A call to reflect upon the phenomenon of the Islamic State

Many in the Muslim world, especially in the Arab world, argue that the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS, or ISIL) is a product of Western intelligence agencies, meant to fragment the Muslim world through its sectarian rhetoric, and to disfigure Islamism and Islam through its barbarity. Some go even further to say that its leadership came straight from the Mosad laboratories. People who promote this view have recently found in a leak attributed to the American whistleblower Snowden--alleging that Baghdadi was trained by Mosad-- something to support their argument. An Iranian version of this leak, proclaims that Baghdadi's real name is Sham'on Eliot. An image circulating with this narrative shows someone with some resemblance to Baghdadi posing in a friendly posture with a female in 'Western' attire. 

The official Arab world,  and Arab and Western secular intellectuals (at least those who are bothering themselves to come with a coherent narrative) consider IS to be a group of extremist Islamist secessionists. They are often referred to as khawarij. This argument maintains that these mens are a part of the Wahabi school; young men who were given at an early stage extensive doses of the usual Saudi politico-religious diet, doses whose calibrations have varied subject to the mood-swings of the ruling family and the fluctuations of its intimate relationship with the Americans.  

Personally what I found interesting is the position of what we call moderate political Islam. Although there is no coherent position, and some prefer not to talk about the phenomenon at all. This is in no small part the result of the pleasure at the sight of the corrupt regime in Iraq being punished for its collaboration with the US invasion and its subsequent atrocities against the Sunni sect in Iraq. Despite that position, many websites and TV channels, which are traditionally allied with the Muslims Brothers (the largest civil society in the Muslim World) have engaged in what appears to be a deliberate defamation campaign against IS. 

This policy may have major impact on the already strained Sunni-Sunni relations, portending further rifts. 

 The problem lies not in opposing ISIS, nor in opposing some of its egregious acts; these must be opposed. The problem however lies in pursuing and disseminating rumors and falsehood to create a confused view, which precludes a real attempt to understand the movement. 

A real understanding of the movement is crucial to any attempt to fight it, or absorb it or correct its course. A true knowledge of the movement cannot come through rumors or truncated images or soundbites or per se through reading acts committed by IS or concocted by their opponents.

The image of IS liquidating those who fight it, no matter how brutal, cannot per se provide an insight into the movement. Reducing the acts of the state in those images overlooks the important question of how these men came to be driven to act in such a way, and what kind of rationales sustain their forward march. Sentimental reactions, important as they maybe, are not an alternative to proper understanding, nor could a proper policy be built around such emotional and moral uproar. 

Anyone trying to understand any movement must study their rhetoric, their ideological foundations. For example, anyone interesting in knowing the Muslim Brothers needs to examine their history, and their writings from the founder, Hasan al-Banna, to Sayyid Qutb, all the way to the mid-1990s revisionist writing, which included the Euro-Islamist thoughts of Rashid al-Ghanushi and Turabi, the Americo-Islamist reductive constitutional thoughts of Mohammed al-Mukhtar Shinguity. All these writings were good additions to Islamist literature. They however suffered, especially the Euro-Islamist and Americo-Islamist approaches, from the Westeritis analytic frame, obsessed with finding ready answers for a presumed decline of Muslim thought. This Westeritis analytic frame lacks in its imaginative repertoire anything beyond the present imposing material and discursive dominance of the West.   

Today, there is little that we know about the Islamic State, its discourse and its practices. It is therefore prudent to take the necessary time to examine these areas. 

This is not a call to support the Islamic state, nor is this a call to be sympathetic with it. It is simply a call to try to understand what is taking place, without rushing to all sorts of conclusions.

It is clear that the biggest gulf separating the IS from the rest of the Islamist movements, including the official Islam--whether the monarchist-Islamists of Saudi Arabia, or the pharaonist Islamists of Azhar, or the bourgeois Islamists (both Sufi such as Abdullah Bin Beyya, or impressionist such as Amr Khaled) or others; what separate the Islamic State from them is its unapologetic Islamic centritis. It is apparent that in search of a true Islamic move in history, IS's core spirit may indeed provide an alternative to modernity since it neither accepts its premises, nor stand fettered by its material phallicism, paraded masquerading as a world view and a way of life. 

The problem however is that the IS's thoughts, rarely articulated in any coherent form, lack a jurisprudential theory. It embraces a conflictual view too literalist in its perception of the distinction set forth in the Qur'an between the "in-coexist-ability" between faith and disbelief in the Hereafter and in this world, and try to replicate where the opposite is the Quranic norm.   

This is a dangerous side which is both correctible and useful in times of crises. But it could obliterate everything as it gives actors the elusion of acting on the behest of God, doing what He had chosen, rather than seeing a rom for human error, and human redemption beyond physical retribution, or insurmountable doctrinal error.