A Point of View: Isis and what it means to be modern
 

This is probably one of the best opinion pieces on ISIS that I have heard. It makes a lot more sense too! I wish Americans would wake up. It isn't all about religion. That is where we all have it wrong. This was written in 2014.



Although it claims to be reviving a traditional Islamic system of government, the jihadist group Isis is a very modern proposition, writes John Gray.
When you see the leader of Isis, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in Mosul announcing the creation of a caliphate - an Islamic state ruled by a religious leader - it's easy to think that what you're watching is a march back into the past. The horrifying savagery with which the jihadist organisation treats anyone that stands in its way seems to come from a bygone era. The fact that Isis - the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which has now changed its name to the Islamic State - claims that it wants to restore an early type of Islam, leads many of us to see it as trying to bring about a reversion to mediaeval values.
To my mind, this gives too much credence to the way Isis views itself. There's actually little in common between the horribly repressive regime it has established in parts of Iraq and Syria and the subtle Islamic states of mediaeval times, which in Spain, for example, exercised a degree of tolerance at a time when the rest of Europe was wracked by persecution. Destroying ancient shrines and mosques, Isis is trying to eradicate every trace of Islamic tradition. It's probably even more oppressive than the Taliban were in Afghanistan. In power, Isis resembles a 20th Century totalitarian state more than any type of traditional rule.

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After just reading your excerpt above, one thing jumps out at me. The destruction which IS is visiting on Syria and Iraq is being visited on pre-Islamic sites like Palmyra and also on Sunni sites which, in the view of IS and of all Wahhabists, are symbols of apostacy.

The writer may be correct in his assessment, though I doubt it, but the example he uses above is deeply flawed. The Wahhabi tradition dates back to the mid 18th century and was profoundly atavistic even for those times and that place.

I didn't see it in this article but I have read others where he said that the United States created the conditions and IS actually grew from Wahhabism.

I agree with that.

I think it is naïve to have thought Maliki and the Shia's would invite the Sunni's to power share. Why would they? The same reason they are not going to waste time or men on Mosul.

George Bush and the USA basically created a Shia city-state in Baghdad.

To bad that no one listened to Joe Biden - he proposed that they divide Iraq into a Federation of three states Shia, Sunni and Kurd.

It certainly couldn't have worked worse than what they did try.

Except the Turks, or at least the right wing Turks, would have seen Iraqi Kurdistan as an existential threat. Also, given the way that L. Paul Bremer's Great Libertarian Experiment gutted the institutions of Iraq and disenfranchised the intelligentsia, there would still be the profound social unrest in Iraq.

So, we'd have the Turks fucking with the Kurds and the "Sunni State" making war on the "Shia State".

Now, I do think that one of the long-term consequences of the current crisis will indeed be a Kurdestan or two. The pivotal role of the Iraqi Kurds and the Syrian Kurds in the fight against IS gives them a legitimate claim for their own state(s) and the political power to achieve it. It remains to be seen how the Turks and the other neighbors react.

Yes, these are key aspects of a much more complex situation. Al-Wahhab gave them the ideology and the US gave them the context.

It might use modern means but Isis is apocalyptic; it is looking for the end.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...g-dont-6848067

Yeah, it is a matter of who gets the oil - lol!