Calling a Muslim a Muslim

President Barack Obama now says that ISIL isn't Muslim.

This is, of course, utter rubbish; albeit rubbish that flows from the delicate task of seeking to suppress a bloody offshoot of a religion to which 1.6 billion human beings subscribe.

We are fortunately not, contrary to the late Samuel Huntington, at war with Islam. But we are most certainly at war, and have been for some time now, with what can be called radical Islam; which means that we are using various means, including military force, to combat groups like ISIL, al-Qaida, al-Shabab, and the Taliban, along with (for the most part) supporting Israel in its struggle with variants like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.

Those groups often have different enemy hierarchies and sometimes even see themselves as rivals in the massacre-infidels game (particularly along that Shia-Sunni divide), but they most definitely are "Islamic" in nature and motivation, however extreme their interpretation of various Koranic passages might be and however much we wish it were otherwise (that tricky 1.6 billion Muslim thing again).

Obama thus takes our conceptual confusion about what we face to another level. Whereas George W. Bush reflexively proclaimed like some kind of demented parrot that "Islam is a religion of peace" every time a terrorist group did something less than peaceful in the name of Allah, Obama now goes a step further to claim that the latest incarnation of the menace isn't Muslim at all. Why? Well, because, in his telling, true Muslims don't behave that way; they don't, among other things, kill innocents or other Muslims.

About which, at least three observations.

First, that it is strange for a non-Muslim to tell the world what is and isn't Muslim. Obama might or might not be the "constitutional scholar" his press secretary once claimed he was, but we know for absolute certain that he isn't an expert on Islam. To say that ISIL isn't Muslim is perhaps even more preposterous than claiming that Obama is. Or saying that he isn't really a Christian, although that's what he claims to be.

Second, there is the peculiar logic of using good or bad deeds done in a religion's name as a basis for determining its authenticity. This is problematic because all religions and belief systems in general have seen vile things done on their behalf, including Christianity. As University of Chicago Professor Jerry Coyne noted in a recent piece for New Republic, "If ISIS is not Islamic then the Inquisition wasn't Catholic." Humanity has coughed up lots of religions over time, many of which are long-gone and justly forgotten, but we haven't defined them as such only if what they spawned was always cuddly and cute (and "peaceful").

Third, even if we can somehow de-link religions from the behavior of their followers in favor of an examination of doctrinal tenets only, there is seldom a supreme arbiter of doctrine. Religious dogma and scripture tend to be grab-bags out of which all kinds of often-contradictory points can be made by whomever wants to reach in, and who is to say which of them is dispositive? Even the Vatican, perhaps as close to a central authority as any religion has produced, keeps changing it up from time to time to fit the latest fashion, sometimes to controversial effect among the faithful.

There is, in other words, no way of authoritatively identifying the "true" version of any religion, whether Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, such that when Secretary of State John Kerry talks, as he recently did, about putting "real Islam out there" to counter ISIL, he is speaking arrant nonsense (and as if he would recognize a Koran if it hit him in his generous forehead, anyway).

In the end, if ISIL isn't Muslim, as it so emphatically claims to be, then what, exactly, is it? Stalin and Mao might have been bad interpreters of Marx and Engels, but that didn't stop them from seeing themselves as communists, and it didn't stop us from seeing them that way, either. At the least, it is difficult to contest Greg Gutfeld's point that the "'I' in ISIL doesn't mean 'igloo.'''

We can't wish away reality. And the reality is that it isn't schismatic Presbyterians, malcontent Hindus or suddenly militarized Quakers who are flying jetliners into skyscrapers and beheading infidels to the cry of "Allahu Akbar." Alas, Muslims (or Christians or Buddhists) don't cease to be Muslims (or Christians or Buddhists) because they do things we disapprove of.

Yes, it is crucial to distinguish between Islam as a venerable religion and the strain of radical Islam from which now flows terrorist atrocities, but we do no favors for the cause of truth when we pretend that there is no relationship between terrorism and Islam. One suspects that our ever politically correct leaders protest too much here, apparently out of a misguided assumption that the unwashed masses, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike, cannot make reasonable distinctions.

It isn't up to us to decide who is and isn't Muslim. And if the flotsam and jetsam that we are hosting at Guantanamo aren't truly Muslims, then why do we present them with Korans upon their arrival?

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 09/22/2014

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