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| Tuvia Brodie |
Tuvia Brodie in todays Arutz Sheva:
The Islamic State (IS) is a Jihadi Islamic movement. It is a movement that has declared a holy war against those it considers ‘impure’. Its goals center on Islam. Its mission is to establish a caliphate, “a state ruled by a single political and religious leader according to Islamic law, or Sharia” (“What is Islamic State?”, BBC, September 12, 2014). It seeks to spread Islam through the sword.
It follows an extreme version of Sunni Islam (BBC, ibid). Its major—and only--political tool is barbaric violence. It is rabidly anti-West. Its message is clear—and brutally simple: convert to our form of Islam or die.
There is nothing un-Islamic about ISIS. Everything it does is in the name of allah.
The
Islamic State is so barbaric that the United States has decided to
fight it. But as the US tries to form a coalition to do that, it
undercuts its own anti-ISIS argument. Britain does the same thing.
When US President Obama
announced on September 10, 2014 his intention to fight ISIS, he made
the startling declaration that ISIS “is not Islamic” (“The prepared text
of President Obama’s speech, as released by the White House”, npr, September 10, 2014).
When British Prime Minister David Cameron reacted to the September 13, 2014 beheading of British citizen David Haines, he did exactly what US President Obama
had done three days earlier: he committed to fighting the barbaric
ISIS; then he declared that ISIS doesn’t represent Islam (“Cameron on
ISIS: They are Not Muslims. They are Monsters”, pjmedia, September 14, 2014).
They
are both wrong. Calling ISIS un-Islamic (or, ‘not Islam’) is the same
thing as calling Protestants un-Christian (or not Christian). It’s a
semantic absurdity.
Furthermore, calling ISIS ‘not Islam’
weakens the West’s fight with ISIS. When you take ‘Islam’ out of the
‘Islamic State’ you remove from your gun sights the belief-structure
that propels ISIS.
Put another way, if the West doesn’t
address the Islamic ideology of ISIS, then all we will destroy will be
ISIS members. We will attack a house but leave its walls, roof and
foundation intact.
Applying the words, ‘un-Islamic’ to ISIS
falls into the same category of folly as telling then-US President
Franklin Roosevelt to announce (in 1941) that America would fight
Germany, but that Germany wasn’t Nazi.
Roosevelt knew better.
When, in January, 1943, he spoke about requiring unconditional
surrender from Germany, Italy and Japan in order to end World War Two,
he said that such a complete surrender “does not mean the destruction of
the population of Germany, Italy or Japan, but it does mean the
destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on
conquest and the subjugation of other peoples” [emphasis mine] (“Peace
& Unconditional Surrender”, Lincoln and Churchill.org,
December 27, 2013). Roosevelt was right. Without unconditional
surrender, the Nazi foundation would have not been destroyed. The lust
for conquest and subjugation would never have been extinguished.
It’s the same with ISIS. We don’t fight ISIS because it’s a gang of killers. There are many such gangs in the world.
We must fight ISIS because it is propelled by an Islamic ideology that
seeks to conquer, kill and convert everyone it can find. It’s an Islamic
plague that spreads death through conquest and subjugation.
If
we de-link ISIS (which carries ‘Islam’ in its name) from the
Islamic-driven lust to conquer, we will not extinguish the underlying
fire that drives ISIS. The battle against ISIS will not end until we
extinguish that fire.
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