UKC

Lost in another thread, this is well worth a read.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/...

In reply to lowersharpnose: Read that a while ago. It makes for a scary read...

In reply to beardy mike:

But with hope. ISIS have to expand or die.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

Didn't have time to read it last time it was posted a few weeks/months back but have managed it now. Fascinating, frightening stuff - thanks.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

+1.

Very interesting indeed.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

It is worth noting that some serious students of jihadism disagree with some of what he argues, I'll try and dig out some links if people are interested.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Can you be a muslim and not follow the Koran? All of it?

Do any Islamic theologians stand up and point out that the ISIS/Baghdadi koranic line is wrong or that bits x & y of the Koran are out of date?

In reply to TobyA:

Please, thanks.

In reply to lowersharpnose:
Its such a hi risk strategy though. I suspect they will be like a virus that will mutate as it encounters antibodies. At the moment they have a clarity of vision if you can call it that, but it will get dirty as they fight to survive. The trouble with believers is that any doctrine can be bent to their will if they want it to be. If a stranglehold is achieved they will just shape shift a little to get out of the deadlock... They are just hanging out for the battle and they will encourage it as much as they can. In the meantime the poor f*ckers in the middle of it all are getting massacred...

In reply to beardy mike:

I'm not sure in this case. The article makes the point that, in a viral analogy, this is more like Ebola, and likely to kill its host and so itself before it gets a chance to spread

In reply to lowersharpnose:

I presume that the Koran is not free from contradictions and that no one could actually follow it all.


https://news.vice.com/article/muslim-scholars-make-the-theological-case-aga...

(not read it yet)

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Some of it eg supposedly it is forbidden to take slaves, is directly contracted by the other article

The rest of it is, disappointingly, no true Scotsman stuff.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

ISIS is lots of things. I'd be more interested in what its leaders and financiers think it is rather than Ahmed 21 from Burnley thinks he getting involved with. Even the finger wagging head lopping Jihadi tourists haven't got the foggiest of 'its aims' are beyond a treacly notion of sharia and revisionist 'caliphate' (as if ISIS was a single entity with a coherent identity and aims rather than a badge of utilitarian convienience. I do read the 'The Atlantic' now and again because they have some interesting writers but you should know thats it is a neo-con fanzine. The clues in the name.

D

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs: well I understand that that's the theory. But what happens when you leave them to it, containing them and put in force a strangle hold and they then slowly change the way they operate. It could happen...

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:



The intellectual quicksand of theology. Neither IS nor these scholars have any greater authority to say what is or is not "forbidden". They can say what they like - what they say has no basis in anything, there is no truth to be revealed, just some words that have different meanings to different people.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I am wading through that 'letter to Baghdadi' link you posted. I find it quite dispiriting. Theologians quibbling about interpretation of of texts, certain that the truth is in in there.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

Right, it was Shadi Hamid from Brookings who I follow on twitter that I was thinking of - someone collected his twitter responses to Wood's article here https://storify.com/AthertonKD/isis-s-rejection-of-modernity-is-hyper-moder... read down and it make sense.

A collection of response here http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/20/the-misguided-...

And Brookings have a whole debate series coming from it: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/series/experts-weigh-in

In reply to Dauphin:


I'm not sure how considering it has been called that for 150 years.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

They want wiped off the face of the earth...

In reply to TobyA:

Thanks.

Picked through the tweets.

The Washington Post article was a short piece saying what was wrong with Wood's article or saying what really needs looking at. It seems like a pastiche of rather disconnected comments.

This is typical "Wood does not convincingly dismiss the contention that the jihadists, for all their medievalist fervor, are still creatures of our modern moment."

Why does he have to?

I note it does finish with "We can get caught up in the "Islamic" part of the Islamic State. But matters of "state" will be what ultimately unravels it." Which is in effect what Wood wrote.

Am reading through the last load of links.

Thanks again.

In reply to lowersharpnose:

Yep, Hamid obviously agree with much of Wood's argument but I saw the mainly difference being he saying that there IS centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence that ISIS is going against. They might be super literal but Islam hasn't developed as a textual literalist religion as a whole.

I suppose that ISIS differ little from ijtihad tradition of literal reading to prove their point that al Qaeda did before them, and that goes back through the revisionist writers within the Salafi and Islamists traditions.

I used to have print off copies of all these various 'seminal' islamist texts by Qutb and the like from years back but most got recycled before I moved house last year! Probably best the police never looked inside that recycling skip as there was all sorts of stuff from my old work which you're probably not even meant to have in the UK, or at least has got some uni students into hot water for having!