There’s No Such Thing as ‘Radical Islam.’ There Are Only Terrorists Who Are Muslim

[DonViejo]

Dean Obeidallah

ISIS is about as Islamic as the KKK is Christian. They just use religion. Their real agenda is political. Get with it

How many Muslims does ISIS have to slaughter before people will stop calling the group “Islamic” anything? Seriously, can someone please tell me the number of innocent Muslim men, women, and children who have to die at the hands of ISIS before people will realize that ISIS is truly unIslamic and arguably anti-Islamic?

On Tuesday, we saw more of ISIS’s barbaric brutality on display with the release of the video depicting its killing of Jordanian Muslim fighter pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh. He was flying sorties as part of the U.S.-organized coalition to destroy ISIS.

The way he was killed sets a new low in depravity. ISIS militants first chained Kasasbeh in a cage and then poured flammable fluids into his cell. With Kasasbeh watching, an ISIS militant lit the fluid on fire. Then while Kasasbeh was burning to death, they dropped debris on him, like brick masonry. Finally they drove a bulldozer over him several times.

What makes the killing of this man so noteworthy is not just the viciousness of his execution, but that it actually received national U.S. media coverage. We rarely see our media cover the Muslims killed by ISIS or al Qaeda. I often wonder, is it because some in the media feel that Muslims lives don’t matter? Or is it because they sense that collectively, most (though not all) Americans could care less about it when non-Americans are killed, so that translates into low ratings for these types of stories?

To be honest, how many have heard about the details of ISIS slaughtering of Muslims? In 2014 in Iraq alone, can you guess how many Muslims civilians—not fighters, civilians—ISIS killed? At least 4,325. ISIS is murdering an average 12 Muslim civilian men, women, and children every single day.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/06/there-s-no-such-thing-as-radical-islam-there-are-only-terrorists-who-are-muslim.html

[guillaumeb]

1. excellent post

Great points, especially the ISIS/KKK comparison. The media constantly tries to make the point that, if anyone identified as a Muslim commits a violent act, Islam itself must be to blame. The same logic is not invoked in the corporate media if a Christian commits an act of violence.The number of posts on this site equating Islam with a religion of terror show how successful this media scapegoating has been.

As to rarely seeing coverage of ISIS atrocities, I agree again, but will also point out that the American media never shows the numerous bombing raids or drone attacks that are carried out all the time by the US in Pakistan, Yemen, and who really knows where else. We never see the targeted killings, all done in the name of freedom, that kill thousands of innocent civilians.

Watch "Dirty Wars" by Jeremy Scahill to see a little bit of how the new way of making war affects the faraway victims of violence. Watch the transcript of the Madeleine Albright interview regarding the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children during the Clinton Presidency.
Is she not every bit as sociopathic as any ISIS killers? We do not see these things reported by the American media because these non-American deaths do not matter.

[brooklynite]

2. So you're saying a religious entity would never endorse burning someone?

And, I take it you're saying that ISIS isn't Islamic because "real" Muslims wouldn't do such a thing? Care to provide an objective standard of what a "real" Muslim/Christian/Jew/Hindu/Shinto/etc. WOULD do?

[guillaumeb]

3. what I am saying is...

that a person can identify as a member of any organization, religion, or other collection of people united in a common belief or common circumstance. But this personal identification does not mean that a particular individual "speaks for" the organization, nor does it mean that a particular individual's action are representative of the group.

Adolph Hitler self-identified as a Christian, Joseph Stalin as an atheist. I would not judge either Christians or atheists by the actions of either above-named lunatic.

When you speak of a religious entity, do you mean a religious figure, such as an Ayatollah, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Pope, or a Rabbi, or do you speak of a collection of people with a social and/or political agenda who self-identify as belonging to or following a particular religion?

As to religions endorsing burning, Jeanne d'Arc was burned as a heretic by the English, many First Peoples in the Americas were burned as infidels, and the Spanish were quite fond of burning Jews, witches and other heretics. Would you indict the religions or the people who use religion to justify their actions?

and no, I cannot provide a standard as to what anyone would do. I can only speak for myself and I cannot even fathom why I did the many foolish things I have done.

[brooklynite]

4. The problem is that nobody but the individual get to make that determination.

Unless your religion is a closed group that determines membership, you have no basis for saying that one person's interpretation is any better than another's. That's why I tend to go with "God's Will" as defined in the scriptural material that almost every adherent claims to recognize.

[guillaumeb]

5. how does one determine ...

God's will? The same problem you mentioned is that each person interprets God's will in a manner to justify what that person wishes to do. People like the Romneys and the Waltons claim to be following the message of Christ but how do they justify their obvious worship of money with the verse "love of money is the root of all evil"?

In the Koran, the Prophet tells the faithful to "forget and forgive, live and let live" but many of those who claim to follow him have ignored these words.

My feeling is that anyone can claim to be following any philosophy but I will judge them by their actions.

[Igel]

6. Look at the subject of the post.

Most people reject saying "Islam as a whole is to blame". Instead they point to "radical Islam" or "Islamist ideology." They distinguish between the kind of Islam that condones this sort of thing--there's no other word for it, since it draws so heavily on Islamic sources and the same kind of outcome has been produced by a variety of Islamic societies over the last 1300 years.

Those who do say it's all Islam point to the OP as an example of "there is only one Islam." If there is only one Islam, as many say, either it's not a problem to just remove those who support IS from mosques around the country and refuse communion with them or they have to be part of the fold. There is no third choice.

Those who point to "radical Islam" are boldly asserting that there are rifts and schisms within Islam, which view is often decried as fitna if appropriated by a Muslim. That's my view--there are multiple Islams just as there are multiple Xianities. Some are vile and disgraceful. Some are spiritual pabulum. Some are reasonable faiths or belief systems.

When the KKK does something hateful there are no shortage of people who see the difference between that and, say, Catholics or Episcopalians. Few claims that the Queen of England is funneling funds to it, nor that collection baskets across the country fund it (as was the case with some zakat donations, it turned out, in the early-mid 2000s). This is because there's a long tradition in Xianity of having different confessions, of acknowledging that there may be some kind of umbrella "Xianity" but there are many Xianities. This is an old fashioned view now--many in the last 20, 30 years have decided to overlook them, even though it means a wildly divided and schizophrenic Jesus.

Of course, there are DUers who fail to see the difference and do accuse religion, Xianity in particular, of being monolithically odious and hateful.