Arutz Sheva 7 (Israel National News), by Hillel Fendel
The argument that Islamic State is not Islamic because it mainly murders Muslims doesn’t hold water, says Middle East and Islam specialist Raymond Ibrahim.
Raymond Ibrahim, writing for FrontPage Magazine on Friday, explains that US President Barack Obama has prominently advanced this argument – most recently, just after the San Bernardino attack by ISIS sympathizers that claimed 14 lives.
“ISIL does not speak for Islam,” Obama said then. “They are thugs and killers… Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim.”
Ibrahim, son of Egyptian Coptic Christian immigrants to the United States, says the identity of ISIS victims says nothing about ISIS motivations. This is because 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 [or] heretics,” Ibrahim states. Of course, Shiites view Sunnis the same way.
“Overall, then,” Ibrahim continues, “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…”
Regarding Sunni Mulims who are killed during the Islamic State’s jihad, Ibrahim notes that they are considered martyrs, and need not be greatly mourned.
He cites an analysis by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who writes, “The only thing mujahidin [jihadis] are specifically required to do, should they knowingly kill a Muslim [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…”
Some Sunnis may even be killed intentionally – when they are considered kafir, i.e., non-Muslims and infidels whose blood can be shed with impunity.
In short, ISIS kills Muslims not because they [the victims] are Muslims – but because they’re not Muslim enough.
Good points, mr. Ibrahim – the disingenuous logic that Barack Obama demonstrated here cannot be criticized often enough.
I mean, really – it’s just like saying that the Nazis weren’t actually white supremacists, because the overwhelming majority of their victims (including 20 million Russians and all the other war deaths from the rest of Europe) were white.
And yes, if you’re going to start a brutal war in a region while also committing genocide on a small local minority, then *of course* the regular war deaths among the majority are going to outnumber the minority victims.
That’s why the criterion of genocide is intent, and not the number of victims.