Islamic State or Daesh?

The New Zealand Defence Force will now refer to Islamic State (IS) as “Daesh”, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  It is likely opinion leaders here will follow those in the U.K., U.S. and France.  This essay explains the reasoning behind the intention to change IS’ name, and why we should be wary of its demonisation.

The first five paragraphs carry background information and definitions. Readers familiar with these terms can skip to The Western Reaction to IS for a nuanced assessment that won’t be found elsewhere.

Background to ‘Daesh’

Daesh is the preferred Arabic name for Islamic State.  It stands for Dawlat al Islamiyah fi'al Iraq wa al Sham, which translates as Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria).  But there is more to this than a convenient acronym.  In Arabic, Daesh sounds similar "Daes," which means "one who crushes something underfoot," and "Dahes," which means "one who sows discord." It may also imply ‘darkness’ and ‘bigoted’.  As a result of this play on words, Daesh has become a derogatory expression.  In turn, IS leaders have threatened to "cut the tongue" of anyone who uses the word in public. 

Middle East and North African (MENA) states see, accurately, IS as an active and existential threat to both their borders’ and their nationhood’s integrity.  In this the rest of the world agrees, and it will support these states (at least those that it hasn’t assisted in destroying) in any way possible without actually get their hands dirty (or more correctly, dirtier).

International Response

The BBC’s director general Lord Hall has rejected demands by more than 100 British MPs to stop using the term "Islamic State" on the grounds that it “gives legitimacy to a terrorist organization that is not Islamic nor has it been recognized as a state and which a vast majority of Muslims around the world finds despicable and insulting to their peaceful religion."  This statement compounds ignorance with naivety which can only be redeemed by use of the word ‘mendacious’.  Lord Hall said that the proposed alternative, "Daesh," is pejorative and using it would be unfair to the Islamic State, thereby casting doubt upon the BBC's impartiality.  Unfortunately, his response confers a modicum of legitimacy on IS.

France, with its strong Arab links, is perfectly happy to appease the Arabs, with prime minister Manuel Valls giving the distinct impression of spitting out the word “Daesh” when referring to an IS atrocity, and foreign minister Laurent Fabius calls IS "Daesh cut-throats".

Pressure is increasing on others in the West to refer to IS as Daesh.  Some comes from government members – the lead MP who wrote to the BBC is Rehman Chishti, a Pakistan-born Conservative MP.  Other sources are the media who are in an optimal position to normalise use of the word.  The justification of this is on the grounds that, in UK PM David Cameron’s words, “because it is neither in my view Islamic nor a state.”  But Cameron’s ‘my view’ qualification has meant that he is not giving approval to Daesh, rather, he wants the BBC to modify Islamic State with ‘so-called’.  US Secretary of State John Kerry has increased his usage of the word beyond just talks with Arabic leaders.

I will continue to use the term Islamic State or IS for other reasons, which I will explain soon. 

The Caliphate

IS regards itself as a caliphate, a foundational concept and a theme which runs through Islam right up to the present day.  It is the core narrative of al Qaeda and a goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. Regardless of what happens to IS, it will never go away. 

To understand the caliphate one needs to understand the concept of tawhid, Islam’s concept of universal, absolute and uncompromising monotheism that transcends the world.  There is no ‘out’ from this.  You, dear reader, I, and everyone else on earth is born with this original, pure nature called fitra which inclines us, in Islam’s doctrinal world, towards tawhid.  Then, as the former Cat Stevens says, “It is only his parents who make him a Christian or a Jew.”  This is why Muslims refer to converts as ‘reverts’ as they turn back to the natural state of Islam.  This is the caliphate in its most abstract form. 

There are frequent references by individual Muslims to the nation of Islam, our people, and the global Muslim community or nation, which in Arabic is known as the ummah. This represents Muslims’ collective identity which reinforces the individual’s persona.  The majority of Muslims consider their Muslim identity more important than their national identity, and as such put a high priority on the ummah.  This is the caliphate in its unrealised form, creating an international bond of unity.  Less favourably, it facilitates group-think, obliges Muslims to assist others in need such as illegal immigrants, puts non-Muslims into the out-group category while at the same time claiming that in the West they themselves are the out-group, and enabling anything considered anti-Islamic to receive universal opprobrium. Beware of Muslims talking of ‘their community’, for they talk of the caliphate.

It is a form concrete in imagination only.  The modern world does not have a place for it.  When people are to be ruled by the word of Allah and not man, democracy is out of the question.  As are borders, nation states, secularism, and anything that intermediates between Allah’s will and the people of his world. 

To achieve God’s will, then, the caliphate has to be made real by force.  This is the responsibility of volunteers from the ummah, helped by al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, an endless procession of fundamentalist preachers funded by Saudi petrodollars, and the manipulation of Western opinion with the help of the anarchist and Marxist Left in what must be the most unlikely pairing of bedfellows in history.

The one thing that links the anarchist Left with radical Islam is the need for chaos, out of which a new order can arise.  The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Western response and the Arab Spring created this situation in MENA.  Strategically important states such as Libya with its six African state borders and Mediterranean coastline, and Iraq with its four Arab state borders as well as Iran and Turkey, quickly came under the radicals’ control.  Islamic State filled in the gap formed by the retreat of Syrian state troops.  Its surge in popular support, combined with canny financial management and with the religious face of its present leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Thus was created the latest incarnation of the caliphate, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Islamic State – is it Islamic?

There’s no shortage of people willing to refer to IS as “neither Islamic nor a state.”  Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and many Muslim community leaders are quick to deny the credibility of the IS name.  For their own reasons these people consider Islam should work in a certain way, that a state should follow certain definitions, and anything failing this standard can have its claim refuted. Such opinions are self-referential and lack validity. 

Islam is a religion unlike any other.  It is based on the immutable words of Allah as reported by Islam’s prophet Muhammad, meaning that the 7^th century morality it espouses cannot be changed, only interpreted by scholars.  It is a complete system for life with religious, political and governmental, social and charitable, economic, legal and judicial, educational, and military components.  It applies to the entire world, meaning the world has to change, not Muslims.  It is neither permissible nor necessary to exercise critical thinking since the answers to any problem lie in the Koran and the hadith, that vast collection of Islam’s oral traditions relating to their prophet Muhammad’s life.

Since its inception Islam has faced the problem of resolving changes in society with its binding laws.  Its inability to change has led to regressive standards of living and education, while maintaining a façade of moral superiority over the West.  As predominantly-Muslim states yield to modernising pressures, the convictions of the deeply religious result in jihad, holy war, waged on the less pious in order to restore Islam to what should be, in their minds, the pre-eminent religious, social and political system to rule the world.

The creation of the Islamic State, then, is a gift from Allah.  It is an opportunity for the faithful to create a state ruled by sharia or Islamic religious law.  No other country is ruled in this manner which means their pious citizens feel unable to live by Islam’s procedures and thus cannot enter paradise.  The Islamic State offers them entry to paradise, so whatever the hardships, sacrifices and actions of extreme violence they make, it will be worth it in the afterlife. 

Religious justification for such a life is a prerequisite, and were IS to fail in its Koranic-based moral and religious defence of its actions, its expansion would be curtailed rapidly.  This is not the case.  It is not for the West, nor is it for other Muslims, to judge IS on its Islamic credentials. 

Islamic State – is it a State?

There is considerable flexibility in establishing what constitutes a state.  Basic requirements are for a defined geographical area, a population subject to a single governing entity to which it pays taxes in return for protection and stability, and that it is not subject to any other state.  Islam boasts of being a complete system – economic, political, governmental, social, judicial, military and religious, and its comprehensive rules and IS’ successful economic model give it a measure of sustainability.  Despite lack of international recognition and consequent legitimacy, IS has achieved at least the facsimile of statehood.

It is incumbent, then, on those claiming “IS is not a state” to provide a definitive reason why IS fails to make the grade.  None is forthcoming.  It is thus warranted to refer to IS as a state, whatever qualifications one wishes to apply to it.

The Western Reaction to IS

The creation of a fundamentalist state out of a rudimentary collection of al Qaeda offshoots – the heads of the Hydra we were warned about – came as a shock to the West.  Credit where it’s due, Islamic terrorists are able to repeatedly create massive, unpredictable and traumatic events. 

Western response has been principally to augment ME states which have most to lose.  The United States’ role as ‘globo-cop’ has been curtailed by the lessons learned in Iraq and Libya, which is no comfort to states calling for active defence against IS.

Of greater interest to me as a commentator on the defeat of the West at the hands of resurgent Islam is the effect IS has on Western perceptions of Islam in general.

The true significance of Muslims’ demands to change IS’ name is to create a false distinction between Islam and the actions of IS which is bringing Islam’s barbarism into the spotlight. 

This serves four purposes. 

Delegitimisation

Firstly they seek to diminish the legitimacy of IS to act in Islam’s name.  This is similar in purpose to depreciating ‘lone wolf’ terrorists as mentally unbalanced.

Individual Muslims may express disgust with IS’ actions but its undoubted success in obtaining Western recruits indicates a far wider support for its brazen victories than is publicly acknowledged.  Islam is a religion of conquest and IS’ triumphs feed into this very popular narrative. 

Terror and Lure

Secondly is Islam’s doctrine of dawah baina al targhib wal tarhib, that is, preaching between terror and lure.  Muslims are required to submit to the will of Allah and failure in this will be met by the threat of Allah’s wrath in hell for eternity.  Those who succeed have the absolute certainty of eternal peace and carnal pleasure in paradise.   Life in this world is of no consequence except as preparation for their place in the afterlife, which explains the frivolous expenditure of human lives in the Muslim world.

For non-Muslims, to whom entry into paradise is forbidden and are condemned to hell for eternity, a warning is needed to demonstrate the unconditional supremacy of Islam, courtesy of among others, Islamic State, whose members are instructed by the Koran to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.” 

The lure, that of eternal peace, and only be achieved by reversion to Islam.

The Less-Evil Option

Thirdly is the principle of the lesser of two evils.  IS raises the profile while Western Muslims look virtually normal with enhanced visibility as they seek to keep IS in check.  For the moment.  

Keeping Islam’s dirty little secret

Fourthly and most importantly, both Islam in the West and the Islamic State have the same ultimate goal of global Islamic hegemony.  But those in the West have the Muslim Brotherhood’s prescriptive path to follow while ingratiating themselves into prominent public positions, whereas IS operates in failed states.  By sending its operatives into Europe this path is disrupted and Europeans will become aware too early about Islam’s goal.  Thus, Muslims in significant positions in the West want to maintain a wide berth between themselves and IS. 

Conclusion

In spite of denials Islamic State’s name is clearly a justifiable description of its position, albeit it nascent and possibly temporary nature.  When Western leaders say “IS is not Islamic or a state”, it is an act of appeasement in the manner of “Islam is a religion of peace.”  Neither statement sustains scrutiny but they maintain a semblance of dignity as the Western ships of state sink beneath the waves of Muslim immigration.  The Islamic conquest of Europe is a fait accompli, but as a corpse, its culture will take decades, longer, to realise it is actually dead, consumed by the maggots of triumphant Islam.

Speaking Truth to Media

The Dominion Post recently published an opinion piece Free speech pairs with fairness by its former editor, Tim Pankhurst (26 May 2015).  It filled in a few interesting details about local events at the time of the Danish Muhammad cartoons, but otherwise was an anodyne piece offering guarded support for freedom of speech balanced by the fear of disturbing the fragile sensibilities of Muslims.  There were a few indiscretions – he thinks “God” and “Allah” are the same notwithstanding their major theologically different identities, he has no idea about the substance of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, and he says “Islam in its purest form is a peaceful religion . . . ”  In terms of moving the debate forward it achieved nothing, indeed, retarding it by minimising the dangers faced by the West.

Given that Pankhurst trotted out the familiar “do not disturb” colloquy, I chose just one feature of his commentary in a letter I wrote to the Dominion Post:

Tim Pankhurst (Free speech pairs with fairness, May 26) is quite wrong when he alleges “Islam in its purest form is a peaceful religion.”  Islam is a religion that demands submission.  Peace will only be achieved when the entire world submits to the will of Allah and is ruled by sharia law.  Anything other than that occupies dar al-Harb, the territory of war, which permits precisely what has occurred in the Islamic caliphate and the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

I’ve noticed that if I mention Islamic doctrine in a letter, the Dominion Post declines to print it.  But the Dominion Post did print two letters from other correspondents, one simply supporting free speech and quoting Voltaire, and another from a Muslim suggesting “freedom of expression is not absolute” and that Muslims are more against “slander and abuse” in a statement of incipient grievance-mongering.

All three missed the point about Muslims’ antagonism to the West’s concept of freedom of expression.

On that basis I wrote another letter:

Tim Pankhurst (Opinion May 26) and his corresponding acolyte Michael Poole (Letters May 28), and eristic, Fawzan Hafiz (Letters May 29), need to realise that attacks on cartoonists aren’t a simple matter of attacks on freedom of speech.  Their primary purpose is to prevent any criticism of Islam, under threat of death.  This is what has stopped Islam’s reform for 1,400 years and why it has not progressed morally since.

Of my letters to the Dominion Post, only those showing minor personal opinion are printed.  Those that used accurate and verifiable concepts such as terror and lure (tarhib wal targhib), dissembling or concealment (tawriya), or the ‘oneness’ of Allah and its sole representation through fundamentalist Islam (tawhid), were not printed.

The Dominion Post publishes news of the most horrendous acts of Islamic violence, but fails to print anything which states clearly the reasons behind them. 

Islamic Appeasement by Papal Proxy

Can Pope Francis prevent a holy war? asks Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Garry Wills in an opinion piece in the March 10 Dominion Post.  Wills’ exercise in Islamic appeasement by papal proxy neglects to point out that Pope Francis’ outreach to the Muslim world was met with increasing rates of Christian slaughter, rape, forced conversion, slavery, discrimination and expulsion. The pope should take a lesson from Egypt's President el-Sisi. His heroic call for Islam’s reformation at Al-Azhar University could be a lot more effective than the pope’s, for the simple reason that he has, to paraphrase Stalin, more divisions.

How real is the terrorist threat to NZ?

Recently Radio New Zealand’s National Programme’s Insight ran an episode considering the terrorist threat to New Zealand following the departure of troops to train the Iraqi Army in April 2015. Contributors included the head of the SIS Rebecca Kitteridge, former foreign minister of Afghanistan and senior politics lecturer at Otago University Najibullah Lafraie, Professor Ramesh Thakur from the Australian National University, and attorney general Chris Findlayson.  The tenor of the programme was detached from the reality not just of the inroads Islamic extremism has made across the world, but also of the major Western adjustments necessary to accommodate it.  All contributors made comments that showed a poor grasp of Islam’s basic tenets. 

In order understand the effects of Islamic terrorism on New Zealand it is important to realise the multiple ways in which Islam has developed and refined terrorism over centuries.  Insight’s interviewees tended to obfuscate the situation for diverse reasons, so Islamic terrorism’s strategy, trajectory and goal would be lost on many listeners.  I hope this necessarily brief analysis clarifies the reality which lies behind the interviewees’ inept responses.

Mitigation

It is a frequent strategy to render Islamic terrorism insignificant by comparing its consequences to other acts of terrorism.  Freeing factory-farmed pigs and chickens, digging up genetically-modified crops, or bombing an abortion clinic qualify as terrorism under certain classifications.  It is false moral equivalence, however, to equate the destruction of property for strongly held convictions with the dispassionate and deliberate targeting of non-combatants on the basis of their religion, for ethnic cleansing, enslavement or slaughter.

Professor Ramesh Thakur diminishes terrorism’s threat, which he considers should be seen as small compared with, say, road deaths.  I doubt that Middle East and North African (MENA) states will be comforted by this.  Terrorism destroys territory.  By comparing deaths due to terrorism with car crashes Thakur trivialises its cause and conflates intent and accident.

Rebecca Kitteridge acknowledges the threat and its increase over time, and the watch-list figure she uses, 30 to 40, sounds barely significant.  But this figure correlates with a rule of thumb that one percent of Muslims consider terrorism justified and one percent of that cohort will carry out such acts.  She then wrecked her credibility by saying, “When I talk of the Islamic State I always kind of do it in inverted commas because I don’t think they are a state and I don’t think they are Islamic either.” 

It’s only demographics that gives New Zealanders a sense of detachment from Islamic terrorism. Europe’s recent history shows how vulnerable a nation can be to Islam’s destabilising influences as its adherents’ proportion of the population increases. 

The Lesser Evil Principle

Both Kitteridge and Tayyaba Khan repudiate Islamic State’s Islamic credentials with the solipsistic view that, since it does not concur with their personal views of what constitutes Islam, it cannot be Islamic.  This is contrary to reality.  IS (also as a proxy for most if not all Islamic fundamentalist groups) operates firmly on the Islamic principle of the immutability of Islam’s holy works, and the exemplary actions of its prophet.  Interpretations may vary, but it is incontestable that every action IS takes is permissible under sharia law.  Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has a doctorate in Islamic studies, and it is safe to assume he can justify any action in IS’ name in Islamic terms.

The result of this is the attempt to decouple terrorist acts from the ‘vast number of Muslims who don’t have extremist views’.  In a variation on New Zealand exceptionalism, the Muslim community is presented as integrated, peaceful, and law-abiding.  There is an implication that these people put New Zealand values above those of Islam, notwithstanding that a Muslim’s identity is primarily, wholly and inviolably bound to Islam under threat of death from those of greater purity.

Despite Khan’s exhortation to change Islam from within, overseas experience shows that any such action will be met with threats and intimidation from inside this ‘vast number’.  Worldwide, the arc of post-war history shows that the Islamic agenda has been driven by extremists and not by moderates. 

Even as Muslims demand and are given concessions (which no other minority religion expects), they are granted immunity from the sins of the Islamists.  Yet the role of moderate Muslims in the West is in fact passive support of extremist groups by means of demographic expansion, a voting bloc favouring sympathetic political parties, a resource for influential positions in education and governance, and a wellspring of manpower for both local and global terrorism. 

Defensive Jihad

The Security Intelligence Service’s monitoring of extremists is practically the only defence New Zealand has against them, yet it comes under intense scrutiny from the far Left and strong criticism from the Muslim community.  The creation of implied rights exempting Muslims from criticism is a reflection of a greater principle mentioned above, Islam’s immutability, and its consequent exemption from investigation of any kind.  Human rights have been progressively constrained as an inevitable consequence of Muslim violence and the vociferous complaints from the Western Muslim community on ressentiment, that is, the perceived slights and grievances causing hostility.  Since human rights as Westerners perceive the term do not exist in Islam (they were granted by Allah in the 7^th century and cannot be changed) Muslims themselves have nothing to lose as long as Islamic principles are not curtailed. 

The extreme reluctance to permit analysis of Islam is having devastating effects on free speech in Europe and the U.S., with increasing instances of the ‘hecklers’ veto’, ‘smear and jeer’ responses, disinvitations, and the ultimate dissuader, the assassin’s veto. 

Hijrah

This concept of migration is modelled on Islam’s prophet Mohammad’s flight to Medina from Mecca in 622 AD.  There, he gathered manpower and armaments until he was able to conquer Mecca eight years later.  In modern terms, migration on an unprecedented scale is a consequence of the appalling disruption of the MENA states by terrorism and civil war as millions try to escape.  The illegal migration industry which is sending many hundreds of thousands of people to either Europe or death thus has a religious mandate to continue.

That many people die in the process of war and migration is of limited concern to Muslims because Islamic doctrine guarantees eternal life in paradise to those who live the good life by pleasing God in all they do. Secular Western precepts no longer carry the promise of life after death, thus giving human lives a value that simply doesn’t exist in the Islamic world. In what could be termed a ‘dominant meme’, in that it supplants and suppresses Islam’s doctrine in the Western world-view, Westerners fail to take account of it. This moral disparity is wilfully exploited in Islam’s dealings with the West.

The resultant population shift is causing Europe immense and accelerating problems.  New Zealand already has issues with its Muslim community, to which many Radio New Zealand programmes can attest, while forming just 1% of its population. 

Tawhid

This is Islam’s single and absolute truth that transcends the world, from which Muslims gain authority to act in the way they do.  From this is derived Islam’s essentialism and supremacism, and its adherents’ unique intensity of belief, yaqeen. 

Terror and lure

“Strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.”  The Koran’s directive has many beneficial results for Islam.  The gruesome deaths of its transgressors act as far more than punishment.  It is principally a warning to others.  Do not criticise Islam, do not leave the religion, do not blaspheme, for Jews and Christians – live under the prescribed conditions or forfeit their “contract of protection” and their heads, and for others, convert or die.  This has raised a generation of Islamophobes, whose fear of violent repercussions as a result of criticism renders them mute. 

Preaching between terror and lure is an established doctrine.  It means preaching between the eternal horrors of hell and the carnal pleasures of paradise, and their earthly proxies of Islamist terrorists, and Islam, the Religion of Peace.

Najibullah Lafraie makes it quite clear that we toe the terrorists’ line or face the consequences.  Whose side are we to take?  IS and its cohort by non-interference, with their 7^th century morality as they attack every facet of modern life?  Or the Western world’s defence of democratic modernity and its ability to cope with moral change, Westphalian sovereignty, and the Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman heritage that has manifestly served its world better than Islam has theirs? 

Any level of support for IS and Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, from Lafraie’s advocacy of non-involvement, through the refusal to denounce Muslim activism, to the thousands of Muslims joining IS, is support for the ummah, the global Muslim community and its resurrected caliphate. 

It is this which defines the threat to the Western world and must be actively rejected by Muslim New Zealanders. Insight should examine the motives of Muslims who choose the ummah over New Zealand values, because they cannot have it both ways.

In conclusion, New Zealanders need to grasp the meaning of Islam’s world-view, and how it fundamentally and incompatibly differs from the Western world’s.  Insight has a major role to play here.