It is important to get a diverse set of opinions about this situation. Here is a response to the article: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/wha...
However. There is definitely an ideological fight here over what Islam is. I just think it is a separate discussion altogether. I didn't read the article as attempting to do anything but discern the intentions of the state. Could someone explain? I'm having a difficult time not seeing these issues as a projection of fears.
I don't agree with the parent article. They are basically parroting the official stance of ISIS which has been covered (in a much better way)before : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/anne-speckhard/isis-iraq_b_5...
Yes. ISIS has cultivated a doomsday cult through their propaganda machine. ISIS wants to be seen by the world as a doomsday cult, and all their propaganda is aimed at this.
But ISIS's actions in the past have not matched their propaganda. For example why is an organisation that claim's to adhere to Salafist fundamentalist principles, in war with pretty much every Salafist faction in Syria?During 2013 - mid 2014, they were in a truce with Assad's government. At the time they almost exclusively attacked Rebel outfits. Many groups including the Syrian Observatory kept claiming that several major ISIS offensives on rebels, were often preceeded by airstrikes from the Syrian govt indicating coordination and cooperation.
The truth is that ISIS is a purely opportunistic faction that won't allow any moral or even religious considerations from getting in the way of its ambitions.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that all of ISIS is like that. It could be that such men as Bakr were instrumental in getting things started, but those brought in to provide religious pretense eventually became the more powerful faction.
Also, I don't see how temporary alliances with a secular regime indicate lack of true religious conviction. If making temporary, strategic alliances with Assad and fighting agianst the Syrian rebels was plainly hypocritical, I would think that would staunch the flow of true believers to their ranks. And while we may debate whether or not ISIS is the haven of belief it portrays itself to be, I don't think we can question that there are many, many people on the outside that it successfully recruits because they believe it to be that. Which requires at least that the hypocrisy not be blatantly obvious.
Group C that claims to be defenders of group A against group B, secretly allies itself with B against A. How does that not indicate lack of religious conviction. The general narrative of ISIS, is that they are the most strictest in adherence to medieval Islam. But to me it looks that they are the most flexible in their adherence in favour of tactical pragmatism.
>"staunch the flow of true believers to their ranks."
What makes you think that the majority of followers of ISIS is attracting are true believers?
Looking at the profiles of the foreigners who are joining : Coulibaly who attacked the french supermarket was previously arrested on drug offences: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/09/amedy-coulibaly-par...
Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the current attacks, was previously jailed for theft and assault : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/europe/belgium-confr...
According to the Sun (admittedly less reliable source; make of it what you will) Jihadi John was into drugs, and alcohol. By other accounts he was rebellious, socially isolated, and on the wayward side of society.
Most of the people recruited seem to follow a pattern of rebelliousness, impulsiveness, poor decisions (frequently involving drugs, jailtime, etc.), rather than sever religiosity through years of attending madrasas. In the west people of a similar disposition might find themselves joining gangs, or in a downward spiral of hard drugs, or making other poor decisions. The ones with the most severe prognosis might end up as school shooters, or doing hard time. ISIS has set itself as a cult to attract such people and has given them a cause.
Quote from former AQ member turned informant : http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31700894 "There is no single process of radicalisation. Some people, it took them years to be convinced of coming to the jihad and some people it took them minutes. Some people were studying in religious seminaries - they're a minority by the way - and then decided to come and some people basically just came straight out of a night club you know while he was consuming alcohol basically to come and seek redemption there in the jihadist world. So you know you see immediately that you know there isn't one single classical journey there, that there are so many journeys."
There are many scattered reports of defections by disillusioned members, but we won't probably know the real truth until after the conflict. Of course, one doesn't simply cash in their last paycheck and walk away from such an organisation, so even if there were mass defections it would be in secret because of fear for safety of them and their families.
As a lay Muslim, I will give a few examples. The interpretation of correct Islamic creed and behavior according to Sunni Muslims is according to the Qur'an and Hadith as understood by the early Muslims, principally the first four caliphs and some of the closest students of the Prophet, succeeding generations, and four or five schools of law established thereafter. Within these schools, there is debate and re-interpretation. So simply citing a snippet of text to support your position, if it contradicts other texts, established practice, or informed consensus opinion is not going to fly.
For example, Daesh burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive while his tribe and the Jordanian government wanted to have him released under a prisoner exchange. There are specific Hadith and verses to support that prisoners of war can be ransomed or exchanged. More pointedly, there is a well accepted Hadith that burning is specifically prohibited as a punishment for even the severest enemies. This is a well-known Hadith and is accepted by all schools of law. So Daesh not only ignored all the Islamically available options which they might have used, but did an act to further inflame specific Sunni Muslim communities that they claim to defend. Further, they did something which would offend all people ethically and goes against specific Islamic rules.
While slavery in the medieval period was practiced against enemies that would do the same, there has been a consensus among Muslims and non-Muslims alike that this is a thing of the past. Muslim governemnts have signed specific international conventions banning it. Even extremely vile outfits like their predecessors like AQ had never mentioned bringing it back. They however chose to revive it against communities that were not doing this to them.
Sending irregular forces under the guise of a Muslim community which is bound by a legal agreement with a country and endangering said agreement is something that is again prohibited. i.e., the Muslims living in France as citizens or foreigners are under a legal framework of citizenship or diplomatic recognition of Muslim countries wherein they are given legal protection in France in return for obeying French law and not fighting them.
the gist is, They are interpreting things literally without any history and context of what a verse of Quran meant and revealed for, one would argue that should have been fine, but it isn't because it reduces islam to their interpretation.
Arabic is a very diverse language, with tens of meanings for a word (often contradictory) and which one you pick and choose depends upon what type of a person you are, if you are a hate mongering terrorist, you would find those meanings to justify your terror like isis is doing, if you are a peace loving feminist, you would find plenty to justify that (using the same verses). This would mean that their interpretation would depend alot on their socio economic status, the kind of society they live in, the world view they have etc.
People often judge islam by the norms of 6th century arabia, Islam has a evolutionary process in place called ijtihad, which the intolerant people don't seem to use. But if you would have to judge islam, you would have to either assume yourself to be in 6th century to see why they were relevant at that time, or to remove them so to understand the general direction islam gives.
That is an odd definition of "misinterpreting".
Biblical literalists are generally not accused of "misinterpreting" the Christian Bible. They are commonly accused of being antiquated, crazy, or dumb, but it's hard to accuse someone of "misinterpreting" something because they follow its literal meaning.
It similarly seems incorrect to say ISIS is "misinterpreting Islam" by reading the Koran literally. It may not be the popular interpretation, and it may not be a pleasant interpretation, but that doesn't mean it's an incorrect interpretation.
Christian groups like to accuse each other of misinterpreting the Bible. Church of Christ members say that Catholics have misinterpreted the organization of the church. Catholics say that Baptists have misinterpreted the apocalypse. Etc. These accusations in reality say very little about the validity of the accused's interpretations, and merely serve as a way for the accuser's to assert the correctness of their own interpretations. "Your interpretation of the Bible is wrong" has no more validity than "Your choice of religion is wrong" in general.
Not so hard actually. A correct interpretation of a work is to discern what the author actually intended to communicate. If I say to a coworker "a meteor is about to strike earth, wiping out all life unless we do something about it" and the listener interprets what I say to be a metaphor (perhaps they think that I am trying to say simply that the project we are working on is in danger of falling apart) they may or may not be correct. If I work at an accounting firm, the statement is probably metaphorical; if I work at NASA, probably not.
In any case, determining the meaning of a text depends upon the genre, and to understand that you need context. The main issue that most Christian traditions have with literalists is that they try to interpret the texts without any of the original context, or without any acknowledgement that the Bible is an anthology of different books written by different authors for different purposes.
>It similarly seems incorrect to say ISIS is "misinterpreting Islam" by reading the Koran literally. It may not be the popular interpretation, and it may not be a pleasant interpretation, but that doesn't mean it's an incorrect interpretation.
You're right, it may be a correct interpretation. Understanding the correct interpretation of Islamic texts is important for those deciding how to approach the spread of violent Islamic teachings. Should it be left to Islamic religious leaders who can leverage Islamic texts to spread a more peaceful (and accurate) teaching, or should the focus be to discredit Islam from the outside?
> "Your interpretation of the Bible is wrong" has no more validity than "Your choice of religion is wrong" in general.
Any given religious text was written by a human being to convey a set of ideas an claims. It is no less valid to talk about a correct interpretation of religious texts than it is to talk about the correct interpretation of any other text.
Here you are attempting to equate accuracy with peacefulness, with nothing given to support that link. To be clear, I don't have a strong opinion on whether Islam is a peaceful religion or not. I have not done enough research to be confident in that sort of claim. I do, however, find it disingenuous to claim that the ISIS interpretation is wrong when the only support given for that claim is that it differs from some other muslims' interpretations.
> It is no less valid to talk about a correct interpretation of religious texts than it is to talk about the correct interpretation of any other text.
Sure, it's reasonable and valid to say "Here's a thing ISIS believes about Islam. Here is the context around that thing. And here is the reason ISIS is wrong." That's not what's happening here, though. This is more like "Here's a thing ISIS believes. I promise you that there is some context that makes them wrong. See, other Muslims agree that ISIS is wrong."
I made no such equivocation, though I apologize if I was unclear.
My point was that the strategy Western countries should take towards addressing violent Islamic sects depends upon what the correct interpretation of their religious texts is. If the moderates are correct in their interpretation, it would be better to let them convince the radicals because they would have greater common ground, and the "home court advantage" in interpreting their texts.
> I do, however, find it disingenuous to claim that the ISIS interpretation is wrong when the only support given for that claim is that it differs from some other muslims' interpretations.
I completely agree. I also do not know what the correct interpretation is, though it is becoming increasingly clear that I should probably learn.
I think we have been arguing at cross-purposes. I thought you were claiming that "all interpretations are equally valid" or something like that. It seems now that you are arguing that "ISIS's interpretation isn't necessarily invalid just because moderate Muslims say it is". If that is your point, then I agree with you and I apologize for the misunderstanding.
In which case, your reply to the grandparent comment makes more sense. I've done a little bit of studying ancient texts in the original language (with help from classicists and theologians) and while the nuances in these ancient languages allow for multiple levels of meaning, it emphatically does not mean that you can interpret whatever you want into the texts.
It seems that way.
> It seems now that you are arguing that "ISIS's interpretation isn't necessarily invalid just because moderate Muslims say it is".
Essentially, yes. It's hard to say that someone is right in their religious interpretation, based just on how much disagreement there is, but that's not the same as saying all interpretations are equally valid.
If someone claims that Jesus commanded his followers to kill nonbelievers, that's a pretty problematic interpretation of the Bible. On the other hand, if one person says Jesus established the system of popes and another person disagrees, it's really difficult to that one of these interpretations is objectively better, even though the difference in interpretation is pretty significant.
> If that is your point, then I agree with you and I apologize for the misunderstanding.
No apologies necessary. You made a civil response to my comment and (we thought) we disagreed. If only all discussions online were like this. :)
A "correct interpretation" of a book written by a dead author is, in essence, an oxymoron. I would argue that this point is not debatable.
All modern Christian bibles are many generations of interpretation from the original text. I would presume the same to be true of the Quran (though it's a bit younger, so perhaps it's had slightly fewer generations of interpretation than the christian bible).
There is no "correct interpretation" of Shakespeare's works (which are arguably true to their original writing in our current records of them), and they're only 400 years old. How can we possibly presume there is a "correct interpretation" of a text that's ostensibly 1400 years old?
I know I'm late to the party in this thread, but still - "correct interpretation" is just not a thing with literary works, regardless of whom you attribute them to.
No worries. I'm glad to continue the discussion as I think it is important.
> A "correct interpretation" of a book written by a dead author is, in essence, an oxymoron. I would argue that this point is not debatable.
Let's take the Shakespeare example, as I think it is a good example and less likely to cause strife.
What is the purpose of Romeo and Juliet? Was it written to be a non-fiction historical account of politics in Renaissance Verona, or was it supposed to be a fictional drama meant primarily to entertain its audience?
It seems obvious to me that this question is meaningful, and even has an objectively correct answer. That is, there is a correct interpretation as to the purpose of Romeo and Juliet that we can glean from a combination of the text itself as well as the historical information about the context it was written in - Shakespeare's current vital signs notwithstanding. Wherein lies the oxymoron?
No, its not an oxymoron, any more than "correct interpretation" is always an oxymoron; a living author doesn't even necessarily make it easier to identify the correct interpretation, since individuals are not static, and the author's preferred interpretation at a later time may not reflect their intent when they wrote the text.
Yes, they are. This has been a discussion for millenia. Many people will definitely consider their interpretation incorrect, or absurd.
The biblical literalists are not wrong when they say that the Bible tells them that God created Earth in 6 days. That is what it says. The more common "metaphorical interpretation" is more recent than the acceptance as a true origin story.
Yes, it is trivially true, by definition, that the only people who say that someone has an incorrect interpretation is people who would portray a different interpretation is correct. That's what saying an interpretation is incorrect means.
When I said it's "hard to accuse someone of misinterpreting...", I meant that it's hard to accuse them in a convincing or sound manner. Obviously it's easy to accuse anyone of basically anything. You just open your mouth and make the accusation. But to do so convincingly takes effort beyond "I don't like their interpretation so they must be wrong". The literal interpretation actually seems like the default, and any other interpretation demands support.
Yes, they are. Particularly by other Christians.
> but it's hard to accuse someone of "misinterpreting" something because they follow its literal meaning.
No, its quite easy: outside of the context of religion, we see it all the time when people are accused of misinterpreting something by treating either one-off metaphors or colloquial figures of speech as if their meaning was what is suggested by the literal meanings of the individual words. Or when one of many possible literal meaning (words often have more than one nonfigurative meaning) is chosen, despite the fact that the context (possibly very broad context) suggests a different interpretation, whether a different literal interpretation or a nonliteral one.
Its no harder to accuse people of misinterpretation for pursuing a particular literal interpretation when the thing being misinterpreted is a religious text.
You're making my point for me. Yes, some Christians accuse biblical literalists of misinterpreting the Bible. But Christian groups frequently assert that other Christian groups are wrong for many, many reasons. There's generally little compelling reason to take any of them as "more correct", though. It's just one group arguing that their religion is more correct than someone else's religion. It's not one group interpreting correctly and the other group misinterpreting. It's just two (or more) groups that disagree, and they typically have no sound reason to assert their beliefs over others'.
> No, its quite easy: outside of the context of religion...
Sure, it's easy when you can provide a reason that the literal interpretation is wrong. It's not easy when the reason is just that you don't like the literal interpretation (or it's easy but not valid).
That's frequently the case with criticism of biblical literalism. While, certainly, the people making the criticism have different interpretations that they prefer as correct (that is, obviously, what it means to say that an interpretation is wrong), and those that care enough about an interpretation to challenge another as incorrect are generally people for whom their preferred interpretation is also an element of the their religious belief and not just a more casual opinion, there are quite specific reasons given for challenges both to specific literal interpretations and to the doctrine of literalism itself (for the latter, the existence of flat-out contradictions within the canon when interpreted literally is one of the more common.)
In my experience that is rarely the case. The reasons given are generally only compelling to others who already hold the same beliefs. If you're arguing against biblical literalism to others who consider the bible to be metaphorical, you will of course be successful. If you're arguing with a biblical literalist, you'll find that they fail to see the logic in your arguments. If you're arguing with a non-Christian, they'll likely just not care, but they might also find your arguments no more convincing than those of the literalist.
> for the latter, the existence of flat-out contradictions within the canon when interpreted literally is one of the more common.
This is only compelling if you start with the axiom that the bible (or whatever text) is correct. If you start with that, and then add contradictions, then the only way to resolve the discrepancy is to say that the bible is metaphorical. If you don't take correctness as an axiom, it's quite reasonable to say that the bible is mostly if not completely literal but that parts of it are simply wrong. It's not a question of correctness of interpretation, then, so much as a question of correctness of the canon.
Which would perhaps be a serious problem with criticizing biblical literalism with that argument if the literalism being criticized ever failed to included a strong form of inerrantism; since, as a doctrine, Biblical literalism is always tied to strong-form inerrantism (which is the axiom that the Bible is, in every particular, both moral and factual, correct), and subsidiary doctrines on matters of fact and/or morals can only be derived from it through its intersection with inerrantism, it really isn't a problem that challenges to literalism rely on arguments that are valid in the presence of inerrantism.
> If you don't take correctness as an axiom
Without inerrantism, whether something is a correct or incorrect interpretation of the Bible doesn't have any significance. Literalism or not only has any meaning in the context of inerrantism.
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file...)
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file...)
"What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters."
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-inte...
"To Defeat ISIS, We Must Call Both Western and Muslim Leaders to Account"
http://www.thenation.com/article/we-cannot-defeat-isis-witho...