In order to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one must understand that their ideological is far from “un-Islamic,” but rather preaches a version of the religion that “derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam,” Graeme Wood wrote in an article published in The Atlantic on Sunday. Wood argued that it was important to “get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it.”
Wood cites Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, whom he describes as “the leading expert on the group’s theology,” to explain the philosophy of ISIS.
According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”
Together with its strict adherence to elements of Islam, ISIS is notable for its need to control territory. Wood argues that if ISIS would lose its territory, its authority to its adherents would dissipate.
One way to un-cast the Islamic State’s spell over its adherents would be to overpower it militarily and occupy the parts of Syria and Iraq now under caliphate rule. Al‑Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive, cockroach-like, by going underground. The Islamic State cannot. If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding. Former pledges could of course continue to attack the West and behead their enemies, as freelancers. But the propaganda value of the caliphate would disappear, and with it the supposed religious duty to immigrate and serve it.
In the end, though, Wood sounds a pessimistic note. For the most part, ISIS’s followers cannot be dissuaded from their beliefs, and military action will likely only “limit its horrors.” In order to defeat ISIS ,Wood suggests, an effective war against ISIS “may be a long one.”
[Photo: Sky News / YouTube ]