After failing to capture Vienna, the Ottoman caliphate went into a long, slow decline and by the middle of the nineteenth century was being referred to derisively as “The Sick Man of Europe.” This decline led to some reforms that relaxed the Sharia’s institutionalized oppression of Christians. Under Western pressure in the nineteenth century, the caliph agreed to significant departures from Islamic law regarding the subjugated dhimmis.
Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman government), in 1842 protested to the caliph Abdulmecid I after seeing two Christians who had converted to Islam and then returned to Christianity executed in accord with Islam’s death penalty for apostasy. He urged the caliph to “give his royal word that henceforward neither should Christianity be insulted in his dominions, nor should Christians be in any way persecuted for their religion.”77
Needing British support, Abdulmecid agreed, and Queen Victoria sent him congratulations. Then, with the British and French allied with the Ottomans against Russia in the Crimean War, Canning used the increasing Ottoman dependence on the Western powers to continue to press the Porte for further reform of the dhimmi laws. This pressure culminated in the Hatti-Humayun decree of 1856, which declared that all Ottoman subjects were equal before the law, regardless of religion.
The Europeans added this decree to the Treaty of Paris that ended the Crimean War, praising “the Sultan’s generous intentions towards the Christian population of his Empire.” But the British and French severely disappointed Canning by assuring the Ottomans and the world that they did not consider themselves to have any right “to interfere either collectively or individually in the relations of the Sultan with his subjects or in the internal administration of the Empire.”
Canning knew this would doom the reform: without Western pressure, the Ottomans would continue to enforce Islamic law. The Porte, he said, would “give way to its natural indolence and leave the firman [decree] of reform . . . a lifeless paper, valuable only as a record of sound principles.”78
And that’s how it played out. The British consul James H. Skene wrote to another British official on March 31, 1859, that “the Christian subjects of the sultan at Aleppo still live in a state of terror.” He attributed this fact to the trauma they had suffered nine years earlier, when
houses were plundered, men of distinction among them were murdered, and women violated. . . . They were not allowed to ride in the town, not even to walk in the gardens. Rich merchants were fain to dress in the humblest garb to escape notice; when they failed in this they were often forced to sweep the streets or act as porters in order to give proofs of their patience and obedience; and they were never addressed by a Mussulman without expressions of contempt.79
This contempt was mandated by the Qur’anic command to Muslims to be “merciful to one another” but “harsh to unbelievers” (48:29)—prescripts whose effect we see today in the Islamic State’s treatment of Christians and Yazidis.
Another British consul, James Brant, wrote in July 1860 about “the inability of the Sultans [sic] Government to protect its Christian subjects,” referring to massacres of Christians by Muslim mobs in Ottoman domains.80 Yet another British consul, James Finn, wrote at the same time that “oppression against Christians usually begins with the fanatic populace, but it is neither repressed nor punished by the Government.”81
These reports and Stratford Canning’s efforts to compel the Ottoman caliphate to ease the hardships mandated by Islamic law for religious minorities make for interesting reading from a contemporary vantage point. In sharp contrast to the British officials’ forthright and unapologetic efforts to curb the enforcement of Islamic law in the Ottoman Empire, today the president of the United States and virtually every leader in what was once known as Christendom respond only with fulsome praise for the belief system that is motivating the Islamic State to persecute Christians with a ferocity not seen since Roman times.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Ottoman caliphate’s gradual decline accelerated. The caliphate, the symbol and source of the unity of Muslims worldwide, was so diminished in influence by the time World War I broke out and the Ottomans joined the Central Powers against Britain, France, and its archenemy Russia, that the caliph Mehmet V declared a jihad and nobody came.
NOT THAT THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM
And when your Lord said to the angels, “Indeed, I will make upon the earth a caliph,” they said, “Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?” Allah said, “Indeed, I know that which you do not know.”
—Qur’an 2:30
This verse doesn’t necessarily refer to a defined office of successor of Muhammad—most Islamic scholars consider it a reference to Adam, the “caliph” of Allah on earth. But by the sheer use of the word itself, it does give the idea of the caliphate broad Qur’anic sanction.
Mehmet issued a fatwa (religious ruling) answering yes to this question:
When it occurs that enemies attack the Islamic world, when it has been established that they seize and pillage Islamic countries and capture Moslem persons and when His Majesty the Padishah of Islam thereupon orders the jihad in the form of a general mobilization, has jihad then, according to the illustrious Koran verse: March out light and heavy [hearted], and strive with goods and persons [in the way of Allah; that will be better for you’ (K[oran] 9:41)], become incumbent upon all Moslems in all parts of the world, be they young or old, on foot or mounted, to hasten to partake in the jihad with their goods and money?82
The war lost, there was widespread discontent in the diminishing Ottoman domains against the sultanate/caliphate that had led the once-great Empire down the road to disaster. Amid the postwar atmosphere of imperial collapse, one Turkish woman reflected the sentiments of many when she asked, “Of what use was the Caliphate to us during the war? We proclaimed a holy war and what good did that do?”83
Kemal Atatürk, the founder of secular Turkey, agreed. The Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate on November 1, 1922, but seventeen days later chose the Ottoman Crown Prince, Abdulmecid II, to be the caliph—the first and only Ottoman caliph not to be also the sultan of the Empire. Atatürk viewed Abdulmecid with contempt, remarking: “The Caliph has no power or position except as a nominal figurehead”—by that time, simply a statement of fact.
CAN’T GET NO RESPECT
When the caliph asked for an increase in his pay, Atatürk thundered: “The Caliphate, your office, is no more than an historical relic. It has no justification for existence. It is a piece of impertinence that you should dare write to any of my secretaries.”84
On March 3, 1924, Atatürk abolished the caliphate altogether and sent Abdulmecid into exile. The last caliph boarded the Orient Express, bound for Switzerland. As the grand train sped through Hungary, past the site where his predecessor Suleyman the Magnificent’s heart was said to have been buried after he died while on a jihad campaign, Abdulmecid murmured, “My ancestor came with a horse and flags. Now I come as an exile.”85
“Islam,” said Atatürk, “this theology of an immoral Arab, is a dead thing.”86
The caliphate certainly was—until June 29, 2014.
Chapter Eight
IS THE ISLAMIC STATE ISLAMIC?
(IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?)
It would be patently obvious to everyone that the Islamic State is Islamic—were it not for the fact that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, David Cameron, and virtually every other authority in the Western world insist that it’s not.
Did you know?
•Islamic State beheading victims appear calm in the videos because they are told they’re just going through a rehearsal
•Hostages are given Arabic names to reassure them
•“Captives of the right hand”—that is, sex slaves—are allowed in addition to the four wives a Muslim man can have
•Musli
m intellectuals proposed reviving slavery before ISIS did it
This is the primary reason why Western authorities unanimously refuse to call the Islamic State by the name it calls itself: the Islamic State.
They Think They’re Islamic
“ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion,” said Deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf in August 2014. “The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.”1 Really? As far as the Islamic State itself is concerned, there is no question that it is Islamic—in fact, it holds that any Muslim who doesn’t get on board with the State’s claim to represent Islam is placing himself outside the fold of true Islam. In June 2014, a video circulated of a masked Islamic State commander telling a cheering crowd: “By Allah, we embarked on our Jihad only to support the religion of Allah. . . . Allah willing, we will establish a state ruled by the Quran and the Sunna. . . . All of you honorable Muslims are the soldiers of the Muslim State.” He promised that the Islamic State would establish “the Sharia of Allah, the Quran, and the Sunna” as the crowed repeatedly responded with cries of “Allahu akbar.”2
But for virtually every authority in the Western world and many Muslim leaders as well, the Islamic State is a vicious perversion of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the Sharia of Allah—thus they insist that whatever the group is called, it must not be called “Islamic” or identified in any way with the religion of Islam.
A Caliphate by Any Other Name Would Smell as Rancid
Considerable confusion has arisen over what exactly to call the Islamic State. It calls itself just that—the Islamic State—but with “Islamic” so prominent in that name, Western officials eager to reassure their people that they have nothing to fear or be concerned about in Islam would rather be waterboarded than call it that.
OSTRICH ALERT
“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.”
—Barack Obama3
And so they take refuge in acronyms. The most commonly used name for the group is ISIS, which stands for the name the group discarded in June 2014: ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa sh-Shams: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams. Al-Shams is the Arabic term for the Levant, the Mediterranean region generally understood as comprising Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Many assume that ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but al-Shams is a larger region than Syria alone.
In light of the meaning of Shams, some translators have rendered the group’s former name in English as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL—the acronym that Barack Obama and his administration prefer, for reasons unknown.
In September 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that he would henceforth be using the Arabic acronym for ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa sh-Shams: Daesh. “This is a terrorist group and not a state,” he explained. “I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats.’”4
Apparently Secretary of State John Kerry thought this was a great idea, as he began referring to the group as “Daesh” in December 2014.5 This may have been calculated to raise the group’s ire, since after dropping “in Iraq and al-Shams” from after “the Islamic State,” the group threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who referred to them as Daesh, the acronym for the longer name.6 Now that they were claiming the world, to refer to them as pertaining only to Iraq and the Levant was an implicit denial of their claim to have restored the caliphate. Plus, as we have seen, “Daesh” sounds like the Arabic words for someone who “crushes something under foot” or “sows discord.”
OSTRICH ALERT
“Islam is about peace and brotherhood. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in this world, and the true Islamic faith has nothing to do with what ISIL represents. And so to start labeling them as Islam or as Islamic State in any respect, I think gives them far more dignity than they deserve.”
—Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, February 22, 20157
Fabius and Kerry may have been intending to signal to ISIS leaders a calculated disrespect. But it was also handy that calling the Islamic State “Daesh” among English speakers obscured the “Islamic” aspect of its name even more than calling it “ISIS” or “ISIL.”
THEY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY
In February 2015, the Islamic State showed that they meant business about being called the name they wanted; they gave a boy sixty lashes in public for referring to them as “Daesh.”8 He was lucky not to have his tongue amputated—the prescribed penalty for his crime.
It is increasingly common journalistic practice to refer to the Islamic State simply as “Islamic State,” without the definite article, as if it were some Dantescan college sports team. This is not so much an attempt to demonstrate by shorthand that it is not Islamic as that it is not a state—and a group with illegitimate pretensions to both.
As if all these different names weren’t confusing enough, Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, announced that it would be calling the group “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria”: QSIS.9 A group of imams in Britain called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to call it “the un-Islamic State.”10
The Islamic State Laughs
The Islamic State has professed contempt and amusement over all this confusion and denial. In his September 21, 2014, address calling for strikes in the U.S. and Europe, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani ridiculed John Kerry (“that uncircumcised old geezer”) and Barack Obama (“the mule of the jews”, Adnani’s capitalization) for declaring that the Islamic State was not Islamic—as if the American president and secretary of state were Islamic authorities:
The media portrayed the crusaders as good, merciful, noble, generous, honorable and passionate people who feared for Islam and the Muslims the “corruption and cruelty of the khawarij (a deviant, extremist sect) of the Islamic State” as they allege. To the extent that Kerry, the uncircumcised old geezer, suddenly became an Islamic jurist, issuing a verdict to the people that the Islamic State was distorting Islam, that what it was doing was against Islamic teachings, and that the Islamic State was an enemy of Islam. And to the extent that Obama, the mule of the jews [sic], suddenly became a sheikh, mufti (Islamic scholar that issues verdicts), and an Islamic preacher, warning the people and preaching in defense of Islam, claiming that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. This occurred during six different addresses he made in the span of a single month, all of them about the threat of the Islamic State.11
The Western media has taken little notice of the Islamic State’s self-description and contempt for those who deny its Islamic character. A steady stream of articles by Muslim and non-Muslim academics and commentators maintains that, despite appearances to the contrary, ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.
However, this avalanche of reassurances only leaves us with an inexplicable mystery: If the Islamic State so brazenly violates the Qur’an and outrages Muhammad’s example, why is it so appealing to the most devout young Muslims that over twenty thousand Muslims from all over the world have now joined it in Iraq and Syria, with five thousand joining its Libyan wing?12
The answer is not complicated, despite intense and ongoing efforts to complicate it.
OSTRICH ALERT
“It makes no sense to turn the ISIS threat into a fight about Islam.”
—Forbes, February 26, 201513
The Islamic State’s theology is straightforward. While apologists for Islam in the West insist that the Qur’an’s words must not be taken at face value and maintain that only a tiny minority of Muslims do take them literally, the Qur’anic justifications for the Islamic State’s actions are based on the plain words of the text. And the Islamic State’s appeal to tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world testifies to the resonance of their literal reading of Islam’s ho
ly book.
What Is It about ISIS and Lopping Off Heads?
It has been a seemingly endless parade, beginning just weeks after ISIS declared its new caliphate: public beheadings, lovingly filmed and included in slick propaganda videos appealing to Muslims around the world to join the Islamic State.
These very public beheadings have horrified the world; in large part, they were responsible for the wave of public concern about ISIS in America that led to the U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State. Many have taken them as a sign that for all its vaunted media savvy, the Islamic State will ultimately be undone by its own savagery, as the world will ultimately have had enough of this horror and will move to destroy ISIS once and for all.
Why, then, does the Islamic State behead anyone at all, much less film the beheadings and post them on social media? Because from their standpoint, beheadings are a recruitment tool—one that is rooted in the Qur’an. The Muslim holy book says straightforwardly, “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4).
The Islamic State knows that young Muslims who are aware of that verse will not recoil in horror and disgust from their beheading videos, but rather realize that the Islamic State is acting in fidelity with the Qur’an. Thus the beheadings will bolster the Islamic State’s claim to constitute the new caliphate.
The beheading videos also “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah”—another Qur’anic imperative (8:60). Thus, as far as the jihadis of the Islamic State are concerned, the world’s revulsion and disgust at their beheading videos are only confirmation that they’re on the right track.
The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS Page 23