ISIS is fuelled by Islamic ideology
Re What we shouldn’t ignore when we talk about Daesh, DiManno, May 26 Thank you for your insightful article pointing out that ISIS (Daesh) is in fact based in Islam, albeit a seventh-century version of said religion. I for one have no desire to return to the Dark Ages — I value my smartphone and my personal freedom too dearly, and it’s safe to say that all but the most fanatical, fringe Muslims would prefer modernity. Yet you ask, “Who, except reactionary blowhard politicians and fringe crackpots, blame an entire community?” The answer is a large swath of the tens of millions of people who voted for said reactionary blowhard politicians. And that is why sensible people are careful not to conflate the religious practice of everyday law-abiding Muslims with ISIS. Nor do they feel the need to point out the obvious: that the Islamic State or ISIS is, in fact, Islamic. Levi Folk, Toronto
Thank you to Rosie DiManno for her cogent counterpoint to PC apologists regarding the use of the terms Islamic or Islamist to characterize terrorists using the religious tenets of Daesh and other extremist organizations. Trying to divorce the religious and political aspects of the agendas of these terrorist groups is futile. These are all still hierarchical groups with patriarchal leadership structures and, as such, are seeking political goals of territory and power over people. It is a sad truth historically, among so many organized religions, that dogma and doctrine trump the core beliefs. Trying to remove the Islamic/Islamist underpinning of terrorists acting in the name of a radical interpretation of their religion is especially naive, given that recognized states, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and others, are effectively theocracies, where these radical ideas have been allowed to take root and blossom. Understanding the motivations — and being horrified by them — are part and parcel of using terms such as Islamic/Islamist, and not fundamentally different from the subtle Christian war chant of “May God continue to bless the United States” used very often by ex-president George W. Bush, for similar purposes. Alex Hillar, Mississauga Re We should stop labelling terrorists as ‘Islamic’
and ‘Islamist,’ Paradkar, May 24 The notion that terrorism as a phenomenon exists separately and apart from the ideology that fuels it is patently absurd.
The first letter of the acronym “ISIS” stands for “Islamic.”
This is not a label imposed by hostile outsiders, but an expression of selfidentity chosen by a subset of the Islamic ummah community, whose arguably ignorant, false, deviant but undeniably violent and bloodthirsty re-interpretation of the Qu’ran, sharia law and other Islamic teachings, both ancient and modern, is considered by its members and sympathizers not just Islamic but authoritatively so.
This is the problem in a nutshell. The fact that Shree Paradkar thinks her, or any other, interpretation of Islam is the correct one is neither here nor there.
Indeed, thousands of innocent Muslims, far more than non-Muslim bystanders to this sectarian conflict, have paid with their lives for too casually dismissing jihadist terrorism fuelled by radical Islamist ideology as “un-Islamic.”
On the contrary, it might best be described as hyper-Islamic, an ideology in which moderate Muslims, and those of different sects or cultural practices, are considered no less “kafir” (infidel) than non-Muslims. Edward Ozog, Brantford