What ISIS Really Wants

Imagine a group of people who rape.  Enslave.  Maim.  Murder.  Ethnically cleanse.  Extort.  Burn.  Behead.  But then imagine this—they don’t lie?  Can’t lie.  Won’t lie.  That’s what Graeme Wood’s recent Atlantic essay, “What ISIS Really Wants,” really wants us to believe.

That a movement that has earned the world’s nearly universal opprobrium for its grotesque violence and wickedness is nevertheless honest in describing why it does what it does.  I beg to differ.  The only Muslims who think ISIS represents Islam, or even Muslims, are ISIS themselves.

There’s almost no comparison between Islam and the West.  For one thing, Islam is a religion.  The West obviously is not.  But even the countries of the world that are Muslim-majority don’t compare to the West.  For all this fearful talk of a global Muslim Caliphate, it’s the West that has made real progress in creating transnational institutions.

There’s no Muslim counterpart to the European Union, the Schengen Treaty, NATO, the G-20—a Western initiative—or the many bilateral and multilateral agreements and processes that make the West what it is.  Nor is this exclusively a mark of the Muslim world: You think China, Brazil or India enjoys the alliances we do?  The kinds of integration that make our societies so prosperous and powerful?

The world’s Muslim-majority societies are remarkably diverse—much more so than the West, I’d argue.  Which is all fine, in theory, until you get to the practice.  These very different peoples are going through our equivalent of the dark ages, the consequence of centuries of colonialism, occupation, authoritarianism and extremism.

As Muslim societies struggle to find their way forward, everything is up for grabs.  What kind of government should they have?  What role should religion play?  How should power be divided?  Very little is agreed on.  One of them is this: Among an incredibly diverse, astonishingly fractured and contentious community, ISIS is anathema.

Many people still ask questions like, “Why don’t Muslims protest ISIS?”  Of course, every Muslim institution and organization outside of the region has.  As for the Muslims who are closer?  Well, put it another way.  People in unsafe neighborhoods don’t denounce the gangs who make their lives miserable, at least not if they want to stay alive.  They turn to the police–maybe.  Unless they don’t trust those police.

When you’re fractured and fragmented, it’s hard to root out a movement like ISIS, and even harder to rally together when the people on the other side are just as brutal.  If not more so.  Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iranian backers have killed more people than the Islamic State has.  It’s not an easy time to be Muslim, that’s for sure.

But for every deluded soul ISIS ensnares, or who seeks them out, countless more condemn them, oppose them, reject them or fight them.  It’s beyond a stretch to argue that ISIS represents Islam, is grounded in Islam, or justified by Islam.  That’s not to say they don’t claim religious mandates, or exploit religion to enable their savagery.

It’s that no one’s buying it.

Just ask Muslims the world over.  Imagine that: actually talking to and hearing out 1.5 billion people who live, identify with and practice this religion.  From Sunni to Shi’a, secular to conservative, Islamist to liberal, autocratic to democratic, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his doppelganger of a Caliphate have united the Muslim world like no one else has –  against them.