islam,” as she once put it in a discussion at Ricochet.com
But I must say, her book “Menace in Europe” is an outstanding read and she holds that mass Islamic immigration to Europe is an utter catastrophe for Europe. She holds this belief, however, because she claims European conservative impulses or ideology aren’t grounded in individual liberty but rather in “identity” or groups. So the mass immigration will lead to war. So she seems opposed to Islamification of Europe not because the particularity of European cultural expression will be lost as a result of immigration. This seems an echo of something her father David Berlinski (whom I otherwise greatly admire) said in debate with Christopher Hitchens: that the question of whether he’d prefer living in a theocratic Christian or a theocratic Islamic Europe is a question that “has no provocative urgency for me. It has none whatsoever. It’s like asking what would you rather be dressed in, gold or silver? It’s not a living issue.” That rather blew me away.
But we’ll see how this all plays out…
Not wishing to pre-empt Dymphna’s reply, but your friend CB seems wedded to Marx’s idea that all history is economic. Alas, if only it were that simple…
“Does not labeling Islam as both monolithic and intrinsically violent simply alienate them?”
Does labelling Catholicism as a religion which once inspired the Inquisition and the Crusades inspire the same behaviour in its modern followers?
“Is it not true that among our best allies in defeating Islamism are moderate Muslims themselves?”
That is, if you believe that there is such a thing as “moderate Islam” (contrary to the prime minister of Turkey, recipient of a prize for “services to Islam” from none other than the Saudi King) – and not, for example, Shia against the Sunni Isis, Kurds against Isis, and Middle Eastern governments suddenly worried about what may happen to them. That – and the fact most Muslims would probably rather enjoy the latest Mercedes cars, luxury hotels and the richness of the “evil West” than join Isis on one of their beheading tours. All of which does not mean that their religion commands them to live their lives like this…
One only needs to listen to the muslim community. Absolute silence when it comes to condemning the actions of extremists who commit the atrocities in the name of ISIS and also those who rape young female children in European countries.
My answer is always the same, their silence only condones these actions. If these people are using the name of a religion to do things that are not normal for that religion, those who follow the religion should be utterly outraged about it. Therefore, we can only presume that these actions are normal since there has been no public display of outrage by muslims.
Indeed, where islam has become the primary religion, overpowering the indigenous religion, these actions perpetrated against non-muslims are quite normal.
It really does lend credence to the statement, “there is no such thing as a moderate muslim.”
However, a loud voice this late in the game would now be seen as yet another attempt at taqqiya. Any public condemnation of the actions of these so-called “extremists” should have been done many years ago, before it became as serious and widely known as it is now.
The answers to these and many other questions can be found in Hugh Fitzgerald’s articles @ NewEnglishReview.org.
“How does Wood account for why ISIS seems sanguinary in equal measure regarding Shia Muslims as it is regarding Christians and Yazidis?”
Sunnis and shi’a regard each other as heretics, and therefore fair game for slaughter.
“Is it not true that among our best allies in defeating Islamism are moderate Muslims themselves?”
You must realize that the radical (i.e., violent) muslims and the so-called moderate muslims differ only in their means to the same end, which is sharia and the predominance of muslims over all others. Violent muslims pursue this end through what Fitzgerald calls the “fast jihad” (e.g., Hamas), while the so-called moderates do so through the “slow jihad” (e.g., the PA).
“Are the Kurds not our friends? They seem very pro-American. And pro-Islrael.”
As HF has pointed out many times, while the Kurds are muslims, their primary identity is tied to their ethnicity, not their religion, which comes second. Hence they will act friendly toward those who support Kurdish independence, like the Americans and Israelis, and oppose those, including “fellow” muslims, who do not.
As far as alienating so-called moderate muslims by considering islam in toto as a problem and not just its most radical and violent practitioners, why wouldn’t we want to alienate all muslims who seek to establish sharia law?
Ned – thank you for posting this definitive reference on the Quranic verses behind the actions of Isis. Sent it to a few friends already, advising for it to be sent on to any naive infidel who doubts the connections between Isis and the “Religion of Peace”. Will definitely also share it with any “doubters” I come across…
And yes, Quran 2:106, explaining the Islamic belief in abrogation, could be the most-important verse of the Quran. Interestingly, Surah 2 is regarded as the first of the Medinan Surahs… was “Allah” preparing his followers to dump all their previous more peaceful beliefs in favour of a new, more “effective” method to spread their faith?
There is a lot of misinterpretation in the quran.
The 72 virgins for example: The word is “houri” which does not necessarily mean “virgin”, it can mean “pure” and could also mean “pure of heart” rather than of body.
Therefore the “72 virgins” would actually read “72 pure of heart”, in other words, 72 souls who have gone to heaven before you. Theologically speaking, it would make more sense.
Words such as “persuade” can be misinterpreted too. Does one persuade people to convert with words or with intimidation and threats? If it really were a religion of peace, intimidation and threats would not even be considered. However, for muslims, intimidation and threats are the preferred method of persuading people to convert to islam.
I hate to break it to these muslims that there is a reason why UK law states that contracts signed under duress are null and void. Similarly, conversion to your religion under duress does not constitute a valid conversion either. Put a gun to someone’s head and they’ll undoubtedly bow down and pray to your pet tortoise and call you it’s prophet if you told them to. They’ll probably call you a few other things once you let them go and I can safely bet that “prophet” won’t be one of them.