Weapons alone won’t stop ISIS


By themselves, guns and bombs will not defeat an ideology of terror, death and destruction. Education and understanding will.

The ideology I speak of recently shocked the world in a 22-minute video. The video shows the brutal execution of a Jordanian fighter pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh. When al-Kaseasbeh’s fighter plane crashed in Syria in late December, he was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Prisoner swap negotiations between the Jordanian government and ISIS failed.

As Al-Kaseasbeh writhes and audibly screams for nearly a minute in the video while his body is burned alive, the world seems like a scarier place than ever. The terror wreaked by the Islamic State is so unsettling because they aren’t a nation state, either; their territorial reach extends from Northern Iraq to Southern Syria, but they have tens of thousands of followers around the world, all preaching a radical, hate-filled doctrine.

To be clear, the religion of Islam is not that doctrine. Islam is a religion of one and a half billion people, and as scholar Reza Aslan has argued, Islam — like any other religion — is characterized by what its followers bring to it. The majority of Muslims, just like the majority of Christians, Jews, Sikhs, etc., do not bring violent extremism to their religion.

To respond to the continued brutality of ISIS with Islamaphobia and logically devoid generalizations about the Muslim faith would be an enormous error. It would be an error that forgets, for example, that  the occupants of a Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower were among the thousands killed on 9/11. They were killed peacefully practicing a faith that shares its basic tenets of compassion and self-betterment with nearly every other religion.

Such an error would also selectively forget the actions of Christian extremists — the Crusades or Spanish Inquisition being the most obvious — like Anders Breivik, who in July 2011 single-handedly massacred 77 people at a Norwegian youth camp. It was one of the worst terrorist attacks the world had seen since 9/11, but did the aftermath of that attack reveal deep seated hatred with the Christian faith? Of course not.

The point is, and I’m modifying a phrase from gun-rights activists here: religion does not kill people. People do. In the same way that a grotesque minority of individuals have brought violence to an ordinarily peaceful religion, it is imperative for the world citizenry to bring hope and tolerance to the forefront of their fight against those individuals.

The global citizenry needs hope that in the face of such horror, peace will prevail. The world’s apathetic people (and there are plenty in the United States) must redouble their efforts to participate in the free exchange of ideas, on the Internet and elsewhere, because their voice is needed, now more than ever. Steady support of coalition governments engaging in military support against ISIS is a must, but so, too, is steady and unwavering pressure on the leaders of those governments to continue to offer a competing vision of global togetherness in the marketplace of ideas.

Society needs tolerance to stem the tide of overreaction. This begins with recognizing the distinction between the ideology of individuals and the teachings of religion. Overgeneralizing the message of ISIS to a much broader group of Muslims only increases the risk that, in response to that overgeneralizing, ISIS’s recruiting and ranks will grow. Instead of this mistake, tolerance and support of individuals who share nothing in common with ISIS but a peaceful religious faith will ensure that the radicalized ideas of ISIS will die in the marketplace of ideas.

The Jordanian government responded to the burning by executing two Al Qaeda-affiliated prisoners who were captured several years ago. ISIS demanded one of the prisoners, Sajida al-Rishawi, who had been on death row for an attempted suicide bombing, be released in exchange for al-Kaseasbeh. Jordan’s retaliation by execution plays the same sad game that ISIS thrives upon. To demonstrate the anti-ISIS message that world leaders so desperately need to communicate, what if Jordan had simply let al-Rishawi go free anyways?

That would have sent a powerful message: “We know you hate us, and we will relentlessly condemn your actions with military and ideological force—but unlike you, we are above terror for terror’s sake.”

Nathaniel Haas is a junior majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs Fridays. 

4 replies
  1. Arafat
    Arafat says:

    The Muslim Game:

    Bringing other religions down to the level of Islam is one of the most popular strategies of Muslim apologists when confronted with the spectacle of Islamic violence. Remember Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? How about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian killer? Why pick on Islam if other religions have the same problems?

    The Truth:

    Because they don’t.

    Regardless of what his birth certificate may or may not have said, Timothy McVeigh was not a religious man (in fact, he stated explicitly that he was agnostic and that “science” was his religion). At no time did he credit his deeds to religion, quote Bible verses, or claim that he killed for Jesus. His motives are very well documented through interviews and research. God is never mentioned.

    The so-called “members of other faiths” alluded to by Muslims are nearly always just nominal members who have no active involvement. They are neither inspired by, nor do they credit religion as Muslim terrorists do – and this is what makes it a very different matter.

    Islam is associated with Islamic terrorism because that is the association that the terrorists themselves choose to make.

    Muslims who compare crime committed by people who happen to be nominal members of other religions to religious terror committed explicitly in the name of Islam are comparing apples to oranges.

    Yes, some of the abortion clinic bombers were religious (as Muslims enjoy pointing out), but consider the scope of the problem. There have been six deadly attacks over a 36 year period in the U.S. Eight people died. This is an average of one death every 4.5 years.

    By contrast, Islamic terrorists staged nearly ten thousand deadly attacks in just the six years following September 11th, 2001. If one goes back to 1971, when Muslim armies in Bangladesh began the mass slaughter of Hindus, through the years of Jihad in the Sudan, Kashmir and Algeria, and the present-day Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq, the number of innocents killed in the name of Islam probably exceeds five million over this same period.

    Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 innocents in a lone rampage on July 22nd, 2011, was originally misidentified as a “Christian fundamentalist” by the police. In fact, the killings were later determined to be politically motivated. He also left behind a detailed 1500 page manifesto in which he stated that he is not religious, does not know if God exists, and prefers a secular state to a theocracy. Needless to say, he does not quote any Bible verses in support of his killing spree, nor did he shout “praise the Lord” as he picked people off.

    In the last ten years, there have been perhaps a dozen or so religiously-inspired killings by people of all other faiths combined. No other religion produces the killing sprees that Islam does nearly every day of the year. Neither do they have verses in their holy texts that arguably support it. Nor do they have large groups across the globe dedicated to the mass murder of people who worship a different god, as the broader community of believers struggles with ambivalence and tolerance for a radical clergy that supports the terror.

    Muslims may like to pretend that other religions are just as subject to “misinterpretation” as is their “perfect” one, but the reality speaks of something far worse.

  2. Arafat
    Arafat says:

    Nathan writes, “To be clear, the religion of Islam is not that doctrine. Islam is a religion of one and a half billion people, and as scholar Reza Aslan has argued, Islam — like any other religion — is characterized by what its followers bring to it.”
    +++
    Good God, quoting Reza Aslan to better understand Islam is like quoting Josef Goebbels to better understand Nazism.

  3. Don Harmon
    Don Harmon says:

    Education and understanding? Would that have worked with the Nazis, too? C’mon, Nathaniel, we are not dealing with rational, reasonable people who have the desire to negotiate and talk. They don’t want to work things out. They are virulent fanatics who want to burn YOU alive if they get their hands on you. And if you are a Christian or Jew, unlike the fellow Muslim Jordanian they burned, perhaps they would find even more violent , long-lasting and painful torture for you. ISIS cannot all be psychopaths, buyt the psychopaths are in charge and their troops and financial backers find that acceptable. Forcibly convert you to an ISIS subject or enslave you if you are lucky, but murder you in hideous ways would be their choice. They are not like you, Nathaniel. Such people exist.

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