[Andrew Frisardi]

I cringe at the phrase at the beginning of the article (three posts back) which suggests that Islamist terrorists are uniquely evil or sadistic. This is obviously false, since the Ku Klux Klan or the Albigensian crusaders of the twelfth century, to name two, are/were easily as brutal and sadistic. But I found much of the article insightful.

The author argues, persuasively I feel, that it is not going to help either Muslims or non-Muslims to say: “The terrorists aren’t real Muslims.” On the contrary, Wahhabism/Salafism is considered by its adherents as hyper-Islam. And there is no reason that we can’t consider what it is in modern Islamic politics and culture that makes that ideology so appealing to so many, without turning on the Muslims who are our neighbors and co-citizens. Just as criticizing the corrupt power structures of the medieval Church wasn’t tantamount to trashing good and ordinary Christians.

As the Atlantic article Bill Lantry linked to at the start of this thread says, it’s an avoidance of what ISIL is about simply to say, “That’s not Islam.” Of course it’s not enlightened Islam which facilitates spiritual realization, any more than the Albigensian Crusade in the twelfth century was real Christianity. And yet the people who undertook that crusade were Christians, in their own view. A sickness within Christendom itself—ultimately the corruption of the papacy—made it possible for those crusades to happen. The fact that most Christians at that time were ordinary people with more or less devout, honest lives didn’t mean there wasn’t a systemic problem. There was: and plenty of people spoke up about it. Eventually, this would lead to the Reformation. Maybe the papacy for modern Islam is Saudi Arabia.

Right-wing Islamophobia in the U.S. lately has been sickening, but it won’t do either to gloss over the fact that the violent extremism which threatens us most these days, and Muslims most of all, is Islamic violent extremism. It doesn’t hurt anyone to question where that’s coming from. And to bring up George W. Bush’s “crusade” statement and other parallels is to revert to generalities. The Ku Klux Klan took root in a context, not only in some generalized “Us-Other” reality. Criticizing American triumphalism is a good thing to do, but the only thing we really learn by noting the universal theme of human stupidity and lust for power is that it’s universal. Then each instance of it has to be dealt with in its own specific terms.

And I think the article, despite its extravagant opening, has something worthwhile to say along these lines.