The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[garbon]

So why is Martim watching these videos?

Why do people watch porn? 

Decapitation videos are like porn?

[Martinus]

Can we just glass the Middle East, then send robots capable of extracting and refining oil in high radiation environment, please?

[Martinus]

I never really understand things like this. Seems like beheading Americans on video isn't a good way to get the US out of your business.

Like I alluded to earlier. These people are not operating with the scope of what we consider rational and intelligent behaviour. They are not doing this because they think it is smart, they are doing this because their book tells them to. They are not calculating their behaviour to manipulate american public opinion like so many terror groups which accrue useful idiots and fellow travellers in the west. They read the book, the book says behead infidels, so they behead infidels.

So it seems like they just pick and choose the passages that they like?

That would be so un-christian-like of them. 

[Martinus]

I can't be arsed to watch all of these.  Can you links us up to your favorites?  You know, the ones you find yourself going back to over and over again?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

some people will go to extreme lengths in order to whitewash islam. They're propbably still hoping for the paper with "peace in our time" on it.

[LaCroix]

some people will go to extreme lengths in order to whitewash islam. They're propbably still hoping for the paper with "peace in our time" on it.

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

[Admiral Yi]

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

You've got to be kidding me. 

[Martinus]

some people will go to extreme lengths in order to whitewash islam. They're propbably still hoping for the paper with "peace in our time" on it.

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

[Tamas]

some people will go to extreme lengths in order to whitewash islam. They're propbably still hoping for the paper with "peace in our time" on it.

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

Nice troll

[Viking]

some people will go to extreme lengths in order to whitewash islam. They're propbably still hoping for the paper with "peace in our time" on it.

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

You, sir, are an idiot. Christianity is a Religion of Morals, Islam is a Religion of Law, Atheism is a lack of belief in a God. Most people know this. 

[Viking]

When trying to understand the IS you need to remember that not only do they believe in their religion they take it seriously. Remember if you really are a true believer you substitute your own personal morality, ethics and judgement for that of the book.

It is the lot of appeasers throughout history to elevate hope for peace over all other considerations. Usually it works, which is what most people forget, given the infamy the word "appeasement" carries with it. Fastidiously hoping that people are reasonable works when people end up being reasonable, it fails catastrophically when they are not. At some point you need to remember that what people say in public are about what they are doing and why they are doing it are not only communications with the "other" but also with themselves. It's easy to lie about what others are doing but it is hard to do so about what you are doing yourself.

However spurious or pathetic public justifications are they are usually the justifications people use for themselves. Nobody is the bad guy in his own story. Evil acts are done for allegedly good reasons and people are usually honest about why.

To understand religious crazies you sort of need a person capable of true belief to look at what is believed. The person capable of true belief will take it seriously, just as the IS Hajis are.

Robert Spencer has been saying this for a while now. The book says do X, so the true believer does X. What the koran and hadith tell the believer to do is EVIL. Now IS has given them free reign without any moderation on their behaviour and this is what happens.   

Why Is the Islamic State Behaving This Way?

August 19, 2014 by Robert Spencer

The Islamic State is turning into a huge public relations problem for groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies. For years they have insisted that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorism committed with alarming regularity in its name, and that the people responsible for linking Islam with terrorism were not Islamic jihad terrorists, but "Islamophobic" opponents of jihad terror. But then comes along a group calling itself The Islamic State, committing unimaginable atrocities and presenting each one as an authentic embodiment of Islamic texts and teachings, and the deception campaign at which CAIR officials have labored so assiduously for so many years, and with such great success, is in danger of crashing around their uneasy necks.

Take, for example, the recent revelation that, according to the UN News Centre, "some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery." A similar kidnapping by Islamic jihadists in Nigeria recently horrified the world, but much overlooked was the fact that such behavior is sanctioned by the Qur'an. According to Islamic law, Muslim men can take "captives of the right hand" (Qur'an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50). The Qur'an says: "O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war" (33:50). 4:3 and 4:24 extend this privilege to Muslim men in general, as does this passage. "Certainly will the believers have succeeded: They who are during their prayer humbly submissive, and they who turn away from ill speech, and they who are observant of zakah, and they who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed" (Qur'an 23:1-6).

These passages have not gone unnoticed. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that "we are in the era of jihad," and that meant Muslims would take slaves. In a subsequent interview he elaborated:

Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur'an by the name milk al-yamin, "that which your right hands possess" [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur'an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn't need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point—there is no disagreement from any of them. [...] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.

A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up [this man's] situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, "What is the law of sex slaves?"

The mufti said, "With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war."

"Is this forbidden by Islam?" I asked.

"Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that's it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman."

The Islamic State acts on these beliefs, which are Qur'an-based. The kidnappings, meanwhile, have taken place amid a backdrop of unimaginable slaughter. The victims were those who refused the Islamic State's demand that they convert to Islam to save their lives: a Yazidi woman explained last week why thousands of Yazidis had fled the area of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State: "We came here because the terrorists said, 'Either you convert to Islam or we slaughter you.'"

The Quran says "there is no compulsion in religion" (2:256) – a verse much beloved of Western non-Muslim multiculturalists, but it also says that Muslims must fight unbelievers until "religion is all for Allah" (8:39). And it insists that Muslims should "slay them" wherever they're found (cf. 2:191; 4:89; 9:5).

It also says that Muslims must fight against the "People of the Book" – Jews, Christians, and others who are considered to have received previous revelations from Allah – until they "pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued" (9:29). That option of submission and subjugation, however, is not open to groups that have no written revelation that could qualify them for "People of the Book" status. Hence for the Yazidis, to convert or die are the only Qur'anic options open for them.

The Islamic State's actions are an open book, and that book is the Qur'an. American Muslim spokesmen would do well to explain how they are misinterpreting the Islamic holy books, but claims to that effect have been vague and short of references to problematic passages. As long as that refusal to confront the problem continues, so will the killing.

[Solmyr]

The Ottomans were big on it. The French too for a while.

It was the humane way to kill people

It was also a good show.

[grumbler]

i don't see much difference between christianity and islam, or atheism for that matter.

You've got to be kidding me. 

He's not the sharpest tool in the shed.  Maybe he is incapable of telling the difference between religion and lack of it.

[Martinus]

I am not sure I fully agree with Viking - I want to, but similar passages can also be found in the Bible - and I am not a sufficiently expert theologian to say if there is a difference between the two books in this respect. Plus there are even in Christianity those, called dominationists, (fortunately most of them are fringe and scarce loons) who say the law should be based on the Mosaic law. Same goes for Judaism adherents.

So my question is - is the difference between Islamists on one hand and dominationist Christians and ultra-Orthodox Jews really qualitative or is it purely quantitative (i.e. with sufficient numbers of the dominationist Christians for example we could have a Christian version of ISIS the kind Malthus's aunt wrote about)?

[Solmyr]

The difference is that Christianity has had a strong organization, the Church, to keep such loons on the fringe.