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Editorial Board of TF USA have collectively decided to post this article in TF USA Website.
Some of the contents of this article may be controversial, hence an objective approach is necessary to read and analyze this article.
EDITORS
Maajid Nawaz
Dec. 11, 2015 11:20 a.m. ET
Islam is a religion, and like any other faith, it is internally diverse. Islamism, by contrast, is the desire to impose a single version of Islam on an entire society. Islamism is not Islam, but it is an offshoot of Islam. It is Muslim theocracy.
In much the same way, jihad is a traditional Muslim idea connoting struggle—sometimes a personal spiritual struggle, sometimes a struggle against an external enemy. Jihadism, however, is something else entirely: It is the doctrine of using force to spread Islamism.
President Barack Obama and many liberal-minded commentators have been hesitant to call this Islamist ideology by its proper name. They seem to fear that both Muslim communities and the religiously intolerant will hear the word “Islam” and simply assume that all Muslims are being held responsible for the excesses of the jihadist few.
I call this the Voldemort effect, after the villain in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling’s fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort’s evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to “He Who Must Not Be Named,” and they deny that he exists in the first place. Such dread only increases public hysteria, thus magnifying the appeal of Voldemort’s power.
The same hysteria about Islamism is unfolding before our eyes. But no strategy intended to defeat Islamism can succeed if Islamism itself and its violent expression in jihadism are not first named, isolated and understood. It is as disingenuous to argue that Islamic State is entirely divorced from Islam as it is to assert that it is synonymous with Islam. Islamic State does indeed have something to do with Islam—not nothing, not everything, but something. That something is the way in which all Islamists justify their arguments using Islamic scripture and seek to recruit from Muslims.
Shared by Dr. Syed Ehtisham
To read the full article, please click the hyper-link below:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-beat-islamic-state-1449850833?mod=e2fb
It is a well written article. As they say, perception is reality. It does not matter how Islamic State’s ideology is termed, Islamic State is considered main stream Islam in the eyes of the public at large in the West. The distinction between Islam vs Islamism and Jihad vs Jihadism can be explained in academia but is hard for the public at large to understand. Many are trying to separate Islamic State‘s extreme ideology from the mainstream Islam but there is no clear cut distinction and hence this confusion. The Western Governments, Muslim organizations and Muslims have adopted calling Islamic State as anti- Islam because it is black and white and easily understandable both by the West and Muslims at large. It also serves the purpose of not holding all Muslim responsible. How much is this successful is obvious to everyone.
I think better explanation is suggested by Dr. Shoeb. Bible and Torah also has violent commands but they have become relic in the West. Similar violent commands in Quran are still believed by some, like Islamic State, but vast majority of Muslims do not believe these violent commands apply in today’s world.
There is another twist in this complex problem. In recent American study by George Washington University, vast majority of Muslims arrested in last 18 months on terrorist charges were young American born citizens who rarely went to mosques or were involved in any Muslim causes like Palestinian issues. They had little knowledge of faith and were no different than newly converts (40 % of arrested were newly converts). They and newly converts got most of their knowledge from “Islam for Dummies” and were attracted to Salafism and Islamic State because it was black and white and easy to understand. Like newly converts, they were looking for something different and not cultured mainstream Islam that was no different than main stream Christianity or Judaism, which they found complicated, boring and not exciting. They bypassed mosques and Imams, hence surveillance of mosques and Imams is not yielding much results.
Fayyaz
A great attempt to separate Islam and Muslims (with jihadi mentality) but still dishonest in my view. Islam is not much different than Christianity and Judaism with regards to potential for inciting to violence as Fayyaz Sahib quoted Dr. Shoeb (though I did not find Dr.Shoeb’s comment on this thread). The worn out, knee jerk response, to this violent perception of Islam that “Islam is a religion of peace” does not convince any one. Instead of cherry picking verses to counter this perception of violence associated with Islam, Muslims have to either follow Christians and Jews by disregarding Quran as relic (which is not happening) or, borrowing from Iqbal, “reconstruct” the understanding of some verses that approve killing of apostates/infidels related to only some specific incident of that time and erase all notions of blasphemy with iron hand.
Why I call this attempt to separate Islam from fundamentalist Muslims dishonest is due to our hypocrisy and some examples are as follows;
Has anyone (Muslims) ever called out Saudi Arabia’s restriction on Non-Muslims to enter Mecca?
Has anyone condemned chopping of hands and necks being practiced in KSA? Every now and then some Pakistani is beheaded in KSA but no one cries for it.
Has anyone the courage to call Sharia laws out as against modern values of equality and freedom and ought to be declared redundant.
We never called stoning to death, chopping necks and hands as barbaric and not a word of God or in Quran, we never tell that Quran never permitted four wives privilege for men adopted by our society. We did not tell a lot of things to our new generations that we practiced only because they suited us, we kept our women as slaves. Not only Jihadis are to be blamed for the perception that is associated with Islam, we all are to be equally blamed and we should accept our cowardice and selfish behavior for over a thousand years.
I hate to admit that I find myself agreeing with Donald Trump when he says that Muslims have to help out here. Muslims have to look in the mirror and figure out how their religion is producing the likes of Boko Haram, Islamic State and Al-Qaida. Yes, the West has not been very kind to Muslims and bombed them like they (Muslims) were insects but that does not make us innocent and condone our own bloody history. Announcing that “killing one person is killing humanity” is a joke – those who quote that never read their history and no wonder no one bothers to pay attention to these hollow verses. Serious sanitization of our religion is needed if we are bent on not considering it a relic….its not as simple as saying Islam is not what Muslims do or did.
Babar