http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/397142/reminder-islamic-state-islamic-and-state-patrick-brennan
Credible
reports about the details of the operations of the Islamic State, also
known as ISIS, have not been terribly easy to come by, which makes a new piece by Arab analyst Hassan Hassan in the Guardian
especially fascinating. The Islamic State subjects its new recruits and
conquered religious figures to detailed indoctrination in a radical and
arcane form of Islam, he reports, with sharia training for new recruits apparently lasting months.
Religious ideology is integral to the group’s influence and growth, and, as some of Hassan’s other work has demonstrated, that it has an effective divide-and-rule strategy, which it uses to disseminate said ideology. The whole piece is worth reading, but Hassan’s take on the group’s recent execution of homosexuals by throwing them off a building is representative:
Religious ideology is integral to the group’s influence and growth, and, as some of Hassan’s other work has demonstrated, that it has an effective divide-and-rule strategy, which it uses to disseminate said ideology. The whole piece is worth reading, but Hassan’s take on the group’s recent execution of homosexuals by throwing them off a building is representative:
Isis presents the “mainstream” Islam practised by Muslims today as one that was “invented” over the past few decades. To unravel this so-called invented Islam, Isis deliberately digs deep into Islamic sharia and history to find arcane teaching and then magnify it. It does so to shock its potential recruits and demonstrate it is preaching a pure and true Islam obscured by the mainstream. Take, for example, the group’s punishment for individuals accused of homosexuality. In a series of incidents in recent weeks, Isis has thrown individuals accused of being gay from the highest buildings. This method as a sharia punishment is unheard of, even in countries where sharia brute justice is openly practised, such as Saudi Arabia.
Unlike previous incidents of stoning adulterers and crucifixion, throwing people from high buildings did not even inspire criticism of sharia in the Middle East because many did not realise it was a sharia penalty in the first place. But it is the obscurity of the punishment that makes it particularly valuable for Isis. The purpose is not to increase the volume of violence but also to raise eyebrows and trigger questions about such practices, which Isis is more capable of answering than mainstream clerics, who prefer to conceal teachings that propound such punishments. Many Isis members were eager to emphasise they were impressed by such obscure teachings, and were drawn to the group by the way Isis presents Islam with absolute lucidity. Mothanna Abdulsattar, for example, spoke about the group’s “intellectualism and the way it spreads religion and fights injustice”His conclusion: The Islamic State’s religiosity is important and and in some ways invulnerable. Mainstream Muslim clerics can and should try to delegitimize the group’s teachings and practices, but its recruits are not entirely amenable to reason — it’s only a situation like Syria that compels large numbers of men to find it appealing to live under and die for such an ideology.
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