That headline comes from the least likely of sources: the very liberal Atlantic magazine. They’ve got a piece out today that completely obliterates the Obama administration’s incessant claims that ISIS is not Islamic and their terror is not religiously motivated. Finally. Of course the libs on this board will disagree. They follow their leader, no questions asked.

Quote:There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.

The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. They refer derisively to “moderns.” In conversation, they insist that they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

To take one example: In September, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, called on Muslims in Western countries such as France and Canada to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock,” poison him, run him over with a car, or “destroy his crops.” To Western ears, the biblical-sounding punishments—the stoning and crop destruction—juxtaposed strangely with his more modern-sounding call to vehicular homicide. (As if to show that he could terrorize by imagery alone, Adnani also referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as an “uncircumcised geezer.”)

But Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion, and his exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

The piece clearly explains that not only is ISIS’s reign of terror rooted in Islam, it walks out a scholarly interpretation the religion to the letter. The United State’s failure to recognize this is part of what allowed ISIS to gain a foothold of power in the first place, and failure to acknowledge that now will only continue to exacerbate the problem.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arch...ts/384980/

Wow, pigs are flying....

So...ISIS was plainly rooted in Islam based on all scholarly interpretations of it...and then formed itself and became powerful and gained a foothold in the middle of a whole hosts of lifelong experts of Islam, thousands of miles away from our shore, but it's all our fault that we didn't recognize this and stop it?

The only thing that will exacerbate the problem is if the rest of the countries in the ME just sit idly by and let them takeover their countries.

We can't do this alone.

I posted this earlier. Read it you might educate yourselves a fraction. Isis is going to stay over there and it's doomed.

It's an informative article and something the liberals are going to have to come to terms with also.

Islam on steroids.

CNN said the Denmark shooter was a gang member.

Yes, he was a member of that biggest gang of thugs... Islam.

But that's not what CNN was trying to put out there.

(02-16-2015 06:56 PM)Paul M Wrote:  CNN said the Denmark shooter was a gang member.

Yes, he was a member of that biggest gang of thugs... Islam.

But that's not what CNN was trying to put out there.

That's typical liberal crap. But to be fair, one woman at CNN (Poppy Harlow?) said yesterday that radical Islam was "metastasizing" into Europe.

If ISIS loses the support of the liberal media, that's a huge setback for them. Those guys rely on the msm to keep the heat off them.

Let's see....is IS most closely associated with:

Christianity? Nope.
Buddhism? No.
Hinduism? No.
Judaism? Oh, heck no!
Atheists? Not.
Commie Bastards? Nope.
Freelance Cons? Nope.
Unions? No.
Greenpeace? Huh?
LGBT? Forgettabout it!
Islam? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

I have heard estimates that the "radical" Islam population could be as high as 25% of all Muslims. It's certainly more that a small fringe movement or they would quickly and easily be eliminated.

(02-16-2015 08:09 PM)THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:  I have heard estimates that the "radical" Islam population could be as high as 25% of all Muslims. It's certainly more that a small fringe movement or they would quickly and easily be eliminated.

Just looking at estimates of IS fighters....

Quote:Estimates of the number of fighters in the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are extraordinarily wide-ranging. On the low end of things, CNN’s Barbara Starr recently reported that “U.S. intelligence estimates that ISIL has a total force of somewhere between 9,000 to 18,000 fighters.” In late 2014, the CIA’s estimate of ISIL’s numbers was slightly higher, as its analysts assessed that the group had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters between its Iraq and Syria holdings.

Other estimates are far higher. Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has said that ISIL has more than 50,000 fighters in Syria alone. The chief of the Russian General Staff recently said that Russia estimates ISIL to have “70,000 gunmen of various nationalities.” In late August of 2014, Baghdad-based security expert Hisham al-Hashimi claimed that ISIL’s total membership could be close to 100,000. By November, Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, told Patrick Cockburn of The Independent that the CIA’s estimates were far too low, and that ISIL had at least 200,000 fighters.

Given this range of estimates, questions naturally arise: Who is right? Which estimate is closest to ISIL’s true numbers? To assess these questions, it’s necessary to consider which parts of ISIL’s force the estimates are attempting to count, the total amount of territory ISIL is occupying, and the attrition that coalition forces have inflicted upon ISIL. Bearing in mind all of these factors, it becomes clear not only that the high-end figures are plausible, but also that they are far more likely than the unrealistically low numbers propounded by U.S. intelligence.

With these factors in mind, Hisham al-Hashimi’s estimate of ISIL having 100,000 men under arms appears plausible. Further, if one takes into account ISIL’s establishment of multiple security bodies and the mass conscription it has imposed in Raqqa, Ninawa, and western Anbar, the overall Kurdish estimate of 200,000 men may be plausible as well.

http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/how-man...nglepage=1

(02-16-2015 05:31 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  So...ISIS was plainly rooted in Islam based on all scholarly interpretations of it...and then formed itself and became powerful and gained a foothold in the middle of a whole hosts of lifelong experts of Islam, thousands of miles away from our shore, but it's all our fault that we didn't recognize this and stop it?

The only thing that will exacerbate the problem is if the rest of the countries in the ME just sit idly by and let them takeover their countries.

We can't do this alone.

It goes back to the unofficial policeman of the world that the US has been labelled with. Some would trace the rise of ISIS to the fact that the American military eliminated to the one individual who could have wiped them out before they could have gained a foothold (Saddam). And that the vacuum left in the aftermath of his death is one that the US is responsible for. And yet, while you assert that the US can't handle the situation alone, I'll go one step further and say we shouldn't do a thing.

I think the funny thing about this article is that its as if this is a huge revelation. Not many Americans, myself included, know a lot about Islam, but most of us knew that these fighters were Islamic extremist, drawing from teachings of Islam. You are not this radical unless you are fighting for a cause you believe in, and they believe in this cause, as evil and heinous as it is. That makes them a very dangerous enemy, much like Imperial Japan.

Maybe someone in the White House will take note.

(02-17-2015 10:31 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(02-16-2015 05:31 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  So...ISIS was plainly rooted in Islam based on all scholarly interpretations of it...and then formed itself and became powerful and gained a foothold in the middle of a whole hosts of lifelong experts of Islam, thousands of miles away from our shore, but it's all our fault that we didn't recognize this and stop it?

The only thing that will exacerbate the problem is if the rest of the countries in the ME just sit idly by and let them takeover their countries.

We can't do this alone.

It goes back to the unofficial policeman of the world that the US has been labelled with. Some would trace the rise of ISIS to the fact that the American military eliminated to the one individual who could have wiped them out before they could have gained a foothold (Saddam). And that the vacuum left in the aftermath of his death is one that the US is responsible for. And yet, while you assert that the US can't handle the situation alone, I'll go one step further and say we shouldn't do a thing.

Never said we couldn't handle it alone, just that we shouldn't. But yes...it was basically due to the misguided decision to de-Baathify the Iraqi government and send their military packing...we didn't need to do this. We could have just got rid of Saddam.