Earlier this week I noted an excellent piece in The Atlantic examining the very real Islamic theological underpinnings that drive ISIS from the inside-out.
Now The Daily Beast is taking President Obama to task for his "tap-dance around whether ISIS is 'Islamic' or not."
"Admit It: ISIS Is an Islamic Death Cult" blares the teaser headline on the Daily Beast's main page, underneath a photo of ISIS executioners standing at the ready to executed orange jumpsuit-wearing prisoners. "Obama's tap-dance around whether ISIS is 'Islamic' or not is completely wrong," adds the subheader.
Of course, liberal critics might dismiss The Atlantic's Graeme Wood because he's just another white dude. That's hardly a comeback that can be deployed against Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa, the authors of today's Beast article (emphasis mine):
[A]s liberal Muslim feminist journalists who reject the vision of the Islamic State, we can say that the Islamic State, al Qaeda and the alphabet soup of Islamic militant groups, like HUM (Harkut-ul Mujahideen) and LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), rely very much on the scholarship of "religious leaders," from Ibn Tamiyyah in the 14th century to Sayyid Qutb in the 20th century, who very much have credibility and authority among too many Muslims as "religious leaders."
A very nuanced and thorough Atlantic article by journalist Graeme Wood this week, arguing “The Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic,” set off a firestorm of “derision,” as labeled by an article at ThinkProgress, a media site affiliated with the Center for American Progress, a think tank started by former Democratic operative John Podesta. ThinkProgress religion reporter Jack Jenkins wrote that the Atlantic article elicited “staunch criticism and derision from many Muslims and academics who study Islam.”
Wood argues the Islamic State views itself as “a key agent of the coming Apocalypse.” He is absolutely right, and we have been seeing the symbols for months. After spending about 200 hours combined over the last few weeks, analyzing every word and symbol in the burning video of the Jordanian Air Force pilot and the execution video of the Coptic Christians, we can tell you that both videos reveal Islamic State strategists, propagandists and recruiters are very much grounded in a logical interpretation of the Quran, the hadith, or sayings and traditions of the prophet Muhammad, and fatwa, or religious rulings.
They are also hell-bent on one mission: Chasing the apocalypse, according to Islamic eschatology—the study of the end of the world.
Doing a verbal tap dance around Islamic theology and extremism, even calling it “whatever ideology,” Obama and his policy team have it completely wrong. We have to own the issue of extremist Islamic theology in order to defeat it and remove it from our world. We have to name it to tame it.
Asra Q. Nomani is a codirector of the Pearl Project and a Muslim women's rights activist . Hala Arafa is an Egyptian-born Voice of America journalist. They are not politically conservative individuals.
The fact of the matter, however, is that defeating ISIS is an imperative which should find and indeed does find broad acceptance across the political divide.
To read their full story for the Daily Beast, click here.
