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

Robert Spencer in PJ Media: AP Claims ISIS Recruits Have a Poor Grasp of Islam

Aug 25, 2016 7:24 am By Robert Spencer

Over at PJ Media I take apart yet another attempt to exonerate Islam of responsibility for crimes committed in its name and in accord with its teachings:

IslamicStateshahadah

At last the universal claim has been proven: Islamic terrorism has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with Islam! The proof?A new report from the Associated Press claims that recruits to the Islamic State (ISIS) knew little or nothing about Islam. After all, if they did, they would have known Islam is a religion of peace. So they wouldn’t have joined an outfit as violent and brutal as ISIS, right?

Wrong, of course.

This AP study is one of an endless stream of mainstream media articles intended to show us that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, that the real Islam is peaceful and benign, and therefore we need have no concern about the elites’ suicidal Muslim immigration policies.

The study is, as one might expect, vague and anecdotal. Apparently much of the AP’s assumptions rest on jihadis’ self-evaluation of how much they knew about Islam, as well as their refusal to expound on Islamic theology in court. The AP tells us about a “jihadi employment form”:

[The form] asked the recruits, on a scale of 1 to 3, to rate their knowledge of Islam. And the Islamic State applicants, herded into a hangar somewhere at the Syria-Turkey border, turned out to be overwhelmingly ignorant.

AP also notes:

[W]hen pressed by the judge on his knowledge of Shariah and how the IS group implements it, Mohammad-Aggad, a former gas station attendant, appeared dumbfounded, saying repeatedly: “I don’t have the knowledge to answer the question.”…

[O]ne of his co-defendants, Radouane Taher, was also pressed by the judge on whether beheadings carried out by the IS group conformed to Islamic law. He couldn’t say for sure, answering: “I don’t have the credentials.”

Very well. But even if jihadis might rate their knowledge of Islam as low, and not feel competent as non-clerics to explain the teachings of the religion, that does not imply they are “ignorant” of Islam. Further, it answers nothing about whether the Islamic State has anything to do with Islam.

Meanwhile, in selecting its anecdotes, the AP ignored those that don’t fit its agenda. We hear nothing in the AP report about the Islamic State propagandist whose parents said of him:

Our son is a devout Muslim. He had learnt the Quran by heart.

Nor does the AP say anything about the Muslim politician from Jordan who said:

[ISIS] doctrine stems from the Qur’an and Sunnah.

Most telling about the AP’s motives, their report ignores the central importance that the Islamic State places upon the Qur’an: In its communiqués, it quotes the Qur’an copiously. They quote it in threats to blow up the White House and conquer Rome and Spain; in explaining its priorities in the nations it is targeting in jihad; in preaching to Christians after collecting the jizya (a Qur’an-based tax, cf. Qur’an 9:29); in justifying the execution of accused spies; and in its various videos.

ISIS’s beheadings (47:4), sex slavery (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30), subjugation of Christians (9:29), global imperative (8:39) and more are all based upon the Qur’an.

ISIS has also awarded $10,000 prizes and sex slaves in Qur’an memorization contests. One of its underground lairs was found littered with weapons and copies of the Qur’an. Children in the Islamic State study the Qur’an and get weapons training.

As for misrepresenting the Qur’an? One Malaysian Muslim said that the Qur’an led him to join the Islamic State. A Muslima in the U.S. promoted the Islamic State by quoting the Qur’an.

AP also hauls out the evergreen anecdote that two jihadis ordered The Koran for Dummies and Islam for Dummies from Amazon. This factoid has been seized upon before by apologists for Islam — including Mehdi Hasan and Karen Armstrong — as evidence that Muslims going to Syria and Iraq to join the jihad don’t really know anything about Islam and are motivated by other factors.

However — and of course — no one actually knows why the jihadis ordered the books. Maybe they wanted to learn how to explain it better, or were planning to give the books to others relatives, or had one of any number of other possibilities in mind. But any irrational argument will do for the likes of the AP, Hasan, or Armstrong when it comes to exonerating Islam from all responsibility for crimes committed in accord with its texts and teachings.

The AP even invokes Tariq Ramadan to emphasize that Islam forbids the killing of innocents.

But it doesn’t ask Ramadan to explain the Islamic perspective that considers all non-Muslims to be guilty, or the Islamic State’s view that they are fighting against people who are not innocent because they have rejected the authority of the ISIS caliphate.

Not in the AP report, of course, is any information about the slick pseudo-moderate Ramadan himself, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna and formerly a paid employee of the Iranian mullahcracy. Ramadan is skillful at manipulating credulous infidels into thinking that he is the very model of the modern moderate Muslim….

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: Featured, journalistic bias, Robert Spencer, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Associated Press


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Comments

  1. JasonP says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 8:06 am

    Robert, I’ve tested an approach to fighting these silly critics. I turn the tables and accuse them of seeing Islam, as a practice of being monolithic. This is the very charge they direct against you. I get them (in most cases) to accept that ISIS practices a bona fide strain of Islam, the Wahhabi Salafi strain. Once I establish this I can go further.

    Very few critics will claim that Saudi Arabia is not Islamic. Even the New York Times admits that ISIS is Wahhabi (and this is in the ISIL Wikipedia article.) From here one can go to the texts but it gives one common ground for further discussion.

    • Angemon says

      Aug 25, 2016 at 10:11 am

      JasonP posted:

      “Very few critics will claim that Saudi Arabia is not Islamic. Even the New York Times admits that ISIS is Wahhabi (and this is in the ISIL Wikipedia article.)”

      I believe their underlying assumption is that Wahabism is a deviation of the pure, peaceful islam that I often hear about but never actually see anywhere in the islamic world.

      • JasonP says

        Aug 25, 2016 at 10:54 am

        It is interesting that I never find Muslims denying that Wahhabism is Islamic. There are silly Westerners who do. I ignore them and reach out to those who are opened to criticism of Wahhabism as a steppingstone to a criticism of Islam.

        After I wrote the previous comment I found another Times article on Wahabbism in today’s newspaper online. It’s mixed. After explaining the nature and global reach it adds some disqualifyers. But most is good. I’d recommend Dore Gold’s book.

        • mortimer says

          Aug 26, 2016 at 5:16 pm

          I want to thank JasonP for these very WISE comments about opening Western minds to the possibility that ISLAM PER SE IS THE PROBLEM.

          Our Western elites are mainly cultural Marxists whose minds are closed to any discussion that begins with the supremacism and misogyny enshrined as the very laws of Allah in Sharia law.

          These cultural Marxists are all around us and their response to is normally to accuse anyone who criticizes Sharia law of being a racist. Sharia is law is discriminatory and draconian, but our Western elites believe through some mental sleight of hand that to criticize discriminatory Sharia is also ‘racist’. These are the people we wish to persuade to examine Islam’s supremacist POLITICAL IDEOLOGY.

          The cultural Marxists conflate our criticism of IDEOLOGY of ISLAMIC SUPREMACISM with racism and thereby, they exempt discriminatory, draconian SHARIA from all criticism and exonerate Wahhabist Islam of all charges of racism, misogyny and political intolerance of ‘others’.

          How do we find common ground with such cultural Marxists who cannot see the difference between 1) CRITICISM OF ISLAMIC POLITICAL PRINCIPLES and 2) our RESPECT FOR the HUMAN RIGHTS OF MUSLIM PERSONS WHO ESPOUSE THOSE DISCRIMINATORY PRINCIPLES ???

  2. Jaladhi says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 10:09 am

    Makes me laugh as if AP has better grasp of real Islam( I didn’t know there was a fake Islam). AP reporter doesn’t know every Muslim kid is taught Islam from the age of 6 or 7 and that is why these kids go to fight with ISIS when they call for fight for jihad!

  3. Chris LA says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 11:11 am

    Often the most devoted followers of any religion are the recent converts or those recently “revived.” They may not have an in-depth understanding of the theology or the intricacies of the religion, but they have learned what is essential and necessary to be faithful. For Islam, salvation comes through the “kill and be killed” command of Surah 9:111. All of this was documented in a recent Canadian study, “Talking to Foreign Fighters.” ( http://tsas.ca/tsas_library_entry/tsas-wp16-14-talking-to-foreign-fighters-socio-economic-push-versus-existential-pull-factors/ )

    • mortimer says

      Aug 26, 2016 at 6:27 pm

      Agree. Recent converts seldom have a depth of knowledge about a religion. That in-depth knowledge can take two decades. A brilliant convert can reach that level in a dozen year or so…enough time to absorb the inconsistencies and anomalies and work on explanations to harmonize them. Since Islam is so very inconsistent, many converts to Islam leave before two years have elapsed, after they find many of the discrepancies that are said not to exist in the Koran.

      The escaped novice jihadists report the inconsistencies in ISIS leadership. Local Syrians and Iraqis are spared while the foreigners born in Europe are given the most dangerous and dirty assignments.

  4. jimbo says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 11:17 am

    Sounds like there’s a mole in the AP.

  5. marina says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 11:31 am

    Well they grasped the concept of “killing of infidels” and” raping of slaves” right if not the other things.

  6. underbed cat says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 11:34 am

    Excellent article again Mr. Spencer …and I heard the same response from a friend…….that reflects the AP. during a discussion….the repression of information about the doctrine continues the fibs and adds to the misery. If the recruits and there may be a few, don’t know the doctrine they are soon taught it the rest cannot speak about it.

  7. Jay Boo says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 12:15 pm

    I bear witness that there is no god of Allah and that Muhammad is the inventor of Islam’s Allah.

  8. Jay Boo says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    Kill, Rob, Rape Torture.

    They understand the CORE teaching of Islam quite well.

  9. Richard Paulsen says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 3:51 pm

    Sweden having a poor grasp of islam.
    https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1chA4hWXfmlPvkhm5gpTkMCb1XDQ&hl=en_US

  10. Allan says

    Aug 25, 2016 at 4:30 pm

    So what? The officers and enlisted personnel of the US military have a poor grasp of con law, American history, the contemporary habits of US government, and so on. Furthermore, the young Islamists’ piety is sincere, which is more than can be said truthfully about many in the military.

  11. Manuele says

    Aug 26, 2016 at 7:13 am

    “AP Claims ISIS Recruits Have a Poor Grasp of Islam”. IT IS SO OBVIOUS,THAT EVERY JACKASS INVOLVED ACT ON IMPULSE TO MURDER PEOPLE BY THE WORD OF MOUTH FROM IMAM/ CLERICS WHO THEMSELVES INVOLVED IN MURDERING AND RAPE OF WOMEN AS WELL AS CHILDREN. THAT IS WHY ANOTHER REASON WHY THE PSYCHOTIC BEHAVIOUR CONTINUES.

  12. duh swami says

    Aug 26, 2016 at 11:05 am

    Not every ISIS recruit is an Imam…All they need to know is that the Qyran is the very words of Allah, and kill the infidels wherever you find them brings rewards…

  13. mortimer says

    Aug 26, 2016 at 5:23 pm

    Ask these warriors if they understand the rulings of Sharia law regarding sex slaves, and they will all have high quiz scores. I have found almost all Muslim men to be aware of their right to rape captive women.

  14. 762x51FMJ says

    Aug 26, 2016 at 5:50 pm

    That’s why they are called musselmen, They may be muscular, but have the brain of a mussel.

  15. David says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 9:40 am

    “America’s Political leadership has a PISS POOR GRASP of islam/Satan Worship.”
    Big ELECTION coming up soon. Maybe NOW would be a great time to:

    THROW THE IDIOT TRAITORS OUT, OUT, OUT! ! ! !

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