!

!!" $"%%&%'() *+, -.%&/'.'"( &0 .!" 1(2*)'/ 3.*." *%"

!"#$%&'( *"( +,#-%.%'( /0 %-# !"-'&$&'-*-%1"# 1. !#2*3

Jeffrey M. Bale
Monterey Institute of International Studies

Which will come first, flying cars and vacations to Mars, or a simple
acknowledgement that beliefs guide behavior and that certain religious ideas jihad,
martyrdom, blasphemy, apostasy reliably lead to oppression and murder?
# $%& '%(()*
1


As is invariably the case these days in the wake of the terrorist violence,
brutality, and atrocities carried out explicitly in the name of Islam by
jihadist terrorists, a host of dissimulating Islamist activists, other Muslims
in a state of psychological denial, and apologetic Western pundits are now
insisting that the actions of the terrorist group calling itself al-Dawla al-
Islamiyya (IS: the Islamic State) which was previously known as al-Dawla
al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham (ISIS: the Islamic State in Iraq and
Greater Syria) has little or nothing to do with Islam.
2


1
Sam Harris, Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon, Sam Harris website, 10 September 2014, at
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sleepwalking-toward-armageddon .

2
Alas, it is even more troubling that these same false claims are so often repeated, like some sort of mindless cult-
like mantra, by Western government officials. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama made the following
misleading statement in his 10 September 2014 address to the American people outlining his strategy for dealing
with the Islamic State: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of
ISIL's victims have been Muslim. See Transcript: President Obama on How U.S. Will Address Islamic State,
NPR [National Public Radio], 10 September 2014, at http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347515100/transcript-
president-obama-on-how-u-s-will-address-islamic-state . The very last point about the preponderance of Muslim
victims is the only accurate part of this statement, but that is because as is the case with so many Sunni jihadist
groups the sectarian, puritanical IS jihadists regard their Muslim victims not as real Muslims, much less as
innocents, but rather as apostates, heretical rejecters of Allah, or hypocrites, and thus as de facto infidels.
For his part, American Secretary of State John Kerry made this no less inaccurate statement during his visit to
Baghdad a couple of days earlier: ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam, but the fact is that its hateful
ideology has nothing to do with Islam. See Jim Bacon and Kim Hjelmgaard, Kerry Says World Wont Let Islamic
State Win in Iraq, USA Today, 10 September 2014, at

2
Alas, it is even more troubling that these same false claims are so often repeated, like some sort of mindless cult-
like mantra, by Western government officials. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama made the following
misleading statement in his 10 September 2014 address to the American people outlining his strategy for dealing
+

Not long ago, many such commentators also argued that the horrendous
actions committed by the Nigerian jihadist group Jamaat Ahl al-Sunna li al-
Dawa wa al-Jihad (Association of People Following the Teachings [of
Muhammad] on Proselytization and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram
(Western Influence is Sinful), had nothing to do with its members
interpretations of Islam.
3

In all such cases, however, the perpetrators of these violent actions not
only proudly insist that their actions are inspired by the Quran and the
exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad himself (as recorded in the

with the Islamic State: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of
ISIL's victims have been Muslim. See Transcript: President Obama on How U.S. Will Address Islamic State,
NPR [National Public Radio], 10 September 2014, at http://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/347515100/transcript-
president-obama-on-how-u-s-will-address-islamic-state . The very last point about the preponderance of Muslim
victims is the only accurate part of this statement, but that is because as is the case with so many Sunni jihadist
groups the sectarian, puritanical IS jihadists regard their Muslim victims not as real Muslims, much less as
innocents, but rather as apostates, heretical rejecters of Allah, or hypocrites, and thus as de facto infidels.
For his part, American Secretary of State John Kerry made this no less inaccurate statement during his visit to
Baghdad a couple of days earlier: ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam, but the fact is that its hateful
ideology has nothing to do with Islam. See Jim Bacon and Kim Hjelmgaard, Kerry Says World Wont Let Islamic
State Win in Iraq, USA Today, 10 September 2014, at
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/10/kerry-iraq-prime-minister-islamic-state-syria/15376123/ .
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in explaining the adoption of heightened security measures in
response to the threat of jihadist terrorism, felt it necessary to opine that [t]his is about crime and combating crime.
This is not about religion See Frank Coletta, Tony Abbott Increases Australias Terrorism Threat Level from
Medium to High and Warns Australians to Expect Increased Security, Daily Mail, 11 September 2014, at
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2753016/Tony-Abbott-increases-Australia-s-terror-threat-medium-
high.html . And British Prime Minister David Cameron, in response to the IS beheading of a British aid worker,
insisted that Islam is a religion of peace, that the IS jihadists are monsters rather than Muslims, and that their
claim to do this in the name of Islam is nonsense. See Peter Dominiczak, David Cameron Vows to Hunt Down
Monsters Who Beheaded British Hostage David Haines, Telegraph, 14 September 2014, at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11095247/David-Cameron-vows-to-hunt-down-monsters-
who-beheaded-British-hostage-David-Haines.html . Apparently, these Western leaders imagine that they have more
expertise on Islamic doctrines and history than IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the nom de guerre of Ibrahim ibn
Awad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, who has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the
Islamic University of Baghdad.

3
See, e.g., Dean Obeidallah, The Boko Haram Terrorists are Not Islamic, Daily Beast, 12 May 2014, at
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/the-boko-haram-terrorists-are-not-islamic.html ; OIC: Boko
Haram has Nothing to Do with Islam, al-Manar, 6 March 2014, at
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=154669&cid=56&fromval=1 ; and Boko Haram has Nothing
to Do with Islam: Iran Cleric, Press TV (Iran), 18 May 2014, at
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/05/18/363213/boko-haram-has-no-relation-with-islam/ . Even some American
politicians have made this same erroneous claim. See Michael Warren, Dem Senator: Boko Haram is Not Islamist,
Weekly Standard, 16 May 2014, at http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-senator-boko-haram-not-
islamist_792891.html .

,

canonical hadith collections), but explicitly cite relevant Quranic passages
and the reported actions of their prophet to justify those actions.
4

Hence in order to argue that jihadist terrorists are not directly inspired and
primarily motivated by their interpretations of Islamic doctrines and by
clear precedents from early Islamic history, as they themselves repeatedly
and accurately claim, one has to pretend as though the perpetrators
themselves have no idea why they are actually carrying out such actions, or
assert that they are deliberately mischaracterizing their own motives.
In short, one must stubbornly ignore what the actual protagonists keep
telling the entire world about their own motives and instead rely on
Islamist activists, who are often peddling outright disinformation, or on
Western commentators, most of whom know little or nothing about Islam
or Islamism, for explanations of their behavior.
5
In both cases, these sorts
of pundits minimize the central role played by Islamist ideology and

4
Cf., e.g., Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qura[y]shi al-Baghdadi, A Message to the Mujahidin and the Muslim Umma in
the Month of Ramadan, al-Hayat Media Center, [1 July 2014], at
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/documents/baghdadi-caliph.pdf , wherein the IS leader, the self-styledAmir al-
Muminin (Commander of the Faithful), announces the establishment of a new Caliphate and enthusiastically
promotes offensive jihad, martyrdom, and world domination (along with ample citations from relevant Quranic
passages); numerous IS propaganda and recruitment videos citing the Quran and ahadith; and the first three issues
of the ISs magazine Dabiq, which likewise contain references to the Quran and hadith, promote actions using
explicitly Islamic rationales and justifications, and are inspired by Muslim apocalyptic millenarian themes. See, e.g.,
Until It Burns the Crusader Armies in Dabiq, Dabiq 1 [July 2014], pp. 3-5, at
https://ia802500.us.archive.org/24/items/dbq01_desktop_en/dbq01_desktop_en.pdf . Indeed, virtually everything
produced by the IS in written or video formats is laced with justificatory references to the Quran and hadith, as well
as events in Islamic history and Muslim eschatological themes. For more on the apocalyptic themes in the first issue
of Dabiq, see Timothy Furnish, New Islamic State Magazine Dabiq: Western Forces on the Eve of Destruction,
Mahdi Watch, 14 July 2014, at http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2014.07.01_arch.html .
5
As atheist Sam Harris accurately notes in Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon, there is now a large industry of
obfuscation designed to protect Muslims [as well as, it should be emphasized, Westerners] from having to grapple
with these truths. Our humanities and social science departments are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars
deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other diverse
fields, who claim that where Muslim intolerance and violence are concerned, nothing is ever what it seems. Above
all, these experts claim that one cant take Islamists and jihadists at their word: Their incessant declarations about
God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy are nothing more than a mask concealing their real motivations.
What are their real motivations? Insert here the most abject hopes and projections of secular liberalism For
further illustrations of these types of delusional and self-destructive arguments, in the context of the Boston
Marathon bombings and other acts of jihadist terrorism in the West, see Jeffrey M. Bale, Denying the Link between
Islamist Ideology and Jihadist Terrorism: Political Correctness and the Undermining of Counterterrorism,
Perspectives on Terrorism 7:5 (October 2013), pp. 5-46.

-

erroneously ascribe the actions of jihadist terrorists to assorted subsidiary
causal factors, such as garden-variety political grievances, poverty, lack of
democracy, psychopathology, greed, or simple hunger for power.
Using similar logic that would be no less faulty than claiming that the
actions of jihadist terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, one might
just as easily argue that self-described Protestant fundamentalists or
Catholic ultra traditionalists who bomb abortion clinics in the name of
their interpretations of Christian doctrines have nothing to do with
Christianity, that the actions of theocratic Orthodox haredi or messianic
Zionist terrorist groups in Israel have nothing to do with their
interpretations of Judaism, that the actions of self-styled Marxist-Leninist
terrorist groups have nothing to do with communism, and that the actions
of self-described neo-Nazi terrorist groups have nothing to do with
Nazism.
6

Needless to say, most of the commentators who keep insisting, against all
evidence to the contrary, that the actions of jihadist terrorists cannot be
attributed to their interpretations of Islam do not also argue that the violent
actions of other types of extremists cannot be attributed to their ideological
beliefs. On the contrary, whenever other types of terrorists carry out
gruesome attacks, many of those same commentators are quick to ascribe
their actions primarily to their proclaimed theological and ideological
beliefs and justifiably so.
One can easily illustrate this glaring contrast with respect to the analytical
treatment of Islamist terrorism by asking a simple question: when was the
last time that any more or less respected commentator made the case that
Nazi ideology had nothing to do with inspiring particular acts of terrorism
committed by self-identified neo-Nazis, or that notions of white supremacy

6
Cf. the broader arguments of Jerry Coyne, If ISIS is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition is Not Catholic, New
Republic, 13 September 2014, at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119433/if-isis-not-islamic-then-inquisition-
was-not-catholic .
.

had nothing to do with violence committed by members of the Ku Klux
Klan?
Thus it is virtually only in cases of acts of terrorism committed by jihadists,
which are nowadays by far the most serious and the most common
throughout large portions of the world, that one encounters so much
unwillingness to face reality and so much frantic desperation to absolve
Islam itself or even Islamist interpretations of Islam from shouldering
any responsibility for inspiring acts committed in its name.
These constant efforts to defend, excuse, absolve, or whitewash Islam (as
well as to mischaracterize the nature of Islamism a right-wing,
totalitarian, theocratic, infidel-hating, and Islamic supremacist ideology
as moderate and democratic) have taken a variety of forms.
On the one hand, there are some academicians who mistakenly minimize
the role of ideology as a key explanatory or causal factor in inspiring the
violence and terrorism carried out by non-state extremist groups, not just
in the case of jihadist terrorism but also in other such cases.
Although these efforts are seriously misleading, since they tend to be based
on flawed social science theories (and also, often, on unsuitable or
problematic quantitative methodologies) that overemphasize the role of
human rationality and rational choice, materialistic rather than idealistic
motives, personal psychological factors, really existing political and
economic grievances, or larger impersonal structural forces as causal
factors in the etiology of terrorism, they at least have the merit of not
employing double standards, i.e., of making an unwarranted and wholly
artificial distinction between the causes of Islamist terrorism and other
types of ideologically-inspired terrorism.
Indeed, although some have specifically applied such problematic notions
in the context of Islamist terrorism, there is no reason to suppose that they
regard ideology as being any more important in other terrorism contexts.
/

See, as examples, the works of Marc Sageman, who exaggerates the role of
social connections whilst minimizing that of ideology in the recruitment
and actions of jihadists;
7
Robert Pape, who (wrongly) argues that foreign
occupation rather than modified Islamic notions of martyrdom explain the
prevalence of jihadist suicide attacks;
8
Scott Atran, who (rightly) notes that
along with religious fervor, jihadists are motivated by a spirit of
camaraderie, influenced by group dynamics, and affected by sacred
values of a cultural nature, but arguably underestimates (like many
anthropologists who view religions in a more holistic fashion) the impact
of core Islamic religious doctrines;
9
Eli Berman, who claims that jihadist
terrorists are rational altruists concerned about their communities rather
than fanatics motivated by Islamic religious doctrines, although these two
notions are not necessarily mutually exclusive (apart from the exaggeration
of their purported rationality);
10
and Alan Krueger, who argues that the
suppression of civil liberties is the main cause of terrorism, a theory that
fails to explain why most non-state terrorist groups, including jihadist
groups, are animated by extremist ideologies that are intrinsically
antithetical to civil liberties.
11


7
See Marc Sagemen, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004); idem,
Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008).

8
Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2006); and
idem and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012). Cf. the sober, historically-grounded counter-arguments in David Cook and
Olivia Allison, Understanding and Addressing Suicide Attacks: The Faith and Politics of Martyrdom Operations
(Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), wherein the prominent religious dimensions of Islamist
suicide attacks are rightly emphasized.

9
Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists (New York: Harper
Collins, 2010).
10
Eli Berman, Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T., 2011).

11
Alan B. Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton
University, 2008). This book does have the merit, however, of demolishing erroneous social science theories that
ascribe terrorism to poverty and lack of education.

0

Two relatively interesting and insightful examples of efforts to de-
emphasize the importance of Islamist ideology, when specifically applied to
the Islamic State, are perhaps worth noting by way of illustration.
The first is Josh Marshalls article The Rage to Oppose, wherein he
rightly points out that some of the Western citizens or residents who leave
their countries to join and fight with the IS are individuals who are so
hostile to liberal democracy and capitalism that they looking for any viable
ideological opposition movement to embrace.
Since the utopian internationalist ideology of revolutionary socialism has
been largely discredited (as has, though Marshall does not mention it, the
utopian radical nationalist ideology of revolutionary fascism) by its own
failed predictions and above all by the sordid, brutal nature and behavior of
really existing communist regimes and movements, the transnational
anti-infidel ideology of Islamism has become increasingly attractive to
some of those lost souls (my term) who are desperately seeking a real
alternative to, and substitute for, the bourgeois materialism and
democracy that they despise.
Yet although Marshall justly notes that these psychologically alienated
individuals have effectively converted to the most extreme, totalizing
variant of Islam, he downplays the significance of this by arguing that
some of them have little more than a passing knowledge of the basics of
Islamic ritual practice, as if that trivial fact has real relevance.
12

The second is an article with an utterly misleading title ISILs Western
Converts are Not Motivated by Islam by UK American historian Tim
Stanley, who claims, quite rightly, that some of the Islamic States Western
converts have been induced to embrace Islamic fundamentalism because

12
Josh Marshall, The Rage to Oppose, TPM, 7 September 2014, at http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-rage-
to-oppose . However, Marshall erroneously claims that the majority of the people from Western countries who have
gone off to fight with the IS are white Western converts rather than first or second generation naturalized
immigrants from the MENA region or Central or South Asia. Given that most of these foreign fighters from the
West are in fact Muslims who fall into the latter category, this tends to greatly undermine his overall argument.
1

they suffered from middle class ennui and boredom, which he later
more accurately characterizes as existential alienation from grubby
capitalist materialism and corrupt, uninspiring democratic processes.
13

As many analysts and extremists themselves have long pointed out,
mundane daily life in consumerist democratic capitalist societies typically
lacks the romance, the heroism, and the sense of involvement (as per
libertarian Charles Cooke) in a higher transcendental, world-transformative
cause that certain individuals find satisfying and inspiring, if not
psychologically necessary.
These dissatisfied dreamers are thus often prone to embrace utopian
ideologies and join extremist movements, which they imagine will satisfy
their cravings for adventure and meaning. Although this is an astute but
hardly original observation, and the author also rightly dismisses the
widespread but unsupportable notion that extremism is mainly a product
of social marginalization, the problem with this article is the erroneous
assertion that such people, once having enthusiastically embraced Islamism,
are not motivated by their interpretations of Islam.
Like Marshall, Stanley also notes, as per a 2008 British Security Service
(MI5) report, that many of those involved in jihadist terrorism are not only
lacking in religious zealotry, but do not practise their faith regularly and
lack religious literacy.
14
Even if this was true before they became
radicalized, which it surely is in some cases, it is no longer applicable to
most born again reverts or converts after they have embraced Islamism.
15


13
Tim Stanley, ISILs Western Converts are Not Motivated by Islam. They are Motivated by Boredom, The
Telegraph, 4 September 2014, at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100285161/isils-western-converts-
are-not-motivated-by-islam-they-are-motivated-by-boredom/ .

14
See the summary in Alan Travis, MI5 Challenges Views on Terrorism in Britain, The Guardian, 20 August
2008, at http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1 . The rest of the reports conclusions
seem perfectly accurate.

15
In this context a revert, as opposed to a non-Muslim who converts to Islam, is a person raised as a Muslim who
for a time does not take his or her religion particularly seriously or carry out his or her prescribed ritualistic
2

Such arguments thus completely miss the point, for reasons that will be
clarified below.
Be that as it may, these analysts are correct to argue that ennui and
alienation are important factors that may induce individuals to join
insurgent terrorist groups. Indeed, I too have argued for decades (in my
introductory terrorism courses) that the only demonstrable psychological
common denominator of individuals who join insurgent terrorist groups is
a profound sense of alienation from the political, social, economic, and/or
cultural status quo.
After all, people who are satisfied or happy with the status quo are not
going to be motivated to formulate revolutionary ideologies, organize
insurgent movements, join such movements after they have been created,
or carry out dangerous and illegal acts of violence, terrorist or otherwise,
against their own governments and fellow citizens.
Although boredom may also be a subsidiary factor at the outset, that vague
feeling of boredom must be transformed into acute alienation from, and
then outright anger towards, the status quo before it will cause someone to
embrace an extremist anti-system ideology or join a violent insurgent
organization. And, given the decline of intellectual and social support for
utopian communist, fascist, and anarchist movements in recent decades, it
is also hardly surprising that more and more of these alienated people,
especially those who are Muslim, are now turning to Islamism or opting to
wage armed jihad.
Where, then, have these commentators gone wrong? First, as noted above,
they fail to distinguish between the factors, psychological and otherwise,
that may initially induce certain individuals to embrace a radical ideology
like Islamism, and the factors that motivate them after they have embraced

obligations regularly, but who then at a certain point becomes enthusiastically pious and devoted to Islam (often to
its most literalist and puritanical interpretations).
!3

that ideology. Second, they simply ignore the powerful impact that the
adherence to such an ideology and to any organized movement that
espouses it will end up having on those individuals.
What they apparently do not recognize is that once such people have
become ideologically indoctrinated by or within the Islamist or other
extremist ideological milieus, they will thenceforth act in accordance with,
and on behalf of, the beliefs associated with those particular theological or
ideological doctrines. Indeed, it is precisely that theology or ideology which
provides them with the higher moral purposes and the glorious
utopian, world-transformative causes that together serve to inspire them to
make sacrifices, risk their lives, and justify their commission of acts of
extreme violence against designated enemies.
Ideological extremists should therefore not, except in very rare and
empirically demonstrable cases, be confused with angry lone nuts with
clinical psychopathologies who are carrying out acts of violence for
idiosyncratic personal reasons, like serial killers or spree killers. Rather,
those extremists tend to become dedicated, committed militants who are
actively struggling with like-minded comrades or (to use jihadist
terminology) brothers, whether in person or in the virtual realm, in
ongoing collective efforts, in the case of Islamist jihadists, to create an
idealized, all-encompassing, sharia-compliant world order.
Hence it is a serious mistake to argue that the overwhelming majority of
the people who are inspired to join jihadist groups do not at some point
become religious zealots acting on the basis of Islamist theo-political
agendas. It is therefore completely irrelevant whether or not those jihadist
recruits were previously religiously devout.
Nor is it necessary that these jihadist recruits have a sophisticated
understanding of Islamic religious doctrines in order to be strongly inspired
!!

and motivated by Islamism, as so many Islam apologists and Islamist
apologists have mistakenly or disingenuously argued.
16

On the contrary, the last thing that the leaders and ideologues of extremist
movements want is for their followers to think too much about complex
issues or to understand all of the potential ramifications and contradictions
of the doctrines they espouse, either of which could conceivably lead to
undermining their ideological convictions or result in their inaction after
further reflection.
For those leaders, it is actually preferable if most of the people who join
extremist movements and/or embrace extremist ideologies have only a
simplified, reductionist, and easily comprehensible view of those ideologies,
one that is constantly reinforced by inspirational slogans, sound bites,
repetitious ritualistic actions, and ceremonial hymns or songs (e.g., jihadist
nashids). In that sense, it is irrelevant whether or not most of these "born
again" jihadists have, or ever manage to develop, a sophisticated
understanding of Islamic or Islamist doctrines, just as it is irrelevant
whether the majority of the militants who earlier joined communist and
fascist movements understood the ideological complexities of those
doctrines, since all they needed to understand were the basic concepts that
served as guides for revolutionary action. The same is true of various types
of non-Islamic religious extremists.
For that matter, the overwhelming majority of the worlds Muslims do not
have a sophisticated understanding of Islamic doctrines, expertise
concerning the interpretation and application of the sharia, or a detailed
knowledge of Islamic history. Yet no reasonable observer would similarly
conclude that over a billion self-identified Muslims with a more or less

16
See, e.g., Mehdi Hasan, Islam for Dummies: This is What Wannabe Jihadists Order Online, New Republic, 22
August 2014, at http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119182/jihadists-buy-islam-dummies-amazon . This article
orginally appeared in the New Statesman.
!+

rudimentary understanding of their faith were not really Muslims or that
central aspects of their behavior had nothing to do with Islam.
As I have argued elsewhere in the context of elucidating the characteristics
of ideological extremism, all political ideologies, including extremist
political and religio-political ideologies, are designed to provide simple
answers to the following three basic questions:
First, what is wrong with the world?
Second, who is responsible for those wrongs?
Third, what needs to be done to correct those wrongs?
The first two questions are diagnostic in nature, whereas the third provides
a basic guide or blueprint for action.
17
In short, the only thing that would-
be jihadists need to understand about Islamism is its explanation for what
is wrong with the world (unbelief [kufr]), who its designated enemies are
(infidels [kuffar], pagans [mushrikun], Muslim apostates [murtaddun],
and Muslim hypocrites [munafiqun]), and what its simplistic, all-
encompassing vision for creating a utopian shari'a-dominated world order
that is purportedly sanctioned by Allah is (for Sunni Islamists, the idealized
image of a global Caliphate).
Needless to say, jihadist recruits come to believe that Islams irremediably
evil enemies must be fought against relentlessly, defeated decisively, and
subjected thoroughly in order for the Islamists to be able to establish their
imagined utopian world order, even though such a grandiose, imperialist
scheme for global Islamic domination is obviously unachievable in the real
world given Muslim military weaknesses.

17
Jeffrey M. Bale, Some Problems with the Notion of a Nexus between Terrorists and Criminals, in The Nexus
between Traffickers and Terrorists: The New Clear and Present Danger?, ed. by Russell Howard (New York:
McGraw-Hill e-book, 2014), pp. 52-4; and idem, Where the Anti-Democratic Extremes Touch: Interaction and
Collaboration between Islamists and Western Left- and Right-Wing Extremists (New York: Routledge, 2015), ch. 1,
forthcoming.
!,

Understanding these basic principles does not require a detailed knowledge
of the Quran, an awareness of the authenticity and reliability problems
concerning the sources for early Islamic history, jurisprudential expertise in
the interpretation of the sharia, or a full comprehension of the
philosophical ideas of brilliant past Islamic thinkers like al-Ghazali (ca.
1058-1111) and Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406).
Similarly, only a similarly nave analyst would claim that the average
communist militant could not really be inspired by communist ideological
doctrines and slogans unless he or she had spent time and effort mastering
the convoluted arguments presented in the three volumes of Karl Marxs
opus, Das Kapital (Capital).
On the contrary, all communist militants really needed to know was that
capitalism was evil and exploitive and had to be destroyed, that the
bourgeoisie were the enemy who must be fought and eliminated, and
that the end goal was the creation of a utopian, worldwide classless
society free of all exploitation and injustice.
To understand those core ideas, it would have sufficed for them to listen to
exhortatory speeches by charismatic revolutionary militants or read short
polemical pamphlets like Marxs Das Kommunistische Manifest (The Communist
Manifesto) or Vladimir Lenins Shto delat? (What Is to Be Done?).
Shifting from relatively serious but nonetheless flawed analyses that
minimize the role of Islamist ideology in connection with the activities of
the Islamic State to nave, polemical, or propagandistic claims by Muslims,
especially Islamists, that the terrorism of jihadist groups like the IS has
nothing to do with Islam itself, or even particular interpretations of it,
one could cite numerous examples.
Indeed, the most egregious nonsense about the Islamic State is currently
being peddled, as one would expect, by ideologues, spokesmen, and
!-

activists from Islamist organizations, both in the Muslim world and in the
West.
Leading Saudi clerics, Saudi-sponsored and Saudi-funded international
Islamic organizations like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC),
and numerous Islamist groups and networks linked to the Jamiyyat al-
Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Society of the Muslim Brothers, better known as the
Muslim Brotherhood) or the Mawdudist Jamaat-i Islami (Islamic
Association) party are now belatedly hastening to denounce the IS and to
falsely claim that it has nothing to do with Islam or that its appalling
actions are un-Islamic or even anti-Islamic.
18


18
Unfortunately, many nave Western journalists have cited these deceptive statements by Islamists in an effort to
challenge conservative Western media claims that not enough Muslims are speaking out against the IS. Indeed,
those journalists tend to highlight such statements in order to give the impression that lots of supposedly moderate
Muslims are publicly opposing the IS, either without actually knowing or without bothering to mention that most of
the people and organizations that are making such statements are in fact Islamists who are, as per usual, trying to
whitewash Islam and their own brands of Islamism, burnish their own tarnished images and thereby protect
themselves, and/or mislead gullible infidels in the media. For a representative example, see Michelle Leung and
Ellie Sandmeyer, Muslim Leaders Have Roundly Denounced Islamic State, but Conservative Media Wont Tell
You That, Media Matters, 21 August 2014, at http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/08/21/muslim-leaders-have-
roundly-denounced-islamic-s/200498 .

These two authors are seemingly unaware that groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the Muslim Council of
Britain (MCB) are all either Muslim Brotherhood legacy (or front) organizations (CAIR, ISNA, MPAC) or umbrella
organizations reportedly dominated by Mawdudists (MCB). For further details, cf. Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam
Roe, and Laurie Cohen, A Rare Look at Secretive Brotherhood in America, Chicago Tribune, 19 September 2004,
at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi-0409190261sep19-story.html#page=1 ; Steven Merley, The
Muslim Brotherhood in the United States (New York: Hudson Institute, [April] 2009), at
http://www.hudson.org/content/researchattachments/attachment/1163/20090411_merley.usbrotherhood.pdf ; Tom
Quiggin, The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Ottawa: Terrorism and Security Experts Network of Canada,
2014); Investigative Project on Terrorism, Islamic Society of North America: An IPT Investigative Report
(Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/275.pdf ; Investigative
Project on Terrorism, Behind the Faade: The Muslim Public Affairs Council (Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/358.pdf ; note 22 below for CAIR; and Anthony McRoy, From
Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain (London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006), pp. 171-3, for the MCB.

For official and unofficial Saudi statements, cf. ISIS is Enemy No. 1 of Islam, says Saudi Grand Mufti, Al-
Arabiyya, 19 August 2014, citing comments made by Saudi Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Shaykh (as well as noting the
Saudi donation of $100 million to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre [UNCCT]), at
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/19/Saudi-mufti-ISIS-is-enemy-No-1-of-Islam-.html ; and
Worlds Top Muslim Leaders Condemn Attacks on Iraqi Christians [by ISIS], Reuters, 25 July 2014, wherein it is
noted that the OICs Saudi Secretary General, Iyad ibn Amin Madani, said that actions like the forced deportation
and threats to execute Christians by ISIS have nothing to do with Islam and its principles that call for justice,
kindness, fairness, freedom of faith and coexistence., at
!.

They are doing so for two reasons. First, Islamist organizations (like the
Muslim Brotherhood) that currently eschew and condemn the use of
armed offensive jihad (jihad al-talab) whilst simultaneously promoting
defensive jihad (jihad al-difa) against the invading Crusaders (salibiyyun)
for pragmatic (as opposed to deep-rooted moral or philosophical)
reasons, and instead assiduously employ a gradualist and stealthy
Islamization from below strategy, are often the bitter rivals of armed
jihadist organizations that promote a violent Islamization from above
strategy.
Although both share the same long term goals of creating a strict,
puritanical Islamic state (al-dawla al-islamiyya) or Islamic order (al-nizam
al-islami), uniting all members of the Muslim community of believers
(umma) under the aegis of a single political entity, re-establishing the
Caliphate (Sunnis) or establishing an Imamate (Shia), resuming the
expansion of the dar al-Islam (abode of Islam, i.e.. those geographical
territories governed by Muslims in accordance with the sharia) at the
expense of the dar al-harb (abode of war, i.e., those geographical territories
not under Muslim control or ruled by the sharia), and ultimately Islamizing

http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/07/25/worlds_muslim_leaders_condemn_attacks_on_iraqi_christians/1103410
.
Given that Saudi Arabia has for decades been and still is the primary worldwide disseminator of one of the most
influential and sectarian currents of Islamism, Wahhabism, one can only marvel at the hypocrisy displayed in such
statements. It is true, of course, that many Muslims who were first radicalized by intolerant Wahhabi doctrines later
embraced even more radical currents of Islamism that identified the Saudi monarchy itself as an infidel regime,
specifically jihadist Salafism. For radical Islamist opposition to the Saudi regime at home, see Thomas
Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
2010); idem and Stphane Lacroix, The Meccan Rebellion: The Story of Juhayman al-Utaybi Revisited (Bristol:
Amal, 2011); Stphane Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2011); and Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (New
York: Palgrave, 1999). These developments caused the Saudis to adopt various types of anti-radicalism policies at
home, ranging from increased repression to newly-instituted re-education efforts, which did not however stop
them from continuing to indoctrinate Saudi students with anti-infidel views, from discriminating against non-
Arabs, non-Muslims, and women inside the kingdom, or from aggressively exporting Wahhabism abroad. Some
examples of Western Islamist claims about the IS being un-Islamic will soon be discussed and analyzed.

!/

the entire world, they vehemently disagree with each other about which
means are best suited for accomplishing those objectives.
19

The former prefer to resort to proselytization (dawa), the creation of an
elaborate network of sectoral, satellite, and front organizations, systematic
ideological indoctrination, the provision of social services, the infiltration
of other Muslim organizations in order to attain hegemony over Muslim
civil society, and the overt or covert penetration of the state apparatus,
whereas the latter primarily favor the use of outright violence and the
forcible seizure of state power to facilitate their imposition of a strict,
puritanical Islamist agenda.
This is an ongoing, decades-old dispute over appropriate means that has
frequently resulted in bitter polemics between rival Islamist ideologues,
organizations, and milieus, including between the IS and its Muslim
Brotherhood-affiliated critics at the present time.
20


19
Cf. Jeffrey M. Bale, Islamism and Totalitarianism, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10:2 (June
2009), pp. 79-81, for the divisions between rival Islamists over the best means to employ. See also the illustrative
quotes from Islamist ideologues and activists, concerning their underlying Islamic supremacist goals, cited in idem,
Jihadist Ideology and Strategy and the Possible Employment of WMD, in Jihadists and Weapons of Mass
Destruction, ed. by Gary Ackerman and Jeremy Tamsett (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009), pp. 17-21. For the IS
fantasies of global domination, note the IS-produced images depicting the entire world under the control of the IS,
one of which is reprinted as Figure 2 in Aymenn [Ayman] Jawad al-Tamimis useful Comprehensive Reference
Guide to Sunni Militant Groups in Iraq, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi website, 23 January 2014, at
http://www.aymennjawad.org/14350/comprehensive-reference-guide-to-sunni-militant .

20
E.g., the IS has criticized both deposed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Prime Minister Muhammad Mursi and
HAMAS leader Ismail Haniyya as tawaghit (i.e., rebels against Allah, idolaters, or tyrants) for employing deviant
methodologies, thereby alluding to their participation (however cynical) in infidel institutions like elections, their
corrupt behavior in power, and their general abandonment of armed jihad. See From Hijrah to Khilafah, Dabiq 1,
pp. 38-9.

In turn, the IS has been criticized for its supposed deviance and excesses by Brotherhood-affiliated clerics such
as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even by some influential pro-jihadist and pro-Qaidat al-Jihad ideologues like the
Jordanian-Palestinian Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who had also earlier criticized the ISs original predecessor
organization, Abu Musab al-Zarqawis Jamaat al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad (The Monotheism and Jihad Group), for its
excessive sectarianism and brutality.

See, respectively, Qaradawi Says Jihadist Caliphate Violates Sharia, Al-Arabiyya, 5 July 2014, at
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/05/Qaradawi-says-jihadist-caliphate-violates-sharia-.html ,
although the article does not specify what al-Qaradawis theological or legal arguments actually are elsewhere,
however, he is reported to have said that it is religiously invalid and does not serve the Islamic project, cited in
Al-Qaradawi Considers Baghdadi Succession in Iraq as Religiously Invalid, Shafaq News [Iraq], 6 July 2014, at
!0

Second, Islamists living in the West who are busily engaged in the
aforementioned gradualist strategy are anxious to conceal their
underlying theocratic, anti-democratic, Islamic supremacist agenda from
ignorant and gullible Westerners so that they can pursue that agenda
unnoticed and unhindered.
As such, they engage in systematic deception and dissimulation to try and
convince Westerners, especially elements of Western political, media, and
academic milieus that are already prone to delude themselves or engage in
wishful thinking, that they are actually moderate and democratic. For
that very reason, one must subject these claims by Islamist activists to
particular scrutiny and skepticism.
Most of these commentators repeat the same one-sided mantras that have
been endlessly repeated since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, e.g., that Islam is a
religion of peace or that Islam does not sanction terrorism and

http://english.shafaaq.com/index.php/politics/10411-al-qaradawi-considers-baghdadi-succession-in-iraq-as-
religiously-invalid ; and Jonathan Miller, Al Qaeda Spiritual Leader: Islamic State are Deviants, Channel 4 News
[UK], 1 July 2014, at http://www.channel4.com/news/sheikh-abu-muhammad-al-maqdis-salafist-islam-islamic-state
. Al-Maqdisis reasons for criticizing the IS, cited therein, are quite revealing: The name (caliphate) and its
announcement does not alarm me.

All of us wish to return to the caliphate and the breaking of boundaries and the raising of the unification banners and
lowering the flags of condemnation. No-one hates that but the hypocrite. But the lesson is in matching the names
with the facts and implementing these facts on the ground.Whoever rush[es] something prematurely will be
punished by being deprived of it. What interests me very much is what will these people (Isis/IS) do based on this
announcement and this name - which changed from a group, to the State of Iraq, then to the state of Iraq and the
Levant and then to general caliphate.Is this caliphate going to be a safe haven for all the vulnerable people and a
shelter for every Muslim? Or will this name become a hanging sword over Muslims who disagree with them? Will
this lead to the abolishment of all emirates (Islamic emirates in Afghanistan and elsewhere) that came before their
declared state, and will it invalidate all the other groups who are doing jihad for the sake of God in all fields before
them?

For al-Maqdisis complete statement, see This is Some of What I Have and Not All of It, July 2014 (relevant
quotes on pp. 3-4 of the English translation), a PDF of which can be accessed at Minbar al-Taw!"d wa-l-Jih#d
presents a new statement from Shaykh Ab$ Mu!ammad al-Maqdis": This Is Some Of What I Have and Not the
Whole Of It, Jihadology website, 27 July 2014, at http://jihadology.net/2014/07/01/minbar-al-
taw%E1%B8%A5id-wa-l-jihad-presents-a-new-statement-from-shaykh-abu-mu%E1%B8%A5ammad-al-maqdisi-
this-is-some-of-what-i-have-and-not-the-whole-of-it/ . For more on al-Maqdisi, see Joas Wagemakers, A Quietist
Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (New York: Cambridge University, 2012); and
Nelly Lahoud, In Search of Philosopher-Jihadis: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisis Jihadi Philosophy, Totalitarian
Movements and Political Religions 10:2 (June 2009), pp. 205-20. For more on al-Qaradawi, see Bettina Grf and
Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, eds., Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (New York: Columbia
University, 2009), although several of the entries therein are overly sympathetic.
!1

beheadings, usually without providing any actual textual or historical
evidence in support of their claims.
This is all the more peculiar, since if the jihadists affiliated with the IS were
in fact egregiously misinterpreting Islam, it should be very easy indeed for
their critics to point this out by referring to Islams sacred scriptures and
the reported words and deeds of Muhammad that would serve to explicitly
repudiate barbarous IS actions such as the wholesale massacre or torture of
captives (mainly apostate Muslims like Alawis/Nusayris and Shia, but
also non-Muslims like Assyrian Christians and Yazidis), the confiscation of
their land and wealth, the enslavement (sexual and otherwise) of their
women, the gruesome public beheadings and stonings of designated
enemies and sinners in order to terrorize others and perhaps also to
precipitate the arrival of the Mahdi and the onset of the end times, the
wanton destruction of places of worship and historical monuments, and
the list goes on and on.
21

Yet they generally fail to do this, and on those rare occasions when they try
to demonstrate that these kinds of activities are un-Islamic, usually by
citing a handful of Quranic passages out of context or by noting a few
recorded examples of Muhammads compassion, their arguments are weak
and unconvincing if not preposterous. The jihadists themselves and certain
hardline pro-jihadist clerics have thus far seemingly had little trouble
rebutting their Muslim critics often specious arguments.

21
Cf. Aaron Y. Zelin, The Massacre Strategy, Washington Institute of Near East Policy, 17 June 2014, at
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-massacre-strategy , for the attempt to terrorize. For the
possible eschatological significance of these beheadings, see Timothy Furnish, IS[IS]: Still Beheading Like Its the
End of the World, Mahdi Watch, 21 August 2014, at http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2014.08.01_arch.html . Other
analysts have argued that some of the activities of the IS, including its savage behavior, have been influenced by the
2004 jihadist strategic treatise written by Abu Bakr Naji, Idarat al-tawwahush: Akhtar mahala satammuru biha al-
umma [The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the Umma Will Pass], which was first
published on a jihadist website but is now available in English translation at
http://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the-management-of-savagery-the-most-critical-stage-
through-which-the-umma-will-pass.pdf . One of the aims of this treatise is to show how jihadist territorial conquests
could lead to the establishment of a Caliphate.
!2

An illustrative example of such sophistry is provided by Nihad Awad,
National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), a key component of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S.
whose predecessor organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine
(IAP), was accused of providing support to the Harakat al-Muqawwama al-
Islamiyya (HAMAS: Islamic Resistance Movement), a designated terrorist
organization in Palestine.
22

In an opinion piece entitled ISIS is Not Just Un-Islamic, It is Anti-
Islamic, Awad describes ISIS as a criminal gang that falselyclaims to
uphold the banner of Islam.
23
In support of his claim that the group is
actually anti-Islamic, he cites three seemingly moderate early Medinan-
period Quranic passages and, as is common for Islam apologists, attempts
to redefine the term jihad in such a way that it cannot be associated with
offensive warfare.
24


22
For a thoroughly documented analysis of the background and agenda of CAIR, which misleadingly claims to be a
Muslim civil liberties organization, see Investigative Project on Terrorism, The Council on American-Islamic
Relations: CAIR Exposed (Washington, DC: IPT, undated), at
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/122.pdf . Cf. also Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, CAIR:
Islamists Fooling the Establishment, Middle East Forum 13:2 (Spring 2006), pp. 3-20.

23
Nihad Awad, ISIS is Not Just Un-Islamic, It is Anti-Islamic, Time Magazine, 5 September 2014, at
http://time.com/3273873/stop-isis-islam/ .

24
The claim that the term jihad does not refer to offensive warfare against the enemies of Islam with the goal of
expanding the dar al-Islam until the entire world is brought under the aegis of Islam is blatantly false.

Such a sanitized definition of jihad , a noun deriving from the verb jahada, meaning to struggle or to exert
oneself, conveniently ignores the fact that jihad bi al-sayf (jihad of the sword) has always been the most
commonplace meaning of the term, both historically and at the present time. See E[mile] Tyan, Djih#d, in Bernard
Lewis et al, Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983 [1965]), vol. 2, p. 538: In law, according
to general doctrine and in historical tradition, the djih!d consists of military action with the object of the expansion
of Islam and, if need be, of its defence

The notion stems from the fundamental principle of the universality of Islam: this religion, along with the temporal
power which it implies, ought to embrace the whole universe, if necessary by force. Cf. further Michael Bonner,
Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2006); David Cook,
Understanding Jihad (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 2005); Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The
Origin of Holy War in Islam (New York and Oxford: Oxford University, 1999); Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical
and Modern Islam (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Weiner, 1996); and Alfred Morabia, Le Gihd dans lIslam mdival
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1993).

+3

The first of those passages from the Quran (2:143) is rather murky and
difficult to interpret, given that it seems to promote moderation due to its
reference to Muslims as a community of the middle way (ummat al-
wasatan) but also has the geographic connotation of being in the center
since it appears in the midst of suras about which direction Muslims should
pray towards.
25

The second (4:35) concerns arbitration resolution in disputes between the
families of the husband and wife and, not coincidentally, appears
immediately after an aya that provides theological sanction for patriarchal
privilege and an explicit authorization for Muslim husbands to maintain
control over their wives (including, after first advising them and then

For a more forthright analysis by Muslims than that of Awad, see The Reason Why Jihaad is Prescribed, Islam
Question & Answer website, undated, at http://islamqa.info/en/34647 , wherein the following reasons are elucidated
(and supported by relevant citations from the Quran and hadith):
1) The main goal of jihad is to make the people worship Allaah alone and to bring them forth from servitude to
people to servitude to the Lord of people;
2) Repelling the aggression of those who attack Muslims;
3) Removing fitnah (tribulation) [i.e., internal strife];
4) Protecting the Islamic state from the evil of the kuffaar [infidels];
5) Frightening the kuffaar, humiliating them and putting them to shame; \
6) Exposing the hypocrites [i.e., those who feign support for Islam];
7) Purifying the believers of their sins and ridding them thereof;
8) Acquiring booty; and
9) Taking martyrs [i.e., producing martyrs]. This particular website is supervised by Riyadh-born Salafist
Muhammad al-Munajjid, but was later banned in 2010 by the Saudi government for issuing independent fatwas.
25
Surat al-Baqara, 2:143, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/143 : And thus we have made you a just community
that you will be witnesses over the people and the Messenger will be a witness over you. And We did not make the
qiblah which you used to face except that We might make evident who would follow the Messenger from who
would turn back on his heels. And indeed, it is difficult except for those whom Allah has guided. And never would
Allah have caused you to lose your faith. Indeed Allah is, to the people, Kind and Merciful. However, it should be
pointed out that although this accessible online version of the Quran usefully provides the Arabic text together with
an English translation, some of the actual translations are poorly rendered, grammatically unsound, or unclear. In
this case, e.g., the key phrase is rendered as just community, whereas in the online Yusuf Ali translation it is
rendered as an ummat justly balanced. See Abdallah Yusuf Ali, The Noble Quran, 2:143, at http://www.sacred-
texts.com/isl/quran/00217.htm . For his part, Islamist ideologue Sayyid Abu al-Ala Mawdudi notes, in his famous
Quranic tafsir (the six volume Tafhim al-Quran) that the expression ummat al-wasatan is too rich in meaning to
find an adequate equivalent in any other language. It signifies that distinguished group of people [i.e., Muslims]
which follows the path of path of justice and equity, of balance and moderation, a group which occupies a central
position among the nations of the world so that its relationship with all is based on righteousness and justice and
none receives its support in wrong and injustice. See Sayyid Abu al-Ala Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the
Qur!n: Abridged Version of Tafh"m al-Qur!n (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2006), p. 40, note 44. The problem,
of course, is that the terms justice, equity, moderation, and balance are not clearly or explicitly defined,
which allows for very different interpretations.
+!

denying them sex, beating them) so as to ensure that they will behave
obediently.
26

The third (2:190) encourages Muslims to fight those who fight them in
the way of Allah (fi sabil Allah), but warns them not to transgress any
divine proscriptions or boundaries since Allah does not like
transgressors.
27
This is a well-known aya that enjoins proportionality with
respect to appropriate levels and types of Muslim violence, and is therefore
related to the Islamic just war conceptions to be discussed below.
Unfortunately for Awad, none of these passages provides unambiguous
support for moderation, or specifically prohibits the use of extreme
violence in cases where it might be considered warranted or proportional
by jihadists.
This is all the more true since, as will become clear, so many other Quranic
passages explicitly sanction warfare and brutal behavior. Hence his
argument that the behavior of IS is not only un-Islamic but anti-
Islamic should be wholly unpersuasive to anyone familiar with the Quran,
the ahadith, or early Islamic history.
Dawud Walid, another Islamist activist associated with CAIR who was
interviewed during a staged September 2014 protest by Muslims Against
ISIS in Dearborn, Michigan, cited the Quranic passage (5:32) that is
invariably referred to by those who are trying to claim that Islam is

26
Surat al-Nisa 4:35, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/4/35 : And if you fear dissension between the two (husband
and wife), send an arbitrator from his people and an arbitrator from her people. If they both desire reconciliation,
Allah will cause it between them. Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Acquainted [with all things]. (Note that I
myself have added occasional words within parentheses for clarification in this and other Quranic passages,
whereas the words in brackets were previously added for clarification by Muslim translators.) Thus, in his article,
Awad has either mistranslated this aya or cited the wrong aya. For the preceding aya, see Surat al-Nisa 4:34,
Quran.com, at http://quran.com/4/34 : Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the
other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding
in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance -
[first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once
more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand. This is hardly an illustration of
moderation, at least by 21
st
century standards.
27
See Surat al-Baqara, 2:190, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/190 : Fight in the way of Allah those who fight
you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.
++

inherently peaceful, which he then proceeded to summarize as follows:
Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is like they have killed all of mankind.
28

Like so many others have done, Walid conveniently ignored the fact that
this particular aya refers specifically to the Children of Israel, i.e., the
Israelites, or members of the twelve tribes of Israel, rather than to Muslims,
and that it was presented for didactic purposes in the context of Cain
wrongly killing Abel: Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of
Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for (killing) a soul or for corruption
[done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever
saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers
had certainly come to them (i.e., Jews) with clear proofs. Then indeed many
of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.
29

Although this message was intended to provide moral guidance to Muslims
as well about what was and was not permissible, it was cited in reference to
Allahs supposed warning to transgressing Jews. More tellingly, the
following aya (5:33) specifies which categories of people can be legitimately
killed, crucified, or dismembered by Muslim believers for their sins: those
who wage war [yuharibun] against Allah and His Prophet and those who
strive to spread corruption/mischief [fasadan] in the land
30


28
Natasha Dado, Muslims Condemn ISIS, Say Terrorist Group Doesnt Represent Islam, New America Media, 2
September 2014, at http://newamericamedia.org/2014/09/muslims-condemn-isis-say-terrorist-group-doesnt-
represent-islam.php .

29
Surat al-Maida 5:32, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/5/32 . The word innocent is found nowhere in this
passage, although it is implicit.

30
See Surat al-Maida 5:33, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/5/33 , for the entire aya: Indeed, the penalty for those
who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be
killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.
That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment. It goes without saying
that spreading corruption/mischief in the land is such a vague formulation that it could conceivably apply to
virtually anything that particular Muslims do not approve of. For the evolution of the attitudes towards the Israelites
and Jews in early Muslim sources, see Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qur!n: The Children of Israel and the Islamic
Self-Image (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999).

+,

Finally, those who cite 5:32 or other ostensibly peaceful passages from the
Quran (such as 2: 256
31
) as authoritative fail to mention that, according to
the doctrine of abrogation (naskh), the intolerant and bellicose passages
revealed during the later Medinan period supposedly abrogate many if
not most of the tolerant, compassionate passages from the prior Meccan
and earlier Medinan period.
32

Hence it is all too easy, and not at all unorthodox or heretical, for jihadists
to insist that they are enjoined by the Quran itself to kill, subjugate, and
enslave the enemies of Islam, irrespective of what Islam apologists or
Islamist apologists may claim.
For example, another participant at the Muslims Against ISIS really in
Michigan, Iraqi-American Alia Almulla, made the bold claim that the
Quran doesnt teach terrorism and went on to say that [p]eople need to
become more educated about Islam and actually read the Quran.
33


31
Surat al-Baqara 2:256, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/256 : 4There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of]
the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut (false gods) and
believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and
Knowing. Lest anyone mistakenly believe that this passage implies Islams tolerance for unbelief or idolatry,
the next aya should disabuse them of that error. See Surat al-Baqara 2:257, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/2/257 :
Allah is the ally of those who believe. He brings them out from darkness into the light. And those who disbelieve -
their allies are Taghut. They take them out of the light into darkness. Those are the companions of the Fire; they will
abide eternally therein. In short, those who are not Muslims will be forever consigned to Hellfire by Allah for their
sins.

32
For scriptural support for the doctrine of abrogation, see 2:106 and 16:101. Three types of abrogation were later
identified by Islamic scholars, the most important of which in this context is naskh al-hukm duna al-tilawa,
abrogation of the ruling but not the wording, essentially the supersession of various earlier passages in the Quran
or hadith by later passages. The standard Muslim explanation for the apparent contradictions in the Quran is not
that Allah or Muhammad made any errors in transmitting it, but rather that the former intentionally revealed
messages to Muhammad and his followers in stages so that they could completely understand them. For abrogation,
see esp. John Burton, The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University, 1990). For a good brief introductory discussion of legal reasoning concerning both the Quran and the
reported words and deeds (sunna) of Muhammad, see Knut S. Vikr, Between God and the Sultan: A History of
Islamic Law (New York: Oxford University, 2005), chapter 3. For a convenient listing of the chronology of the
Quranic revelations, which has been the subject of intense analysis and disputation amongst both Muslim scholars
and modern historians, see Kevin P. Edgecomb, Chronological Order of Quranic Suras, Bombaxo, 2002, at
http://www.bombaxo.com/chronsurs.html .

33
Cited in Dado, Muslims Condemn ISIS

+-

She is absolutely right to encourage people to learn more about Islam and
to read the Quran, but gives little evidence in her quoted comments that
she has carefully read the Quran herself.
If she had, she could hardly have overlooked sura 8:60, which is so often
referred to and praised by Islamists precisely because it sanctions the use of
terrorism against the enemies of Islam: And prepare against them
whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may
terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom
you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the
cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.
34

That particular passage of the Quran has not only been cited favorably by
Qaidat al-Jihad leader Usama bin Ladin and other jihadist terrorists, but
the first two words from it (wa aidduwa = and prepare/make
ready/muster) also appear directly beneath the pair of crossed swords on
the bottom of the symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian
Islamist organization with numerous branches and offshoots throughout
the world that nowadays tends to publicly eschew armed jihad for purely
pragmatic or tactical reasons but not infrequently advocated and resorted
to violence and terrorism in the past.
35

Moreover, there are numerous other Quranic passages that explicitly
enjoin Muslims to wage war and/or slay, capture, enslave, and subjugate
infidels, apostates, and hypocrites, such as 8:39, 8.65, 8:67-68, 9:5,
9:13, 9:29, 9:36, 9:41, 9:73, 9:111, 23:1-6, 33:50, 47:35, 48:29, 2:193, 2:216,
3:140-1, 4:24, 4:76, and 5:33.

34
Surat al-Anfal, 8:60, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/8/60 .

35
See Moderate Islam is a Prostration to the West, in The Al Qaeda Reader, ed. by Raymond Ibrahim (New York:
Broadway, 2007), p. 54. This text was either written by Bin Ladin himself or written under his direction. On
terrorizing the unbelievers, cf. also sura 8:12, cited below in note 37.

+.

Indeed, several of those very passages, especially in the Surat al-Tawba, are
believed by many Islamic scholars to have abrogated and superseded
multiple relatively tolerant passages dating from the Meccan or early
Medinan eras.
36

Hence those who cite certain supposedly abrogated (mansukh) suras as
evidence that Islam really promotes compassion and toleration rather than
intolerance and bellicosity towards unbelievers and insufficiently Islamic
Muslims, can easily be dismissed as egregious misinterpreters of Islam,
and indeed demonized and targeted as apostates, by pro-jihad Islamists.
Even if we limited ourselves herein to discussing particularly gruesome
high profile actions such as public beheadings, one can find passages
sanctioning this behavior in the Quran, such as sura 47:4 and sura 8:12.
37

How, then, is it possible to argue especially if one interprets the Quran
in a strict, literalist fashion rather than very loosely that violent actions
which are explicitly enjoined in Islamic scriptures are actually un-Islamic?
Furthermore, it is not only the Quran itself, but also the recorded
customary practice (sunna) of Muhammad himself that provides ample
justification and sanction for much of the barbaric behavior of IS jihadists.
In this context, it must be remembered that Muhammad is regarded by
other Muslims both as the last of Allahs prophets and as the ideal Muslim,
and that as such his words and deeds are viewed as both exemplary and
worthy of emulation.

36
For an attempt to challenge such arguments, see Louay Fatoohi, Abrogation in the Quran and Islamic Law (New
York: Routledge, 2012), esp. ch. 7, who argues that abrogation is a myth and that later violent Quranic passages
cannot be employed to abrogate earlier peaceful passages. Sadly, many past and present Muslim scholars disagree.

37
Surat Muhammad, 47:4, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/47/4 : So when you meet those who disbelieve [in
battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either
[confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah
had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of
you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah - never will He waste their deeds. Surat al-
Anfal, 8:12, Quran.com, at http://quran.com/8/12 : [Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, I am with
you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike
[them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.
+/

Unfortunately, Islamic sources that are considered authentic by Muslims,
such as the canonical hadith collections, the early biographies of
Muhammad, and various historical chronicles of the early phases of the
Arab conquests, all provide ample evidence assuming that those sources
can actually be trusted with respect to their reliability, which has long been
the subject of scholarly debate amongst historians of the harshness,
brutality, and cruelty that Muhammad, his companions, and the rightly-
guided Caliphs at times exhibited, especially but not exclusively in the
course of their military campaigns, towards their designated enemies: the
Quraysh rulers of Mecca, their hypocritical Muslim supporters and
perfidious Jewish betrayers in Medina, recalcitrant Bedouin tribes, the
Jews of Khaybar, the Byzantines, the Sasanian Persians, and rival or
rebellious groups of Muslims.
38


38
For a good introduction to early Islamic sources, see Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The
Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writings (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998). For examples of such sources, see
Alfred Guillaumes translation of Muhammad ibn Ishaqs Sirat rasul Allah, as The Life of Muhammad (Karachi and
New York: Oxford University, 2006), which survives mainly in an edited recension prepared later by Abd al-Malik
ibn Hisham; and the translation by Rizwi Faizer et al of Muhammad ibn Umar Waqidis Kitab al-maghazi, as The
Life of Muhammad: Al-W!qid"s Kit!b al-magh!z" (New York: Routledge, 2011); the six canonical hadith
collections, which can be accessed in full or partial translated versions at the USC [University of Southern
California] MSA [Muslim Students Association] Compendium of Muslim Texts website, at
http://web.archive.org/web/20070829052559/http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/ ; and the
Tarikh al-rasul wa al-muluk of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, translated by various scholars in a multi-volume
edition as The History of al-Tabar" = T!r"kh al-rusul wa al-mul#k (Albany: SUNY, 1985-), esp. volumes 6-14. For a
detailed older scholarly biography of Muhammad based upon early Islamic sources, see W. Montgomery Watt,
Muhammad in Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); and idem, Muhammad in Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1962). For scholarly descriptions of the early Muslim conquests, see Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic
Conquests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1981); Walter E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic
Conquests (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 1992), esp. chapters 4-8; and Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline
and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (New York: I.
B. Tauris, 2008), esp. chapter 3. For a dense, straightforward narrative of Muhammads life based on an uncritical
use of those same sources, see Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Rochester, VT:
Inner Traditions, 2006 [1983]), which in essence reflects the standard Muslim understanding. For an unduly
sympathetic account of early Islamic history, see Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims: History and Memory
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). For recent and radically revisionist scholarly interpretations (building on skeptical
foundations earlier laid by John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook), which cast considerable doubt on
the provenance and reliability of those sources as well as on the standard Muslim account of the origins of Islam, see
Karl Heinz-Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin, eds., The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009); and Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren, Crossroads to Islam: The Origins
of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003). For a moderately revisionist
account, see Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, 2010). The important point, however, is that devout Muslims regard these sources as reliable indicators
of the activities of Muhammad, his companions, and his immediate successors (al-salaf al-salih, the pious
+0

It should be emphasized, however, that atrocities of the kind described in
these sources were hardly atypical in the 7
th
and 8
th
centuries CE, much less
restricted to Muslims and Muslim armies. But that grim fact provides very
little comfort given that these very same gruesome behaviors, however
common they may have been in the ancient and early medieval periods
(and even, if truth be told, in the later medieval and modern periods), are
still clearly regarded as morally permissible, theologically sanctioned,
worthy of emulation, and even emotionally inspiring by Islamist jihadists
and their active and passive supporters in the early 21
st
century.
This remains true despite the extraordinary evolution and transformation
of human moral values that has occurred in subsequent centuries, especially
in the post-Enlightenment West, and the progress that has been made by
the international community since the end of World War II in officially
delegitimizing and criminalizing, though by no means always successfully
ameliorating, such behaviors.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that many of the activities of the IS
violate the letter and the spirit of traditional Islamic just war doctrines,
since IS jihadists deliberately and often indiscriminately target, abuse, and
slaughter non-combatants from enemy groups.
39

These just war doctrines, which in theory forbid Muslims from deliberately
targeting women, children, the aged, and the physically or mentally infirm

ancestors) during the idealized early history of Islam, and thus as providing an appropriate model for their own
behavior.

39
See, e.g., the comments of jihadist researcher Will McCants, cited in Jack Jenkins, The Book That Really
Explains ISIS (Hint: Its Not the Quran), Think Progress, 10 September 2014, at
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/10/3565635/the-book-that-really-explains-isis-hint-its-not-the-quran/ : The
Islamic State stands apart from other [extremist] organizationsThey are not bound by the structures of traditional
Islamic warfare. Sadly, both the title of the article and McCants own comments are misleading. As has already
been noted, many Quranic passages serve to justify the atrocities committed by the IS. As for McCants, he draws an
overly sharp distinction therein between the IS and other jihadist groups. Although the IS is certainly more brutal
than some other jihadist organizations, many of the latter also regularly violate Islamic just war doctrines. Consider,
as an example, the appalling atrocities and indiscriminate brutality of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya al-Musallaha (the
Groupe Islamique Arm or GIA: Armed Islamic Group) in Algeria, whose takfiri leaders had labeled all Algerians
who did not support them as infidels and then systematically proceeded to target them.
+1

and, more broadly, from carrying out disproportionate levels of violence,
were developed by medieval Muslim jurists on the basis of certain Quranic
passages and various compassionate acts and instructions of Muhammad
recorded in ostensibly reliable ahadith.
40

Even so, it is a sad fact that just war notions in various parts of the world
have frequently been devised precisely during historical contexts in which
such elevated behavioral standards were being regularly or even
systematically violated by armies, and the grim reality in practice was that,
during the time of Muhammad and his successors, civilians within all of
those protected categories were often killed inadvertently or in the normal
course of carrying out regular military operations by Muslim troops,
especially if doing so was considered necessary in order to defeat their
foes.
41

The killing of such people in these circumstances was thus regarded as
permissible, not only by pragmatic Muslim generals but also by
Muhammad himself and by the majority of Muslim jurists, since the
survival and ultimate triumph of Islam was their paramount concern and
spreading the word of Allah, defeating and subjugating the enemies of
Islam, and making the sharia supreme throughout the world were the
primary goals of waging offensive jihad.


40
For Islamic just war conceptions, cf. John Kelsay, Islam and War: A Study of Comparative Ethics (Louisville,
KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993); and idem, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, 2007). See also Fred M. Donner, The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War, in Just War and Jihad:
Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in the Western and Islamic Traditions, ed. by James T.
Johnson and John Kelsay (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 31-70.
41
Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, esp. pp. 104-10, wherein he notes (ibid, p. 106) that classical Islamic
treatises on war exhibit a strong inclination toward a position one might characterize as military realism, since
once a war is determined to be just, i.e., initiated to expand or defend the dar al-Islam, their authors were willing
to grant wide latitude to commanders in the determination of appropriate means even though such latitude was not
total. Modern jihadists have consistently expanded the parameters of what is considered permissible in this
context, not only with respect to jus ad bellum, the right to go to war, but especially as regards jus in bello, i.e.,
proper conduct in war. For several relevant examples and citations, see Bale, Jihadist Ideology and Strategy, p. 55,
note 132.

+2

Hence if they were so inclined, todays jihadists could claim, however
tendentiously, that such brutal behavior was necessary to ensure their
success in fighting infidels and apostates and to enable them to restore
the long-awaited Caliphate. In actuality, most of them appear to have few if
any moral qualms about deliberately targeting, killing, or mistreating their
designated enemies as do many other types of ideological extremists
and indeed seemingly display an unwholesome degree of bloodthirsty
religious fervor or sadistic glee whilst carrying out those acts, since they
believe (not without reason) that the Quran teaches them that Allah
despises and wants to humiliate, punish, or exterminate those enemies.
As German Marxist and Islam critic Hartmut Krauss has justly noted:
What at first glance appears to be the phenomenology of an irrational,
psychopathic bloodlust can on second glance be recognized as an articulate
and normative procedure systematically derived from the sources of Islam
and the historical matrix of Islamic conquests. That is to say, the barbaric
and disgusting actions of IS do indeed have to do with Islam.
42

Even so, perhaps it is better to end on a more positive note by
emphasizing the obvious point that Islam can be interpreted, and indeed
has been interpreted over the centuries, in many different ways by living,
breathing Muslims. Although it is neither unorthodox in most respects nor
limited to the extremist fringe, the strict, literalist, puritanical interpretation
of Islam that is characteristic of the Islamists, including the jihadists, is far
from being the only legitimate interpretation of Islam, despite what they
themselves assert.
Along with secularists in the Muslim world such as Western-style liberals,
nationalists, fascists, and socialists, who have typically viewed Islam as a
vitally important cultural marker rather than as a divinely-mandated system

42
Hartmut Krauss, Islam in Reinkultur: Zur Antriebs- und Legitimationsgrundlage des Islamischen Staates und
seiner antizivilisatorischen Schreckensherrschaft, Hintergrund-Verlag website, 29 August 2014, at
http://www.hintergrund-verlag.de/texte-islam-hartmut-krauss-islam-in-reinkultur-zur-antriebs-und-
legitimationsgrundlage-des-islamischen-staates.html .
,3

of religious beliefs that must be accepted and followed to the letter, Muslim
rationalists, modernists, and even some traditionalists have tended to
interpret Islam in less restrictive, punitive, or sectarian ways that are at least
partially compatible with modernity and democratic pluralism.
Although in many ways scriptural literalists have advantages over
moderates in religious debates, Muslims can nonetheless adopt various
modes of argumentation to challenge theocratic Islamist interpretations of
Islam.
First, as with Judaism and Christianity, genuinely moderate Muslims can
argue that the injunctions in the Quran and the commands of Muhammad
may well have been relevant and even appropriate during the historical
contexts in which they were issued, but that they are not all necessarily
applicable in todays radically different historical context.
Second, they can argue that many of those Quranic passages and
statements of Muhammad were difficult to understand and thus do not
provide clear, unambiguous guidelines for Muslim behavior at the present
time. Hence Muslims should not interpret them slavishly, dogmatically, or
in an invariably literalist fashion, but rather apply human reason and
interpret them, especially if the meaning is unclear, in a more contextual
(historically-grounded), allegorical, or metaphorical way.
43

Third, they can make a case, with good reason, that many Quranic
strictures and ideas of Muhammad were relatively progressive by 7
th

century standards, especially in the context of Arab tribal society, and that

43
For an example of the rationalist (but sadly not always non-dogmatic, non-sectarian, or non-authoritarian)
tradition in Islam, which was often inspired by the importation and adaptation of Greek philosophical ideas, see
D[aniel] Gimaret, Mutazila, Encyclopedia of Islam: New Edition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), volume 7, pp. 783-
93; Albir [Albert] Nasri Nadir, Le systme philosophique des Mutazila: Premiers penseurs de lIslam (Beirut:
Lettres Orientales, 1956); Richard MacDonough Frank, Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian
School of the Mutazila in the Classical Period (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1978); and Richard C. Martin and Mark R.
Woodward, with Dwi S. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mutazilism from Medieval School to Modern
Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).

,!

they therefore embodied a spirit of innovation, pragmatism, and
moderation that Muslims today should be aspire to emulate.
Fourth, they can argue that neither the Quran nor the ahadith mandate the
creation of a theocratic Islamic state or provide a clear blueprint for the
organization of such a state, since both the Constitution of Medina and
the later Pact of Umar were not only devised in particular historical
contexts that have long been superseded, but also in response to specific
and in many ways unique political circumstances.
44

Finally, they can simply ignore or reject the doctrine of abrogation on
various religio-legal grounds, since that doctrine has frequently been used
by some Islamic scholars and militants to justify more extreme
interpretations of Islam. Moreover, Islamic jurisprudential experts have for
centuries adopted contrasting views towards abrogation, some arguing that
it is a mistaken notion, others that it has only a limited application, and still
others that it has a very extensive application. Most regular Muslims,
devout or otherwise, are probably not even aware of abrogation, much less
of the complex legal disputes surrounding it.
Nevertheless, it is impossible for any knowledgeable person to characterize
the beliefs and activities of IS jihadists as un-Islamic, much less as anti-
Islamic, since Islamic supremacism and intolerance of non-Muslims are all
too characteristic in the Quran and Muhammads sunna. Ironically, the
genuine Muslim moderates, official state-supported ulama, and the

44
For those documents and their political contexts, see Michael Lecker, The Constitution of Medina:
Muhammads First Legal Document (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2004); and Mika Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in
the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (New York: Cambridge University, 2011). See, more
generally, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia University, 2001). Cf. also
harsh criticisms by Muslim moderates of traditionalist, revivalist, or Islamist claims that Muslims are required to
create a strict, puritanical Islamic state (whether in the form of a Caliphate or an Imamate), e.g., Ali Abd al-Raziq,
Al-islam wa usul al-hukm: Bath fi al-khilafa wa al-hukuma fi al-islam (Beirut: Al-Hayat, 1966 [1925]); Tarek Fatah,
Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Mississauga, Ontario: Wiley & Sons, 2008), esp.
chapters 6-8; Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 2010), chapter 2; and Bassam Tibi, Islamism and Islam (New Haven: Yale
University, 2012), esp. chapter 2.

,+

disingenuous non-violent Islamists who make such arguments are
themselves effectively engaging in takfir, i.e., labeling other Muslims as
infidels, a sectarian, exclusionary tendency that is so prevalent amongst
the jihadists themselves.
45

In both cases, it is factually incorrect and legally inappropriate for Muslims
to label their co-religionists who have different interpretations of Islam as
non-Muslims, whether in order to discredit them or to target them.
Although they are mistaken and also arguably misguided, such efforts by
Muslims are at least comprehensible, since they are reflective of vitally
important doctrinal and political conflicts over the soul of Islam that are
occurring within the contemporary Muslim world.
It remains far less understandable, however, why so many Western leaders
and commentators are also peddling the same falsehoods about the IS
having nothing to do with Islam.
If they honestly believe what they are saying, then they are either hopelessly
ignorant about Islam, Islamic history, and Islamism, or are wearing
impenetrable ideological blinders that prevent them from seeing reality, or
are living in an acute state of psychological denial that borders on the
pathological and the clinically delusional.
And if such Westerners do not actually believe what they are saying, then
they are fooling themselves that their embarrassing facile attempts to
divorce Islam from Islamism will somehow end up being the most

45
For an example of such an argument by a high-ranking state-supported alim, see Patrick Goodenaugh, ISIL,
ISIS Now QSIS?: Top Sunni Cleric Says Stop Calling Terrorists Islamic, Cybercast News Service, 25 August
2014, wherein it is reported that Egyptian Grand Mufti and Sufi Shawki Ibrahim Abd al-Karim Allam, current
head of the eminent Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyya in Cairo, recommends that the IS be referred to as al-Qaida Separatists
in Iraq and Syria or QSIS, at http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/isil-isis-now-qsis-top-
sunni-cleric-says-stop-calling-terrorists . Although such statements by non-Islamist Muslim religious authorities are
certainly to be welcomed, however consistent with the views of Egypts current military rulers they may be,
Allams bizarre suggestion was designed above all to protect the image of Islam from being associated with IS
atrocities, and it conveniently ignored the fact that Ayman al-Zawahiri publicly repudiated ISIS and appointed the
Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahl al-Sham (Support Front for the People of Greater Syria) as the al-Qaida Central affiliate in
the region.
,,

effective way to rally support from Muslims for various Western foreign
policy and counterterrorist initiatives in the region.
Alas, making manifestly false claims about Islamism is not going to win
over any hearts and minds, especially those of genuinely moderate
Muslims and secularists who have long been bravely resisting and
struggling against better organized Islamists at home and abroad. Even
worse, it has the debilitating and potentially catastrophic effect of
confusing, misleading, and intellectually disarming citizens of Western
countries about the nature of the threat that they face from jihadists, whose
actions are animated primarily by the Islamist theo-political doctrines that
they have fervently embraced.
As I have argued elsewhere, correctly identifying Islamists jihadist or
otherwise as enemies of the democratic West is not going to offend
any actual moderate Muslims who likewise view the Islamists as intractable
enemies, any more than identifying Nazis as its enemies during World War
II had the effect of offending anti-Nazi Germans.
46
(In fact, many German
anti-Nazis were encouraged to flee from Germany and then assist the
Allied powers precisely because the latter were openly opposing and
waging war against Nazi Germany.)
Conversely, those Muslims who are always so prone to display moral
outrage in response to the accurate (and reciprocal) characterization of
armed Islamists as enemies of the West are neither the Wests friends nor
its reliable allies: they are either Islamists themselves, Islamist sympathizers,
or others from Muslim countries who are so resistant to self-reflection and
self-criticism and/or so virulently anti-Western that they are willing to

46
Bale, Denying the Link between Islamist Ideology and Jihadist Terrorism, p. 19.

,-

temporarily suspend their own internal disagreements with Islamists on the
basis of misplaced tribal, national, or religious solidarity.
47

The willingness of so many other Muslims to ignore, excuse, or even
defend the brutal activities of the jihadists (or, alternatively, to blame them
on imagined Zionist or Crusader conspiracies), especially in their
interactions with non-Muslim outsiders, only furthers the growth of
Islamism at the expense of more moderate interpretations of Islam.
Last but certainly not least, one important responsibility of Western
leaders, policymakers, and even self-styled security or Islam experts in
academia and the media should be to educate the public about the serious
national and international security threats emanating from the Islamist and
jihadist milieu.
Such people should not be systematically mischaracterizing or minimizing
the nature of those threats by promoting pseudo-tolerant politically
correct fantasies about Islam or Islamism that have little or no basis in
reality.
Many of these fantasies are being promoted not only in a laudatory effort
to avoid portraying Islam in general and all Muslims as enemies of the
West, but also in a misguided attempt to avoid offending Muslims who
are not Islamists, to convince Muslims that the West is not waging a war
against Islam (which has obviously never been the case, despite the
paranoid delusions of the Islamists), and perhaps also in order to facilitate
the forging of an international anti-IS coalition.
Ironically, that international coalition now also includes militarily weak
Islamist or pro-Islamist Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait,

47
On the last point, cf. Harris, Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon: Many believe it unwise to discuss the link
between Islam and the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world, fearing that it will increase the
perception that the West is at war with the faith and cause millions of otherwise peaceful Muslims to rally to the
jihadist cause. I admit that this concern isnt obviously crazybut it merely attests to the seriousness of the
underlying problem. Religion produces a perverse solidarity that we must find some way to undercut. It causes in-
group loyalty and out-group hostility, even when members of ones own group are behaving like psychopaths.
,.

which have themselves long been either aggressively disseminating
extremist interpretations of Islam (Saudi Arabia) and/or tangibly
supporting, either quasi-officially or unofficially, Sunni jihadists in various
regions including IS fighters in Syria.
48


48
See, e.g., Robert Windrem, Whos Funding ISIS?: Wealthy Gulf Angel Investors, Officials Say, NBC News,
21 September 2014, at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/whos-funding-isis-wealthy-gulf-angel-
investors-officials-say-n208006 ; and Josh Rogin, Americas Allies are Funding ISIS, Daily Beast, 14 June 2014,
at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html . In the former article,
Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif rightly described the Muslim participants in the 15 September
2014 anti-IS Paris conference as a coalition of repenters who now realize that they helped create a monster.
According to Zarif, Most participants in that -- in that meeting in one form or another provided support to ISIS in
the course of its creation and upbringing and expansion, actually at the end of the day, creating a Frankenstein that
came to haunt its creatorsSo this group has been in existence for a long time. It has been supported, it has been
provided for in terms of arms, money, finances by a good number of U.S. allies in the region. For more on this
conference, which included representatives from ten Muslim governments (but not Iran), see John Lichfield,
Islamic State: Countries Meet in Paris to Discuss anti-ISIS Global Strategy, The Independent [UK], 21 September
2014, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/islamic-state-countries-meet-in-paris-to-discuss-antiisis-
global-strategy-9732540.html .