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Comment by joesmo | Hacker News Reader

The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems while touting climate change is both silly and goes against the stated goals of the essay to not tout slogans as solutions. Otherwise, it's a pretty good take on the situation.

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> Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception

Exactly. For example, the US and Saudi supported "rebels" in Syria are Sunnis. Assad is Alawite Shia, Iran too. Now look at who's with whom. ISIS are inspired by Wahabi teaching, which was effectively able to grow thanks to Saudi Arabia and Oil, but consider any Muslim who's not ready to accept Wahabi view apostate, that is, somebody who is, according to their religious views, to be killed(!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

The chaos in Iraq after US invaded to "bring them democracy" resulted in de-facto war between the Shia who got to the power and Sunnis who lost the influence. Yemen, where Saudi Arabia performs military actions now, has large Shia population.

Etc. It sounds complex, but it's not, once you understand what's going on and see how obviously groups support or fight one another exactly based on the religion, you can't even imagine that people can ignore the predominantly religious background for the most of the conflicts.

If you don't make a difference between Sunni, Shia and Wahabi, it's your problem, but people lose lives because of that in the Middle East, in hundreds of thousands.

Which is not to say that it's not even much worse (proportionally) for minorities like smaller religious Muslim groups and even worse for Christians there.

Expanding on this, the author writes:

> Da'esh's plan to take over the world isn't rooted in a theological destiny of Muslims; it's rooted in an explicitly political vision of conquest.

That is probably true of Al Qaeda or Hezbollah but Daesh's worldview is[0] rooted in Islamic apocalyptic theology.

[0]: See "What ISIS Really Wants" for a good analysis of this.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

It's more like he is implying that something like Da'esh will exist no matter if Islam exists or not. Their brand of violence is not rooted in ideological beliefs but rather psycopathic killing for killings sake. That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic. The other issues of famine, fear and a power vaccume are more likely the reason they can last for so long. Groups like this in the United States tend to burn out very quickly or reduce their violence to attacks on rivals and divirsify their actions to more capitalistic actions.

> That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic.

Simply wrong. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism The ideology existed longer than the specific group called ISIS. They just dialed it to 10 what was always more and more cooking for the last few decades. That they are a bit more extreme than how Al-Quaeda is perceived in the West now doesn't mean that the exact Islamic ideology wasn't fully formed before, including the treatment of those with who they fight.

The reason why they call themselves "people of hadith" is because they really believe to just repeat what their prophet was doing, and that that is the major goal of a true believer. It's in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith that they can read about every beheading and stoning performed by Mohammad. They just literally ask themselves "What Would Mohammad Do" in the sense that they "reject the use of Hellenistic philosophical discourse "(kalam)" in favor of strict textualism in interpreting the Quran."

Pretending that all this doesn't exist (on rejecting to learn) won't help anybody understand what's going on.

Interesting.

I would still contend that one cannot take some form of ideology, "dial it up to 10" and then claim it is still that same ideology. What you instead have here is a set of liars that hide behind a name.

That said, it does seem that Wahhabism and Sunni Islam are perhaps a more favorable place for such extremism to culture and grow. So I concede this is as much a part of Islam as the next part (however non-mainstream or mainstream it may be).

Clearly the shift here is what allows such extremism to succeed, the funding, the teaching, the dispersion of such ideas, how are they not called out for what they are: callous and inhumane and insane?

Who is responsible for turning a blind eye for so long? Is it just tolerated because it happens 'Over There' (in this case I suppose 'Over There' would mean 'Not Here in Saudi Arabia' where the political base of this brach of Islam claims home). Or is this more like someones thugs getting out of control -- i.e. this is a sponsored movement and attempts to restrain it are actively interfered with!

I have more questions than answers! What a complex part of the world!

> That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic.

Very true. Incidentally (and ironically), Islamically one is not allowed to overthrow their (Muslim) government to "establish a caliphate". So what ISIS is doing is against the teachings of Islam to start with. They take texts, keep what they like and leave out what they don't like, and use those texts for their own purpose.

We have in Islamic literature, several authentic narrations that talk about, and warn of people who have a similar ideology to that of ISIS.

They just declare the rulers apostate, and poof, no government. Same trick the medieval European rulers would use to get rid of their rivals, by the way (they had to convince the Pope).

If their daily practice agrees with the Scriptures, and by all accounts, they are very uncompromising, it is very hard to argue that they're somehow not legitimate.

> They just declare the rulers apostate, and poof, no government.

Islamically, this does not hold either (and we have authentic narrations to back this up). In order to declare the leader an apostate (a very serious accusation by the way), there has to be extremely clear evidence upon which there is zero room for interpretation or excusing. I'm talking about something along the lines of the ruler outright coming out in front of everyone and saying that he is no longer Muslim.

This applies to everyone, from Mobarak to Qadhafi to Saddam, etc. There were terrible things that happened under their regimes, and I am not defending them. However, absolutely no one can come out and declare them apostates without crystal clear proof upon which no two would disagree -- this has never happened.

I understand what you're saying, however, for the ISIS project to work, it is not necessary that all Muslims agree with them. In fact, ISIS are more than happy to genocide all Muslims who disagree, notably all the Sunni Muslims, and have steadfastly been doing so in the lands they have conquered.

Might is right, and as long as the Caliphate keeps on existing, they will do what they're doing, simply because they can. Your theological objections cannot be taken seriously because they're a state power, you're not, and quite naturally conflicts where one side of the argument is a state, are best settled by war.

> however, for the ISIS project to work, it is not necessary that all Muslims agree with them.

Perhaps, but how far will they get? There are Muslim nations that are fighting ISIS, both in military and in talking about their corrupt ideology and explaining how they have gone astray. For example (if you speak Arabic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb2yAczRc5g

> Your theological objections cannot be taken seriously because they're a state power

While ISIS may not take what I mentioned seriously, the goal is to educate people (especially the emotional and easily charged youth) into showing how misguided ISIS are, and answer their questions in an attempt to prevent the corrupt ISIS message from influencing them.

> where one side of the argument is a state

Just because they call themselves a state does not mean they are :)

> are best settled by war.

We try to educate first and bring truce, but yes, sometimes fighting is unfortunately necessary: http://quran.com/49/9

"That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic."

Lol. They are by definition Islamic. You can't just change the meaning of words like "Islamic" because it suits your point of view. Da'esh is as Islamic as any other Islamic group.

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