Last year, the Sydney siege prompted many to demonise people with mental illness and to claim that the perpetrator couldn’t have been a true Muslim (see my post about it for more). With the recent attacks in Europe (and it’s all about Europe), this is recurring on a massive scale. Some examples:
Picture: DYI fake McDonald’s street cart surrounded by Arabic script. Caption: If ISIS is Islam this is McDonald’s.
Translation: Like McDonald’s, Islam apparently has an official brand, as opposed to being a religion of great diversity. Also, saying ISIS are Muslims means apparently being stuck with the strawman that you think of them as “being”/representing Islam.
This is not a Muslim, this is a Sikh [Picture]. This is not a Muslim, this is a Hindu [Picture]. This is not a Muslim, this is a Buddhist [Picture]. These are not a Muslim, these are Christians [Picture]. This is not a Muslim [Picture of ISIS combatants] this is a fundamentalist nutjob terrorist!
Translation: ISIS performs atrocities because their combatants are ‘crazy’. People with mental illness, meet bus. Also we readers of the meme know what a Muslim is and have the authority to declare someone not a Muslim because they’re evil. Because a true member of a religion can’t be evil. [More on this type of No-True-Scotsmanning here]
Some people want to pin the Paris attacks on an entire religion of 1.5 billion people. Here’s HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ISIS AND MUSLIMS. [Juxtaposed pictures of ISIS combatant and woman in hijab.]Kills indiscriminately vs Wants to flee that guy. Wild eyes of crazed murderer vs Weary eyes from being blamed for his atrocities. Uses iPhone to recruit others on social media vs Uses iPhone to condemn attacks on social media. Suicide belt vs Fashion belt. Attacks mosques vs Hopes ISIS (or right-wing nuts) don’t attack her mosque. Calls himself a Muslim vs Calls him a terrorist.
Translation: ISIS kill indiscriminately (because they’re ‘crazy’?). The discriminate targeting of Shias, Yazidis, LGBT people, Christians etc doesn’t exist. ISIS don’t have theological, ideological or political agendas. Most disturbingly, Muslim and terrorist are mutually exclusive. Presumably no Christian, Jewish, Hindu etc terrorists exist either. Ain’t defining things out of existence great?! Also, we can ignore people’s self-identifications if we think it’s more “compassionate” to do so.
Yesterday an ISIS member stopped the car of a Christian couple. ISIS member: Are you Muslim? Christian man: Yes, I’m Muslim. ISIS member: If you are a Muslim, then recite a verse of Quran. Christian man recited a verse from the Bible. ISIS member: Ok allah go. Later his wife tells him: ‘I cannot believe the risk you just took. Why did u tell him that we are Muslims? If he knew you were lying he would have killed both of us.’ ‘Do not worry! If they knew the Quran they would not kill people’ answered the Husband. ISIS is not Islam, terrorism has no religion.
Translation: Yep, terrorists can’t be religious by definition. Also ISIS are completely ignorant of the Quran; even their statement claiming responsibility for the Paris attacks must have been concocted by Dr Google. Obviously they couldn’t have included those Quran citations themselves.
</sarcasm>
As reasonable people keep saying, there are 1.6 billion Muslims. But accepting this figure means you have to accept a lot of diversity in people who “get to” be called Muslim. And this is an accepted number despite many Muslims not considering other Muslims as Muslim. For example, some Sunnis (eg. ISIS and many Wahhabi groups) don’t consider Shia Muslims to be Muslim. There are lots of other smaller groups not considered Muslim by many Muslims (eg. certain Sufi sects, Ismailis, Alevis, Alawis, Nation of Islam etc). From a secular perspective, we don’t pick one of these theologies and then use it to “cancel” the membership of others.
Let’s look at a few definitions of Islam from a few Muslim websites aimed at English-speaking non-Muslims. This is obviously very simplified but it’s still interesting to note how these sources choose to define a Muslim to their audience.
- From Islamweb.net: “The word ‘Muslim’ means one who submits to the will of God. The first principle of Islam is known as the Shahaadah (Testimony of Faith), and is as follows: ‘There is no one worthy of worship except Allaah (God) and Muhammad is the Final Apostle (Messenger) of God.’ When we mention the characteristics of a Muslim, we do not assume that all Muslims have these characteristics, but only those who follow — to the best of their abilities — the teachings of Islam.” [Many qualities with positive connotations follow]
- From Muslim.org: “These verses make it clear that the person who believes in the oneness of God and the prophethood of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and believes in his revelation, is a Muslim. Verse no. 5 goes so far as to say that a person who offers the greeting assalamu alaikum to show that he is a Muslim cannot be called kafir (unbeliever or non-Muslim).”
- From IntroductionToIslam.org: The word ‘Muslim’ means one who submits to the will of God. This is done by declaring that ‘there is no god except one God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.’
Ok so actual religious organisations say that the Shahada is enough for someone to be a Muslim, possibly with the addition of believing in the revelation of Islam (the Quran and for some sects probably the Sunnah). This is a test few ISIS members would fail. You may be a “bad” Muslim (whatever that is), or a homicidal monster, but that’s not the same. It’s pretty gross to disregard this. On a personal note I know someone who converted to Islam largely due to have the same religion as his Muslim wife. He just did the Shahada, didn’t do much study beyond that and is as unobservant as he was before (which he doesn’t deny) – but still considers himself a Muslim. It would be pretty gross to say he’s lying or wrong about his identity.
What some people probably mean to say is that ISIS don’t represent most (or even many) Muslims. And yes, anyone who thinks the typical Muslim is an ISIS supporter is living in a far-right fantasy world. But this has nothing to do with whether they’re actually Muslim. It’s also a bad idea to conflate theological disagreement with political disagreement. Theologically, ISIS can be placed in the Wahhabist/Salafi schools which number about 50 million people (of which ISIS are a fringe of a fringe). So the vast majority of Muslims don’t accept their approach to Islam. On the other hand, polls about support for ISIS (eg. this one by Pew) are more likely to draw out political disagreement. You can of course agree with their theology but not the methods, or vice versa.
The dissociation between ISIS and Islam aims to avoid fueling the racism, Islamophobia, anti-refugee sentiment and all the other ugly reactions to the recent terror attacks (reactions that are part of ISIS’s strategy). But it’s intellectually dishonest. For more problems with such approaches, I recommend you read this entire post by Alex Gabriel: The Rights Of Muslims Don’t Rest On Islam Being Sacrosanct. Here’s the money quote:
We don’t need bad apologetics to refrain from collectively dehumanising believers. Muslims don’t deserve to be treated as human beings because their religion is a squeaky-clean monolith of peace and love that never produces anything bad – they deserve to be treated as human because they are, and because no amount of harm a religion might cause makes all its followers responsible. If that’s not obvious, it’s because we’re used to debating brown people’s humanity: we can allow Islam to be critiqued without making Muslims’ conditional.
A-fucking-men.
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