Religion of Peace? ISIS Begs to Differ

The leaders of ISIS are trying to tell us something: Islam is not a religion of peace. They call it a “religion of the sword.”

Does anyone believe them yet?

The new issue of ISIS’ magazine released today takes issue with Western leaders who assert that Islam is a religion of peace.

In the Dabiq magazine article, the writer said the wrongful “slogan” is also being used by “apologetic ‘du’āt’ [beggars] when flirting with the West.”

“They have repeated this slogan so much to the extent that some of them alleged that Islam calls to permanent peace with kufr and the kāfirīn. How far is their claim from the truth, for Allah has revealed Islam to be the religion of the sword, and the evidence for this is so profuse that only a zindīq (heretic) would argue otherwise,” the magazine states. [from pjmedia.com 2/12/15, “Islam is the Religion of the Sword, Not Pacifism”]

Here in America, we twice elected a President who loathes use of the word “terrorism” (unless committed by someone who isn’t Muslim), and who repeatedly insists that ISIS has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam or religion.

It seems that the terrorists who support Islam have a different point-of-view.

It’s not just an academic argument, either. It’s an argument with very real consequences, including but not limited to the destruction of skyscrapers with thousands of people in them, multiple kidnappings and beheadings, and discriminatory, racist and homophobic torture surely worthy of the name “hate crime.”

I wonder if any society in human history, when repeatedly attacked by a violent enemy or group, ever insisted on calling that group peaceful. If so, I wonder if the attacking enemy was then forced to come out and say, “Hey, we’re not peaceful! Get with the program.”

The human capacity for denial and evasion is awesome, I know. But I never conceived it could even begin to approach the level it has in America.

What motivates people, like our President, to claim that Islam is inspired by peace even as its most consistent and zealous practitioners continue to attack innocent people? Self-loathing for living in a comfortable and mostly rational civilization? Cowardice or fear of standing up to one’s attackers? Overconfidence that “nothing bad will happen here,” no matter how persistently and violently the attacks from one’s enemy start to escalate? Any or all are possible.

Any one of these motives can be rationalized by such ideas as, “Well, you can’t fight fire with fire.” But what about self-defense? Doesn’t self-defense require frightening your violent enemies to a point where they will hesitate to attack? Clearly, years of unfocused struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t end Islamic terrorism. And years of drone strikes throughout the Middle East have not done the job, either. This is not to disparage the military’s excellent intentions and work, but it is to disparage the policy of the last two Presidents (who both insisted we’re fighting a violent enemy motivated by a peaceful religion).

So what next? Or nothing at all? Shouldn’t we at least debate the pros and cons of doing nothing it all — which is what’s happening — rather than going through the motions creating the false impression that we are engaging in self-defense?

Consider the recent death (by ISIS) of another American hostage in the Middle East, reported at CNN.com 2/11/15:

Kayla Mueller’s parents had been holding out hope.

But on Tuesday, the family of the American being held hostage by ISIS revealed devastating news.

They received it, officials said, in a message from her captors.

“We are heartbroken to share that we’ve received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller has lost her life,” the family said in a statement. “Kayla was a compassionate and devoted humanitarian. She dedicated the whole of her young life to helping those in need of freedom, justice and peace.”

ISIS sent the family a private message over the weekend, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said.

“Once this information was authenticated by the intelligence community, they concluded that Kayla was deceased,” Meehan said.

Based on information reported in this CNN.com story, as well as blog postings dated from 2010 published at another website (http://palsolidarity.org, 2/9/15, “UPDATED: ISM honors Kayla Mueller”), the victim of ISIS killers sided very much against Israel and with the Palestinian and other anti-Israeli and anti-American movements in the Middle East.

She wrote, for example, Oppression greets us from all angles. Oppression wails from the soldiers radio and floats through tear gas clouds in the air. Oppression explodes with every sound bomb and sinks deeper into the heart of the mother who has lost her son. But resistance is nestled in the cracks in the wall, resistance flows from the minaret 5 times a day and resistance sits quietly in jail knowing its time will come again. Resistance lives in the grieving mother’s wails and resistance lives in the anger at the lies broadcasted across the globe. Though it is sometimes hard to see and even harder sometimes to harbor, resistance lives. Do not be fooled, resistance lives.

The WashingtonPost.com also reported on 2/11/15:

Of Mueller’s time with the [anti-Israeli] movement, the organization wrote Tuesday that Kayla had “worked with Palestinians non-violently resisting the Israeli occupation” in the West Bank.

“She marched with us and faced the military that occupies our land side by side with us. For this, Kayla will always live in our hearts,” said Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of weekly protests in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which has farmland on the other side of Israel’s separation barrier dividing Israeli and Palestinian territory.

Kayla Mueller appeared to view oppression as coming from the United States and Israel, and the victims of oppression as everyone else in the Middle East. From an unthinking perspective, this might make some sense. The United States and Israel are the stronger countries. They have far superior military strength and far preferable living conditions, thanks to the relative economic freedom and separation of church and state prevalent in both nations.

In short, America and Israel are bigger and better because they have better systems of government, and more rational approaches to civilization. They don’t feed off of other nations to survive; but they do insist that other nations leave them alone. With militant Islam on the rise, no such thing is permitted, not in the Middle East, and not in Europe or America. Where are the “lies” in this?

If you hold the premise that bigger and stronger is automatically and always bad, while the weak and impoverished are always the victims, and always in the right, then you can understand Kayla Mueller’s point-of-view (even though it’s totally wrong.)

Altogether evaded in this point-of-view is the fact that Israel and the United States are bigger and stronger for objective reasons. They have practiced something close to freedom in their nations, while Islamic “nations” or gangs have put religion first, and required this as the rule of law. The result has been stagnation, brutal intolerance, murder and despair. Of course they’re weaker.

“Peace” and “humanitarianism” cannot exist without free and prosperous countries–like the United States and Israel– to provide the kind of charity work that Doctors Without Borders, and others, attempt to provide. Charity begins with prosperity. Charity is well and good, but the only sustainable solution for Muslim nations is church-state separation and economic capitalism — the same things that work in other nations. Not going to happen, not now and probably not ever. Don’t blame that on countries that have evolved and taken a more rational approach.

Kayla Mueller, like our President and a whole lot of other people, believe that the real victimizers are the stronger countries, even if the reason those countries are stronger is they show greater respect for their citizens as well as the cause of freedom for everyone on earth.

Is Islam a religion of peace? Or an ideology of uncompromising, intolerant brutality? Ask Kayla Mueller. Well, actually you can’t. The religion of peace killed her.