On the so-called Islamic State.
As a consequence of yesterdays suicide
bomber/shooting attacks in Paris, my facebook page is full of
socially engineered intentions to anger and amaze. My friends list
had already been lightening due to the recent federal election.
(They're still my friends, their opinions just became unfollowed.)
However quickly I wanted to dash off clever chastisements to satisfy
my own worth, I dared not unless something interesting happened. I am
after all, a busy person.
This morning, eating my oatmeal,
flipping through by news feed, there's a pic of a mushroom cloud,
glowing orange. Over the cloud was "We've been at peace with
Japan since 1945" underneath the cloud was "Time to make
peace with Islam." I placed my fingers on the keyboard, I don't
recall if I typed my first thought or not, I can't recall the thought
itself. It was probably something like, "there are many things
wrong with this sentence." I put no such complaint. Instead I
examined what options facebook had for me. Could I report this as a
violation of some kind. Hate speech? I tried, their robots (I
presume) did not agree with my assessment of the picture.
I spent a couple hours learning what I
could about the sorts of ideas one can have about this "thing"
they call ISIS or ISIL, or a few other words. I will refer to it as
"the Islamic State." In the interest of clarity, by Islamic
State I mean specifically the small group of terrorists who refer to
themselves as these things. The clarity is important, because there
seems to be a great deal of confusion on the matter.
If you Google "Islam has n"
it will auto-fill in "nothing to do with terrorism." (This
is the point at which I realized I was going to write another essay.)
The first page of search results will contain three news stories,
featuring Muslims and others espousing that this is true because the
Islamic State follows an antiquated, bastardized version of the
faith. Below those stories, the entire rest of the page is devoted to
pages arguing that it's time to "STOP saying Islam has nothing
to do with terrorism." Some of them might claim to argue the
opposite, but if you read them you will discover this is a rouse.
As I searched and read, it became
apparent that everyone needed to have an opinion on this matter and
that this opinion would probably come from other opinions. Some
opinions favour information closer to the truth, some don't. By
truth, it is meant, accurate information, related to facts that are
real in the world, not some astronomical generalization associating
an entire religion and a few pissed off militants. In fact, if you're
so inclined, you're really making things worse, because doing so is
going to piss off Muslims around the world that wouldn't be otherwise
interested in jihad. It's already the case that many young Muslims
join the Islamic State for political reasons more than religious, but
it is also true that there is a growing movement that believe it's
the apocalypse. The Islamic State, it seems, has a place for you,
regardless of where you source your thirst for western blood.
There are common denominators and it
is here where we find all our facts and figures. The stuff we can
actually work with. The Islamic State is real, it has money, offices
with staff, weaponry, technology, manpower, philosophy. It takes
action, it destroys. It has a goal (the conversion of the entire
world to its ancient interpretation of Islam) and it has no problem
beheading you if you're not interested in converting. However, it
isn't doing those things because of its religion, it's doing it
specifically because your country has been or currently is fucking
around in its backyard.
Most victims of the Islamic State are
Muslim, in Muslim countries. Most of the Damage they do is to Muslim
property, (trying to rid us of the more "modern" or
inappropriate religious items or places.) These things are criminal
matters. If you have a bunch of idiots running around in costumes
killing people, something should be done about them. The only thing
that makes them "Terrorist" is the fact that they are
attached to being Muslim/Middle Eastern and that we are attached to
the Christian West. Their association, not mine. I make no
distinctions, that's the point... Imagine if some Christian militant
group (of which there are plenty) reverted to some ancient
ultra-conservative form their faith and then started a similar
campaign. Would we immediately decry all Christians as enemy?
There is an ideology at play here, but
it is more rooted in politic and society than in religion. In my
investigations I discovered that the Islamic State twists the
philosophy of Sayyid Qutb, much the same as Al Qaeda and others. Qutb
was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 50s and 60s,
after his return from going to University in America where he was
appalled by American society. (Imagine the sockhops!) If you would
like to really understand everything about this whole "America
vs the Middle East" thing, all you need to do is watch "The
Power of Nightmares" Seriously, go google "the Power of
Nightmares" it's a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis. You can watch
it on youtube.
The point is, Islam doesn't make
terrorists, being pissed off at America does. Therein lies the
problem in this story, in this matter and in this essay. Once you
start delving into "Why are these criminals so mad at America?"
You only come up against very valid reasons to be pissed. (And we're
not allowed to talk about them. The truth has no place in the
American psyche.) This is an extremely complicated and delicate
matter that is going to have to be handled one criminal at a time and
quietly. Blaming it on any particular belief only fuels the fire,
plus it lumps our friends in with our enemies.
Think of it this way: If all they have
are suicide bombers, they'll eventually run out. Unless we keep
pissing them off and they keep breeding suicide bombers. Change the
mindset, change the outcome. How do we change the mindset? Well, what
is it we've been doing that upset everyone in the first place? Oh
yeah, we have our own set of leaders who put philosophies into
motion, some of them for their own religious motives. Mostly though,
we just want your resources or we don't want other to have them. We
also need to keep the war machine going. It's big business. How are
we going to have enemies to spend billions on if we don't keep
creating enemies?
