Does ISIS Kill
More Muslims than Non-Muslims?
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the first of your friends to like this.
Originally published under the title "But ISIS Kills More Muslims
Than Non-Muslims!"
With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or IS), an old apologia
meant to exonerate Islam of violence has become prominent, again. Because
ISIS is killing other Muslims, so the argument goes, obviously, its
violence cannot be based on Islam, which bans Muslims from killing fellow
Muslims in its name.
This point is always stressed whenever Islamic jihadis commit massacres
in the West. Speaking soon after the San
Bernardino terror attack that left 14 dead, U.S. president Obama, who
earlier insisted that the Islamic State "is
not Islamic," elaborated:
ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are
thugs and killers, part of a cult of death... Moreover, the vast
majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim (emphasis
added).
Similarly, after last November's Paris
terrorist attack, which left 129 people dead, the UK's Independent
published an article
titled, "Paris attacks: Isis responsible for more Muslim deaths than
western victims." And the Daily Beast argued
that, "Before the Paris horror, ISIS was killing Muslims on a daily
basis. We Muslims despise these crazy people more than anyone else does....
But the number one victim of this barbaric terror group is Muslims. That's
undisputed."
Along with distancing Islam from violence—real Muslims are not supposed
to kill other Muslims in the name of jihad—this argument further clouds the
issue of who is the true victim of Islamic terrorism: Why talk about the
Muslim slaughter of non-Muslims—whether Western people in Paris or
California, or Christian minorities under Islam—when it is Muslims who are
the primary victims most deserving of sympathy?
The Islamic State does not view its
non-Sunni victims as Muslims.
|
Yet this argument is flawed on several levels. First, the Islamic State
does not view its victims as Muslims. Indeed, mainstream Sunni Islam—the
world's dominant strand of Islam which ISIS adheres to—views all non-Sunnis
as false Muslims; at best, they are heretics who need to submit to the
"true Islam."
This is largely how Sunnis view Shias, and vice versa—hence their
perennial war. While Western talking heads tend to lump them together as
"Muslims"—thus reaching the erroneous conclusion that ISIS is
un-Islamic because it kills "fellow Muslims"—each group views the
other as enemies. (It's only in recent times, as both groups plot against
the West and Israel, that they occasionally cooperate.)
Overall, then, when Sunni jihadis slaughter Shias—or Sufis, Druze, and
Baha'i, lesser groups affiliated with Islam to varying degrees—they do so
under the same exact logic as when they slaughter Christian minorities, or
European, American, and Israeli citizens: all are infidels who must
either embrace
the true faith, be subjugated, or die.
In fact, that ISIS kills other "Muslims" only further
validates the supremacist and intolerant aspects of Sunnism, which is
hardly limited to ISIS. Just look to our good "friend and ally,"
Saudi Arabia, the official religion of which is Sunni Islam, and witness
the subhuman treatment Shia minorities experience.
Sunnis killed in the ISIS jihad are
rationalized away as collateral "martyrs" destined to enter
Islam's paradise.
|
But what about those Sunnis killed during the Islamic State's jihad?
These are rationalized away as "martyrs"—collateral
damage—destined to enter Islam's paradise. Indeed, the topic of fellow
Sunnis being killed during the jihad has been widely addressed throughout
the centuries. It received a thorough analysis by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman
Al-Zawahiri in his essay, "Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents"
(The
Al Qaeda Reader, pgs. 137-171). After delineating how three of the
four schools of Sunni jurisprudence—Hanafi, Shafi'i, and Hanbali—do not
forbid the accidental or inevitable killing of Muslims during the jihad,
Zawahiri concluded:
The only thing mujahidin [jihadis]
are specifically required to do, should they knowingly kill a Muslim [who
is intermixed with the targeted infidels], is make atonement. Blood money,
however, is a way out of the dispute altogether. Payment should be made
only when there is a surplus of monies, which are no longer needed to fund
the jihad. Again, this is only if their [Muslims] intermingling with
the infidels is for a legitimate reason, such as business. And we assume
that those who are killed are martyrs, and believe that what the Sheikh of
Islam [Ibn Taymiyya] said about them applies: "[T]hose Muslims who are
accidentally killed are martyrs; and the obligatory jihad should
never be abandoned because it creates martyrs."
But what of those Sunnis whom ISIS intentionally kills? Here the jihadis
rely on takfir, the act of one Sunni group denouncing another Sunni
group of being kafir—that is, non-Muslims, infidels, whose
blood can be shed with impunity. Takfir has existed alongside Islam
almost from its inception, beginning with the khawarij (Kharijites)—who
ritually slaughtered Muslims for not following the letter of law—and was/is
the primary rationale used to justify jihad between different Sunni nations
and empires.
In short, to Sunni jihadis—not just ISIS, but al-Qaeda, Boko Haram,
Hamas, et al—all non-Sunni peoples are infidels and thus free game. As for
fellow Sunnis, if they die accidentally, they are martyrs ("and the
obligatory jihad should never be abandoned because it creates
martyrs"); and if fellow Sunnis intentionally get in the way, they are
denounced as infidels and killed accordingly.
The argument that ISIS and other jihadi organizations kill fellow
Muslims proves nothing. Muslims have been slaughtering Muslims on the
accusation that they are "not Islamic enough" from the start: So
what can the obvious non-Muslim—such as the Western infidel—expect?
In the end, it's just jihad and more jihad, for all and sundry.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith
Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Center.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment