ISIS is an abomination to Islam

[Fred Sanders]

Why ISIS, In Fact, Is Not Islamic
.........


"Conservatives reacted harshly to President Obama’s claim on Wednesday night that the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) “is not Islamic,” accusing the commander-in-chief of naiveté and ignorance. “What kindergartner briefs the President on terrorism?” Ron Christie, a GOP strategist tweeted. “ISIS says it’s Islamic, lots of people say it’s Islamic, only the president won’t,” George Will told Fox News shortly after the speech.

But the full context of Obama’s remark points to an important distinction between Islam and the extremist ideology that’s sweeping parts of Iraq and Syria. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim,” Obama said. “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”

"Indeed, even from the viewpoint of a casual observer, ISIS is an abomination to Islam. Explosions tend to capture the media’s attention more than peaceful coexistence, and a minuscule minority of extremist groups claiming to be Islamic have exploited this fact as a way to reinvent Islam as a “violent” religion. But just because you shout God’s name while committing murder doesn’t make your actions righteous. Islam, as millions of Muslims can attest, is a peaceful religion that calls on its followers to choose community over conflict, or, as it says in Surah al-Hujurat of the Qur’an (49:13): “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise [each other]).”

____________________________

Note how George Will, courtesy of Fox News to advance it all, is able to wrap his pointy head around the concept that the Westboro Baptist Church folk are not Christians but it is beyond his personal prejudice to see ISIS as not Islam.

As the President said, the vast majority of ISIS victims are Muslim, they still hold 50 Turkish nationals hostages when they over ran the embassy in Mosul, for example.

Religious and racial prejudice is why he says such things with such gall and conviction, as does Fox.



http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/11/3566181/why-isis-is-in-fact-not-islamic/

[NYC_SKP]

1. Obama, last night: ISIS is neither Islamic nor a State.

He nailed it.

[DCBob]

3. Should call them NISIS "Non-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria"

[Fred Sanders]

5. Criminal State....using Islam in their name itself is wrong.

[MADem]

2. Yes, this is absolutely accurate.

They have misappropriated the seal of the prophet in a rather shameful way as their "symbol" too. Very off-putting.

Kind of like the way the KKK snatched up the cross while they're hating on the "wrong" sorts of Xtians.

Anyone who tries to see them as simply some sort of "government" has a lot of learning to do. They are violent, they are fundamentalist, and if they had their way, most of the population of Iran would be burnt at the stake or worse, because they practise the "wrong" sort of Islam.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Iran would be on the list after Syria for ISIS criminals.

[MFrohike]

7. Saudi

Why bother with an extremely hard target when the softest one imaginable is just due south?

[Fred Sanders]

8. Good point. Jordan maybe! Not so much sand to go across in pickups.

[MFrohike]

10. Good call

Jordan is the most likely target. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's where they started right? Trying to overthrow the king in 2002 and almost getting wiped out?

[Oktober]

6. Uh huh....

[JI7]

9. what makes me angry is there are so many muslims including scholars and others who are condemning

ISIS .

yet the media puts on some jackass (usually some brit, aussie, euro etc) who defend ISIS. these guys are fucking idiots . they sound like fucking ALI G and are too stupid to even discuss the religion and debate it.

but it gets ratings i guess.

[Igel]

11. This is put out by the Islamic pope?

You know, the guy who speaks for all Muslims on the behalf of Islam?

I thought it was decentralized. Which means that speaking with a single voice is difficult. The best you get is majority rule, and I doubt they had much of an election. Strikes me that we've decided to listen to those we like to listen to, so as outsiders we've anointed spokesfolk for the entire religion. And one of them is Obama, a non-Muslim. Rather like having a Hindu spokesman for Judaism.

It's like Xianity: My church spoke for itself and claimed to speak for Xianity. So does the Pope. They're far from the same thing and the two churches would agree on fairly little apart from a bit of history and verbiage with little semantic content. One has Xmas and Easter and Sunday worship, allows divorce, likes its priests unmarried except in exceptional circumstances (say, if you're a married priest in another denomination and "transfer" to Catholicism). It believes Jesus came to essentially annul the unbearable OT law. The other has Passover and Trumpets and Sabbath worship, doesn't allow divorce and requires its ministers to be married (at the time of ordination, at least). It believes that Jesus was the OT God who gave the law and came to make it bearable, so why would he dispose of it?

To say that either speaks for Xianity is insane, an idiot, or self-servingly manipulative. Believing that either speaks for Xianity can't be manipulative since manipulation requires a non-reflexive argument, so the choices are necessarily more restricted.