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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

The Atlantic: “The Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.”

Feb 18, 2015 5:36 am By Robert Spencer

IslamicStateshahadahThis is an extraordinary piece, as it represents one of the first, if not the first, mainstream media acknowledgment that what I have been saying all these years, and illustrated in detail in thirteen books, hundreds of articles, and tens of thousands of posts here, has been absolutely correct: that jihadis use the texts and teachings to justify their actions and make recruits, and make a case that obviously convinces many young Muslims, that they represent the truest and most authentic expression of Islam.

Will Graeme Wood be now smeared and derided as an “Islamophobe” and a “bigot” for stating these obvious truths? Or will his exaggerated confidence in what he calls “quietest Salafis” (not reproduced below) save him from that? In any case, this is a momentous article: it may (may) represent a crack in the edifice, a blade of grass poking through the concrete, a tardy surrender of at least one bastion of politically correct wishful thinking to the overwhelming force of reality. We shall see.

“What ISIS Really Wants,” by Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, March 2015 (thanks to all who sent this in):

…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.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal….

Denying the holiness of the Koran or the prophecies of Muhammad is straightforward apostasy. But Zarqawi and the state he spawned take the position that many other acts can remove a Muslim from Islam. These include, in certain cases, selling alcohol or drugs, wearing Western clothes or shaving one’s beard, voting in an election—even for a Muslim candidate—and being lax about calling other people apostates. Being a Shiite, as most Iraqi Arabs are, meets the standard as well, because the Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection. (The Islamic State claims that common Shiite practices, such as worship at the graves of imams and public self-flagellation, have no basis in the Koran or in the example of the Prophet.) That means roughly 200 million Shia are marked for death. So too are the heads of state of every Muslim country, who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office or enforcing laws not made by God.

Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims. Exempted from automatic execution, it appears, are Christians who do not resist their new government. Baghdadi permits them to live, as long as they pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation. The Koranic authority for this practice is not in dispute.…

Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons.

Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent.

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

The Koran specifies crucifixion as one of the only punishments permitted for enemies of Islam. The tax on Christians finds clear endorsement in the Surah Al-Tawba, the Koran’s ninth chapter, which instructs Muslims to fight Christians and Jews “until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The Prophet, whom all Muslims consider exemplary, imposed these rules and owned slaves.

Leaders of the Islamic State have taken emulation of Muhammad as strict duty, and have revived traditions that have been dormant for hundreds of years. “What’s striking about them is not just the literalism, but also the seriousness with which they read these texts,” Haykel said. “There is an assiduous, obsessive seriousness that Muslims don’t normally have.”

Before the rise of the Islamic State, no group in the past few centuries had attempted more-radical fidelity to the Prophetic model than the Wahhabis of 18th‑century Arabia. They conquered most of what is now Saudi Arabia, and their strict practices survive in a diluted version of Sharia there. Haykel sees an important distinction between the groups, though: “The Wahhabis were not wanton in their violence.” They were surrounded by Muslims, and they conquered lands that were already Islamic; this stayed their hand. “ISIS, by contrast, is really reliving the early period.” Early Muslims were surrounded by non-Muslims, and the Islamic State, because of its takfiri tendencies, considers itself to be in the same situation.

If al-Qaeda wanted to revive slavery, it never said so. And why would it? Silence on slavery probably reflected strategic thinking, with public sympathies in mind: when the Islamic State began enslaving people, even some of its supporters balked. Nonetheless, the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

In October, Dabiq, the magazine of the Islamic State, published “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour,” an article that took up the question of whether Yazidis (the members of an ancient Kurdish sect that borrows elements of Islam, and had come under attack from Islamic State forces in northern Iraq) are lapsed Muslims, and therefore marked for death, or merely pagans and therefore fair game for enslavement. A study group of Islamic State scholars had convened, on government orders, to resolve this issue. If they are pagans, the article’s anonymous author wrote,

Yazidi women and children [are to be] divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations [in northern Iraq] … Enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Koran and the narrations of the Prophet … and thereby apostatizing from Islam….

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Filed Under: anti-dhimmitude, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), Jihad doctrine Tagged With: Graeme Wood, The Atlantic


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Comments

  1. Buraq says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 6:18 am

    Fascinating! ‘The Atlantic’ has a readership of 1.5 million and 400,000 subscribers. That makes it very influential. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a general recognition that Islam’s teachings, doctrines and ideology, are racist, misogynistic and hate-filled.

    • Brian Hoff says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 7:42 am

      The muslim of the west and moderate moslim think the idear of slavery is outdate and the Prophet of Islam didnot like slavery at all. There was than sect alot like Islamist State it was total wipe out by one of the four rightly gruide Caph for being too violate and not Islanist in it practive.

      • Angemon says

        Feb 18, 2015 at 8:03 am

        Hi defenderofislam. You say:

        “The muslim of the west and moderate moslim think the idear of slavery is outdate and the Prophet of Islam didnot like slavery at all.”

        You’re just confirming what we already know: to be a “moderate” muslim, one has to ignore recorded parts is islamic orthodoxy, like the institution of slavery. Muhammad had slaves. He captured and traded slaves. He was particularly fond of Mary, a Coptic Christian sex slave. There’s nothing in islam orthodoxy stating that muhammad didn’t like slavery – at least when the slaves were non-muslims.

        More from defenderofislam:

        “There was than sect alot like Islamist State it was total wipe out by one of the four rightly gruide Caph for being too violate and not Islanist in it practive.”

        Exactly who wiped out who, where and when? Once again, you leave us with some generic statements and no evidence or source to back it up.

        • ECAW says

          Feb 18, 2015 at 12:37 pm

          He’ll be talking about the Kharijites, the mob who assassinated Ali:

          http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/01/islamic-state-kjarijites-continuation.html#

      • Spot On says

        Feb 18, 2015 at 10:20 am

        I am sure that there are some “moderate Muslims” that either reject or don’t know the teachings of Mohammed. The problem is that there is no way to know until they kill or enslave in the name of Allah, as did Mohammed.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 10:27 am

      Hello Buraq — Here is another path to Graeme Wood’s comprehensive article — this one is the National Journal.

      Set aside about 30 minutes for a complete read of it. Commenter Jay, below me in this stream, mentions CAIR — so I went to its website.

      Do you know what their “motto” is ? Ready for a laugh ? “Making democracy work for everyone”. I actually feel a bit sorry for Nihad Awad and his besieged pals . . .

      Never, in the worst of nightmares, did they foresee how ISIS would stick a middle finger in their faces, using beheading & immolation to say “We don’t need no f*cking stealth timetable”.

      As to CAIR’s current problem managing damage control, there is an expression which seems fitting : You can’t polish a turd.

      • jihad3tracker says

        Feb 18, 2015 at 10:29 am

        OOOPS ! ! ! HERE IS THE URL FOR MR. WOOD’S PIECE :

        http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/what-isis-really-wants-20150217

        ————-

    • jihad3tracker says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 10:43 am

      A perfect opportunity to wake up your own federal and state elected officials — particularly Democrats — who are still in denial and think ISIS is “un-Islamic”.

      PAM GELLER HAS A COMPLETE VERSION OF THE ASTONISHING PIECE BY MR. WOOD : http://www.pamelageller.com.

      And if you want to send ONLY the URL — without getting Pam into it — here is the National Journal’s version of that entire article : http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/what-isis-really-wants-20150217

    • Barbie says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 12:10 pm

      Like We Don’t ALREADY KNOW IT!!

    • TheBuffster says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 9:36 pm

      “All this free stuff would be paid by, plunder?”

      And the efforts of slaves.

  2. Damocles says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 6:39 am

    Examine whether Islam is antithetical to Human Rights.

    Please sign this petition here:
    http://chn.ge/1yBGjgK

  3. thomas pellow says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 6:48 am

    The West’s political class and much of MSM remain in denial about the tenets of Islam and about Islam’s long violent history of conquest and imperialism.

    The MSM, in its ignorance, defers to Islamic representatives to provide the false, unchallenged narrative about Islamic ideology and history.

  4. Alan says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 7:00 am

    Moslem terrorist operatives of HAMAS-CA Islam Relations should be treated as enemy combatants and detained and deported. There is no room whatsoever in today’s world for Moslem Brotherhood Jihadists in suits in Washington. All HAMAS CA Islamic Relations staff are hateful criminals and are just the same as Hitler. There must be death by shooting squad fir Niwad and Hooper after a war crimes trial.

  5. Always On Watch says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 7:02 am

    The crack in the mainstream media’s stonewalling — a good thing.

    The problem: it’s 30 seconds till midnight on the doomsday clock and — even worse — the West’s political leaders don’t recognize the reality of the threat.

    A lot of Westerners do recognize what’s going on. Just night, a former student of mine stopped by to check on Mr. AOW and me in this brutal weather in the D.C. area. G, my former student, “gets it” and sees through the taqiyya of his Facebook friends who are Muslims. And G challenges them, too! No shrinking violet, he!

    But the West’s political leaders? They seem determined to cast Western Civilization into the dustbin of history!

  6. Angemon says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 7:54 am

    Has hell froze over yet? Or is this one of the signs of the apocalypse?

  7. Angemon says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 7:55 am

    Also, it seems that “Brian Hoff”/defenderofislam is in damage control mode, going as far as his linguistic skills allow him to try to convince JW regulars that what the article says is false.

  8. ApolloSpeaks says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:40 am

    THE TRUTH ABOUT ISIS

    Deadly, murdering, genocidal Caliph Al-Baghdadi channels the infernal prophet Mohammed from his place in hell like no one else in Islam today. That’s why thousands are flocking to his banner of death dreaming of self-sacrifice and martyrdom in a war to make Islam a great power again.

    http://www.apollospeaks.com

  9. marc says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:51 am

    I hope he’s not planing any trips to the UK in the near future, the truth, that’s a banning offence he has committed.

  10. cs says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:54 am

    4500 comments and counting, most applauding. It is not really harsh on Muslims actually.

    • voegelinian says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 4:40 pm

      “It is not really harsh on Muslims actually.”

      Yes; because the writer, Graeme Wood, makes the staggeringly sweeping claim that “nearly all Muslims” oppose ISIS. This shows, yet again, what I realized recently is the real Problem of the Problem: the PC MCs aren’t so much concerned about Islam, but about Muslims. The PC MCs have shown signs that they would even throw Islam itself under bus — just so they can be sure to save the vast majority of Muslims.

      (Save from what, the reader may ask? Why, naturally, to save them from the Evil White West who is ever on the verge of genociding Brown People — so goes the implicit, and implicitly racist (reverse-racist, that is), meme of the PC MC paradigm.)

      • Demsci says

        Feb 19, 2015 at 12:32 am

        //”the real Problem of the Problem: the PC MCs aren’t so much concerned about Islam, but about Muslims. The PC MCs have shown signs that they would even throw Islam itself under bus — just so they can be sure to save the vast majority of Muslims.”//

        I hope that this analysis of Voegelinian is on to something. about a little paradigm-shift.

        Yes, out of lazy thinking or trying to be fair,objective, balanced and also out of sort of love, forgiveness, or simply cosying up to Muslims, and for more reasons, it seems to me to that many or most Westerners always tried to shield Muslims from “judgement”, so much so that they even attack those who criticize Islam and Muslims more than Islam and Muslims themselves.

        But if now, because of the avalanche of jihadist attacks and increasing general knowledge of Islamic doctrine, the Policors and the “normative” Westerners, especially in media and politics are finally “ditching defense of that Islamic doctrine, bit by bit”

        in order to protect only the “poor innocent majority of Muslims”, well, then they might finally pay attention to the anti-democratic, violence-inciting parts and interpretations of Islam.

        And reflect that in the media and towards Muslims, especially in the West. Like mayor Aboutaleb, who was in Washington this week, was implying again.

        Isn’t Aboutaleb implying that at least some interpretations of Islam are worse than others, when he admonishes those who disagree with Western Values should leave Western countries? Like Graeme Wood implied this when he wrote that what ISIS proclaims is VERY Islamic, so VALID, yet it is only one interpretation of Islam?

        And so that there are multiple interpretations of Islam? This is not the total rejection of Islam that we would like. But it goes to attacking the infallibility and clarity of Quran-Sunnah by implying it contents are AVIO (Ambiguous-Vague-Incomplete-Obsolete) and towards criticizing the very bad consequences of that? And the need for Muslims to somehow take responsibility for some kind of reaction?

        And for the 10th time; I DON;t expect the Muslims to comply, I only expect the Westerners to criticize Islamic sources more and holding Muslims more accountable for the shape of those sources.

  11. Beagle says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 9:08 am

    Mr. Spencer,

    I would be interested to know what you think about the “quietist” Salafists. That was the only information in the piece I found novel.

    As Muhammad is viewed as uswah hasanah my first thought is that quietists face an uphill battle, assuming quietism is a real thing.

    • cs says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 9:26 am

      Me too, I was curious about this “hassidic” muzzies.

    • voegelinian says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 4:36 pm

      Quietist Salafis is just the latest permutation, under another name, of the Moderate Muslim. No doubt Graeme Wood is thinking (so to speak) of Muslims like the Tablighi Jamaat, whom our “expert analysts” in the West often think are “peaceful” and “apolitical” only because they (the expert analysts, that is) have failed to do their job of thinking carefully about the data they are supposed to be researching.

      More on the Tablighi Jamaat:

      http://www.meforum.org/686/tablighi-jamaat-jihads-stealthy-legions

      • Angemon says

        Feb 18, 2015 at 4:42 pm

        voegelinian posted:

        “ No doubt Graeme Wood is thinking (so to speak) of Muslims like the Tablighi Jamaat”

        So voeg, are you in favor of or against mind reading? Or are in favor of mind readings you do and against mind readings others do? Yup, seems like option c).

  12. doh-swami says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 9:09 am

    This could be the start of something big….

  13. Lesley says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 10:14 am

    Well, finally! It’s good to see the plain truth being spoken in the mainstream media for a change. We need more of this truth in mainstream media. Time is ticking, and the Islamists aren’t patiently waiting for the free world to catch up to speed.

    Islamic State is holding territory in Libya now, and will be in Italy soon if the United Nations or NATO doesn’t intervene (or the United States if we had a President who wasn’t an apologist/Islamist). ISIS has fighters 300 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa, and about 500 miles from mainland Italy = Europe by sea. Boatloads of North African refugees are still being accepted in Italy as we speak, so it’s not like they can’t catch a ride and arrive in stealth.

    If and when that happens, so many people are going to be so surprised that this Islamist violence (or however they like to refer to it in a politically correct way) has touched mainland Europe. “How could this happen?” people will say in shock, bewildered that this isn’t just an ‘over there’ Middle Eastern unrest issue anymore.

    Oh, and get ready. Our confused/diabolical President is planning to quadruple the amount of Syrian refugees that the USA takes in. Congress, at least, is properly alarmed and calling this plan, ‘the back door for jihadis’.

    Maybe we should all write to the management of The Atlantic and thank them for publishing this article. I’m sure CAIR and the likes of them will be throwing them plenty of shade for speaking the truth… Let’s add some balance to their world and say, ‘thank you.’

  14. Michael Warden says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 10:42 am

    It may be of peripheral interest but the British Labour government of 1997 to 2010 instituted – according to an accidentally leaked memo – a policy of deliberately bringing into the country Pakistanis. Advertisements were published in Pakistan telling potential immigrants that houses and jobs were waiting for them in Britain and when they received their citizenship ( put through on the nod without any checks ), they could then bring over their wives and families. 99.9 % of the child groomers and rapists recently publicized here in Britain were Pakistanis. A deliberate policy to make Britain ” truly multicultural “. The child rape continues. A few resignations but NO arrests.

    • ECAW says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 12:58 pm

      I remember asking a politics lecturer, around 2000, what was the plan behind all this immigration since there must be one. He just shrugged and denied that there was any plan. Several years later a Labour Party speechwriter, Andrew Neather, was careless enough to admit that there was indeed a plan with two objectives – firstly to make the Conservatives look racist and secondly to import likely Labour voters.

  15. voegelinian says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 4:18 pm

    “Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do.” — Graeme Wood.

    Graeme Wood just made a sweeping statement about approximately a billion people who inhabit some 80 countries around the world. A staggeringly glib feat of global mind-reading.

    • Angemon says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 4:32 pm

      voegelinian posted:

      “Graeme Wood just made a sweeping statement about approximately a billion people who inhabit some 80 countries around the world. A staggeringly glib feat of global mind-reading.”

      Perhaps Graeme Wood graduated from the Hesperado School For The Special People.

    • mortimer says

      Feb 18, 2015 at 11:15 pm

      “Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do.” — Graeme Wood.

      In fact, he’s wrong! Because 65% of Muslims worldwide want a CALIPHATE and strict SHARIA LAW.

      That’s precisely what ISIS is doing!

      IDIOT!

  16. dlbrand says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 5:10 pm

    Robert accurately state, this may be “… a tardy surrender of at least one bastion of politically correct wishful thinking to the overwhelming force of reality. We shall see.”

    Indeed, Well stated, Spencer.

    The overwhelming evidence disclosing IS is as Islamic as one can be is just that—overwhelming.

    All the same, still, FoxNews and others holding tight to the myth of the existence of a moderate Islam, thus Moderate Muslims who follow the spelled out tenets of that Moderate Islam, pitted against those that have perverted the “beautiful faith”: the extremist, and their twisted, contorted rendition of the “sacred texts,” that IS has, somehow, come by.

    I find it noteworthy, there is no question, now that the Islamic State has been “revived,” the Khaleefah reestablished, a standing Khaleef filling the office of the State, which is now an entity that has survived eight years + to date, having announced its formation in November 2006; they are following hard, the order of Abu Bakr. And thus the ordinances and regulations of the Established caliph. Thus the caliph-based system of ruling and governing. Which is, we’d do well to reckon with, the only correct and lawful system the Ummah is to be governed by.

    For such reasons the now common use of fire as punishment.

    Briefly here, just a few notes on Abu Bakr, the first Khaleef of the Khaleefah of the “Messenger of Allah’s”; these excerpts from The Biography of ABU BAKR AS-SIDDEEQ, By Dr. ‘Ali Muhammad Muhhamad As-Sallaabee, Translated by Faisal Shafeeq, DARUSSALAM, First Edition, 2007. Lebanon [Kalamullah.Com]:

    The scholars of Ahlus-Sunnah Wal-Jammaa’ah, both from the past and present, all agree that, after the death of the Prophet, Abu Bakr was more deserving than anyone else to become the overall ruler and Khaleefah of the Muslim nation. Not a single Companion abstained from making a pledge to recognize Abu Bakr as his leader and Khaleefah. This is significant in that it establishes the clear validity of Abu Bakr’s caliphate, since Allah would not unite the Companions upon misguidance. (Ibid, P. 235.)

    …………………..

    There has always been a universal consensus among Muslims that the caliphate-based system of rule is the only correct and legal system of governance in the Muslim nation. It is through the office of the caliphate that the affairs of the nation are managed. The role of the Khaleefah is, simply put, to apply the Shariah, to manage the affairs of the Muslim nation, and to take care of the needs of his people. (Ibid, P. 237.)
    ………………….

    The caliphate-based system of rule is based on the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, and both of these sources teach us ….

    Through the caliphate-based system of rule, the person that is chosen to lead the Muslim nation is known as the Khaleefah….Muslims scholars unanimously agree that it is the obligatory duty of Muslims of any given era to appoint someone to be their Khaleefah. It then becomes that Khaleefah’s duty to oVersee [sic] the affairs of his nation, to apply the teachings of Islam among his people, to establish justice throughout his realm, to provide for the needs of his people, to establish the geographical boundaries of his nation, to defend those boundaries against foreign empires and countries, and to spread the message of Islam to foreign peoples.

    The Qur’an, the Sunnah, and Ijmaa’ (consensus of the scholars of any given generation)—these Islamic legislative sources all confirm the collective obligation of Muslims to appoint a Khaleefah to rule over them, and to then obey him. Allah said:

    “O you who believe! Obey Allah and obey that Messenger (Muhammad), and those of you (Muslims) who are in authority.” (Qur’an 4:59) (Ibid, P.238.)

    …………………….

    Without a doubt, Abu Bakr was the most knowledgeable of all of the Prophet’s Companions. He adhered closely to the Prophet’s company through every stage of the Prophet’s life….(Ibid, P. 240.)

    ……………………..

    It was clear that Abu Bakr was not going to invent a new way of ruling the Muslim nation; rather, he was going to adhere closely to the blueprint that was left behind by the Prophet—his sayings, deeds, and legal rulings…. Abu Bakr did not deviate from the Prophet’s methodology by more than even the span of the hand or, for that matter, the width of a stand of hair. This is why we find that, during the early days of his rule, Abu Bakr made key decisions that were exactly in keeping with the methodology and known wishes of the Prophet ….(Ibid, P. 241.)

    Decisions, we note, that included as punishment for the apostates and those fighting against the Islamic State, the common use of fire.

    Thus, we’d likewise do well to note, for no slight reason was Abu Bark’s letter to the Apostates–which includes in it his command for his commanders to kill the apostates “in a severe manner using all means, “ to include, “ to burn them alive with fire”– featured in full in the latest issue of Islamic State’s on-line Magazine, Dabiq, under the heading of “From the pages of History, An Explicit Ultimatum from the Salaf to the Apostates.” (pp. 17 – 18.)

    What’s more, we’d do well to regard the following facts, with respect to Islam and those who claim to be adherents to it:

    The Prophet said, “Whoever dies without having a Bai’ah over his neck dies the death of (pre-Islamic) ignorance.” (Muslim)

    This Hadeeth contains a clear warning to those who abstain from making a pledge of allegiance to the overall leader of the Muslim nation. If a person does not make such a pledge to the Khaleefah, he lives a life of misguidance; and if he dies without having made it, he dies the death of misguidance.

    Uniting upon a leader is so important that, in Islam, one is commanded to kill anyone who attempts to stage a rebellion or coup against the Khaleefah or Imam of the Muslims. (Ibid, P 249.)

    (The Biography of ABU BAKR AS-SIDDEEQ, By Dr. ‘Ali Muhammad Muhhamad As-Sallaabee, Translated by Faisal Shafeeq, DARUSSALAM, First Edition, 2007. Lebanon [Kalamullah.Com])

    Just as the “prophet” speaks to in the following hadith:

    “…Whoever wishes to be delivered from the fire and enter the garden should die with faith in Allah and the Last Day ….He who pledges allegiance to the Caliph should give him the pledge of his hand and the sincerity of his heart (i.e. submit to him both outwardly as well as inwardly). He should obey him to the best of his capacity. If another man comes forward (as a claimant to Caliphate), disputing his authority, they (the Muslims) should behead the latter….”

    (Sahih Muslim, By Imam Muslim, Rendered in English by ‘Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, Islamic Book Service, Fourth Edition, 2005, Vol. III, Book of Ermitage [sic], pp. 271 -272, #1844.)

    To be brief…

  17. Sharon Hanna says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 7:25 pm

    Told a liberal friend (who doesn’t read anything “anti Islam”) about this article in the Atlantic and he wanted to read it. Just because of where it came from.
    Hope there are lots more liberals who do the same.

  18. abad says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:20 pm

    I still think their “ideal Islamic state” should be relocated to another planet the same distance from a G-star as our earth is. No wonder NASA is so hard at work finding other sustainable earth-like worlds…..

  19. mortimer says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 11:12 pm

    Obama needs to get 10,000 copies of this article sent to him!

  20. GI-had Joe says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 11:20 pm

    My brother, who knows the author, sent me this article last night. I too applaud a mainstream publication for printing this article. About time.

  21. Halaku says

    Feb 18, 2015 at 11:47 pm

    From the main article: “When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons”. – brilliant sarcasm

  22. mortimer says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 12:19 am

    “The world must continue to lift up the voices of Muslim clerics and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of Islam,” Obama wrote on Wednesday.

    The Atlantic magazine article completed contradicted and demolished his argument that Islam is peaceful.

    Obama’s argument is basically, ‘Believe me because I am the President.’

  23. Kaffir Lime says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 1:31 am

    “There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas”.
    Fyodor Dostoevsky

  24. Karl says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 8:55 am

    IT’s true that according to Islam subjugated and taxed Christians are supposed to be protected but Daesh is murdering Christians all over the Middle East and Africa. Islam creates paranoia toward the infidel and projects its brutality upon the infidel. Daesh claims that Christians forcibly convert Muslim women to Christianity when it’s the other way around. Then Daesh gets revenge by waging Jihad agianst Christians by blinding them and chopping off their heads. So although Islamic doctrine doesn’t directly mandate killing of subjugated infidels it leads to creation of paranoia which leads to an Islamic obligation to kill them.

  25. Tanto says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 9:44 am

    This article from last year asked the same question http://theterrorfiles.com/is-isil-islamic/ and speculated that ISIL was not Islamic because it had barely scratched the surface of the barbarism found in Islam as practiced by early followers of Mohammed as he worked to spread his ideology through warfare, slaughter, and slavery.

    Given ISIS’s latest acts, it has finally proved itself fully Islamic.

  26. Mark says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 9:57 am

    Quote “Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do”.

    Shame he does not know about al taqiyya then.

    Muslims practice warfare lying, to disguise islams past, its teachings and its likewise evil agenda for us non muslims.

    ALL muslims do it!

  27. Altar Boy says

    Feb 19, 2015 at 1:59 pm

    The Graeme Wood article is the first accurate main-stream article I have read about Islamic Jihad. This is not a surprise for me that Wood was published by The Atlantic magazine, because The Atlantic has a long history of publishing authors that will be honest and properly research the facts, even if its leads to writing stories that go counter to accepted mainstream opinion. The Atlantic is amazing.

    I am very knowledgeable about the religion of Islam and just as importantly, I am very knowledgeable about the history of Islam, which is mostly about war and conquest (though, admittedly, I am not very knowledgeable on the Muslim concept of “the end days”).

    To further prove the point about The Atlantic magazine, another example the vigorous effort to look at facts, is the 2012 article by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The case for More Guns (and more gun control)”. Goldberg uses statistics and facts to show that a gun at home, and legal concealed-carry gun outside of the home, saves lives and stops the “bad guy”.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/

    The Atlantic has been around for over 150 years, and all their articles are searchable for free (I believe) at their web site. For example, put “Iraq” on their search engine and you will find all the best articles written on this unfortunate subject.

    I for one, am going to renew my subscription. We all need to support the magazine and free speech they maintain.

  28. Islofob IS-1 says

    Feb 20, 2015 at 3:36 am

    The most truth out of the “media” about islam , the interesting part is who now will talk and discuss it in the mainstream.

    it is islam that makes the 17 year old pick up a Ak-47 , because that is what islam leads to, the message being implanted into his brain for 16 years.

    Bringing light and the truth about the qur’an , and all the deception and lies about it will die.

    Thank you, Atlantic.

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