SEPTEMBER 11, 2014 10:00 PM

Its Not a Misnomer

The Islamic State has everything to do with Islam.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
When you are dealing with an administration whose
officials look you in the eye and tell you the Muslim
Brotherhood is a largely secular organization, its
tempting to laugh off the idiocy spouted by President Obama
and Secretary of State John Kerry about how the Islamic
State has nothing to do with Islam. We should resist the
temptation, though, because there is a dangerous purpose
behind the laughable assertion.
Obviously, Bing West and Daniel Pipes are correct that the
terrorist group is entirely Islamic. As Ive been arguing here
more times and for more years than I care to remember,
what we presume to call radical Islam (a/k/a Islamic
supremacism, Islamic extremism, political Islam, Islamism,
and whatever other Islam [fill in the caveat] terms we
devise to avoid considering whether Islam itself inevitably
breeds terrorism) is not very radical among the worlds
Muslims. There are pacific constructions of Islam, too, but it
is silly not to acknowledge that Islamic supremacism is a
mainstream interpretation of Islam. It is firmly rooted in
Islamic scripture and endorsed by many of Islams most
influential scholars. Indeed, when you read what the
scriptures say, there is a good argument that the pacific
constructions are the ones that are radical revisionism.
This point has been made so many times it should hardly be
necessary to point out that Obama and Kerry, like Kerrys
predecessor Hillary Clinton, and like many Bush-
administration officials before them (including President
Bush), are dead wrong when they deny the nexus between
Islamic doctrine the literal scriptures - and terrorism,
decapitations, totalitarian government, repression of women,
rabid anti-Semitism, the murder of homosexuals, and so on.
Still, it would be a serious error merely to observe that they
are wrong, snicker at their fecklessness, and move on.
There is a reason they are taking a position diametrically
opposed to reality.
Obama and Kerry, like transnational progressives in both of
our major political parties, believe there are moderate
Islamists who are the key to stability in the Middle East.
Now, the term moderate Islamist is contradictory: an
Islamist wants government by sharia, Islams totalitarian
societal framework and legal code. There is nothing
moderate about sharia. Those who want it implemented are
not moderates even if they dont commit mass-murder to
get their way. Sharia is also anti-liberty, anti-equality, and
anti-Western. Therefore, we should oppose Islamism just as
we oppose other freedom-killing ideologies. That doesnt
mean we need to go to war with all Islamists, but we should
work to diminish their influence and we should never regard
them as a solution to anything.
Notwithstanding their abhorrence of the West, moderate
Islamists are regarded by Obama and Kerry as potential
allies: people, groups, and, in the case of Turkey, for
example, countries that we can work with to solve the
problems plaguing the Middle East and overcome our own
security challenges. It is thus critically important to Obama
and Kerry for the public to believe that (a) all Islamists are
not basically the same and (b) there is a sharp difference
a day-and-night difference between moderate Islamists
and terrorist organizations like the Islamic State and al-
Qaeda. If, instead, the public becomes convinced that all
Islamists, violent or non-violent, adhere to essentially the
same ideology, the administrations goal of working with
Islamic supremacists becomes politically untenable.
It is impossible to convince people that non-violent (or, at
least, purportedly non-violent) Islamists are not
representative of Islam. The administration tried that with
its largely secular Muslim Brotherhood flyer . . . and has
been embarrassed ever since by the howls of laughter. Most
significant Islamist groups are rooted in or affiliated with
the Brotherhood. Not only do these groups claim the mantle
of Islams representative; our government concedes that
status to them.
It is vital to Obama and Kerry that the public sees these
Islamist groups as having nothing in common with the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda. And since the latter, like the
moderate Islamists, define themselves by their adherence
to Islam, Obama and Kerry have no alternative: They must
deny them standing as true Muslims. That is why they assert
that the claim of Islamic State jihadists to be faithful
Muslims waging holy war in the name of Islam is fraudulent
and, just as ridiculously, they assert that jihad has
nothing to do with violence.
The problem, of course, is that moderate Islamists and
violent jihadists are bound together by sharia-based Islamic
ideology. Yes, they have their differences, but those
differences are mainly about tactics; and, to the limited
extent they are doctrinal, they are irrelevant as far as we are
concerned because the differences do not affect the core
Islamist belief that we are the enemy.
Many violent jihadists who go on to join al-Qaeda and, now,
the Islamic State (an offshoot of al-Qaeda) got their start in
the Muslim Brotherhood. They seamlessly graduate from
Brotherhood teaching to insatiable jihad because
Brotherhood teaching lauds jihad. In fact, the transition
happens because many of those who receive Brotherhood
instruction become frustrated by the contradiction between
the Brotherhoods aim of a worldwide caliphate and
endorsement of jihad to achieve it, on the one hand, and its
counsel of patience in pursuing it, on the other.
It is precisely because Islamists share an ideology rooted in
Islam, and what they see as a divinely mandated mission of
conquest, that a Muslim can so predictably evolve from
student to sharia adherent to moderate Islamist to not-so-
moderate Islamist to terrorist. It happens frequently. And
the common ideology rooted in Islam also explains why so
many moderate Islamists financially and morally support
violent jihadist organizations even if they dont take up arms
themselves.
The Islamic State has presumed to declare a caliphate. Al-
Qaeda franchises think that is hasty especially since
someone else is running the caliphate and would proceed
more gradually, setting up emirates and hoping for more
consensus among Islamists. Both organizations want to
confront the West only violently; the Muslim Brotherhood,
on the contrary, teaches that, while violent jihad has its place
(see Hamas), it is valid to negotiate with the West, to
infiltrate the Wests institutions, and to achieve whatever
conquest can be achieved without violence.
Among the Islamists themselves, these differences are
extremely controversial and cause bitter disputes. But as to
us, the differences are beside the pont: They do not change
the reality that these are all Islamist groups, they all hate
and want to conquer the West, and they all want repressive
sharia implemented. Some groups are more of an immediate
threat than others; some of them need to be defeated
militarily while others require a different approach; but all
of them are enemies of the United States and all of them
support terrorism.
And all of them are Islamic.
Andrew C. McCarthy is a policy fellow at the National
Review I nstitute. His latest book is Faithless Execution:
Building the Political Case for Obamas Impeachment.