What ISIS Really Wants?

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.”

An interfaith-Christian-nonsense-tradition. Not only is that a near-perfect description of the soft-progressive mindset that affects the majority of media-educated Americans, it's also a boom! headshot to all the dumb-assed things your friends at Starbucks are telling you about ISIS in particular, and Islam in general.

The first, and most refreshing, thing you'll notice about What ISIS Really Wants is the complete lack of po'-mouthed moral equivalence. In an era where most media consider it verboten to offer open criticism of anything besides Christianity and cisgender whites, Graeme Wood fearlessly asserts that ISIS is the enemy of the United States, of modern Islam, and of world peace.

The second, and most important, thing you'll notice about the article is that Mr. Wood tirelessly details how the beliefs and practices of ISIS are:

* absolutely rooted in, and based upon, the words and deeds of the Prophet; * internally consistent and supported by well-realized doctrine; * sane, disciplined, and focused, within the belief system of historical Islam.

At any point in the article, Mr. Wood could have copped-out and used the f-word (fundamentalist) to describe ISIS or its adherents or its boosters. The fact that the word doesn't appear a single time is a testament to the depth and intelligence of his research. It's typically lazy American-progressive thinking to blame fundamentalism as the boogeyman behind everything from Christians demonstrating at abortion clinics to ISIS beheading Egyptian Christians. In that mindset, it isn't the beliefs of ISIS that are problematic --- it's the strength of their beliefs that offends. It follows, therefore, that the people in ISIS aren't any worse, or any better, than the Promise Keepers.

This mindset is particularly attractive to women. I've often said that female emotion is not FM, it's AM. In other words, if you want to sleep with a woman, it doesn't particularly matter whether she loves or hates you. What's important is the strength of that emotion. If a woman tells you that you are the worst person on earth and that she prays for your violent death twice a day, you might as well start filing another notch on your guitar. If, on the other hand, she tells her friends that you "seem like a nice guy, I guess," chances are you'll be available for your nightly guild meeting in WoW after all.

Amplitude-modulated emotion is a very feminine, and very progressive, thing. The last time a man went directly from hating something with all his might to loving it unconditionally, they wrote a best-selling book about it. We like the idea that we are consistent from day to day, as constant as the northern star, and so on. We are hugely reluctant to admit to any change in our opinions, and we're actively embarrassed when somebody calls us on it:

"Hey, Jack, didn't you say that the entire Honda lineup sucks? Didn't you actually have a party called 'Huck Fonda' in March of 2012?"

"Uh, yes..."

"And did you not, in fact, buy a 2014 Honda Accord?"

"Uh, um... well... it had the strongest crash structure, and, um..." Women just don't think like that. They will flip it and reverse it like Missy Elliott. Example: Many years ago, a female member of an online car forum went through the trouble of creating a fake username, complete with backstory and unrelated establishing posts, for the sole purpose of attacking me and criticizing my writing. Time elapsed, in terms of actual face-to-face interaction, from her last post on that subject to me pulling off her panties, in a press car, in the parking lot of a grocery store: under seven hours. Certainty I had that it was going to happen: 99.7%. Source of the 0.3% uncertainty: fear of a massive comet striking the Earth.

You'll never see a man behave like that. Our fault is the opposite: we remain in love with stupid ideas long after they've been proven wrong. Which is why these guys in ISIS are so dangerous. As Mr. Wood points out, their ideology is so historically consistent (note that I did not say extreme, this isn't a fucking skatepark) that they've effectively declared al-Qaeda the enemy despite the fact that al-Qaeda shares the vast majority of their ideology. It's the old Emo Philips skit, only this time people are dying for real. Mr. Wood very perceptively suggests that many ISIS boosters view their life and mission in an almost Tolkien-esque manner. They are fighting for the prophet of God against a world of apostasy seven billion infidels strong. They expect the apocalypse in their lifetimes, expect to be winnowed down to five thousand martyrs on a plain of battle and to be saved by the actions of a returned Christ Almighty.

They really believe this stuff. I don't mean that they really believe it the way you said you really believed in Christianity right before you slept through church on Sunday morning then fired off into a piece of tissue paper while watching the free previews on Brazzers, and I don't mean that they really believe it the way you said you believed in racial equality right before you crossed the street to avoid a Michael-K.-Williams-look-a-like in a hoodie. I mean that they really believe in it and that their actions are consistent with their beliefs.

As Americans in the year 2015, we're so thoroughly steeped in irony, detachment, and hypocrisy that we are psychologically unable to understand the men who fight for ISIS. We've been infected by a vertiginous mindset that causes us to view all sincere belief from a great height, as if we were drunk or dreaming. You want proof? I'll give you proof. How many of you believe that abortion is murder? Are you doing anything to stop it? If you really think that they are killing babies in that building right over there, are you prepared to do something to stop that killing?

What about racism, sexism, or any of the other isms? Are you willing to give up everything you have to help the putative victims of that -ism? Has any white liberal in history ever voluntarily quit a job and lost his house so that job could go to a qualified minority? Did Lena Dunham tear up her Oberlin acceptance letter so a PoC could take her place?

You know what strikes me the most about the infamous "I can't breathe" video? Nobody steps in to help the guy. Even the person taking the video moves away when the cops tell him to. There are fifty people watching Eric Garner die and nobody intervenes. Nobody even yells at the police. All the garbage you hear people spit about "solidarity with oppressed minorities" and "#BlackLivesMatter" and when there's an actual #BlackLife being snuffed out in front of you, people watch it with all the disinterest they give a second-rate guitarist on Bourbon Street. Let me ask you a question: Do you think any member of ISIS would permit an image of the Prophet to be defaced in front of him the way all those New Yorkers watched Eric Garner die?

You know the answer to that.

The overall conclusion I drew from Mr. Wood's article on ISIS is that I don't have too much to fear from them here in Powell, Ohio. While I find this passage a bit chilling:

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.”

I rather think that ISIS will have a hard time enforcing the caliphate in the Midwest. If you think we had a hard time in Vietnam, just wait for the day that some foreign power tries conquering any wooded part of America while fifty million dudes wearing Realtree take good solid 200-yard shots on their officers. While it's entirely possible my son will be enslaved, I rather think it will be wage slavery that gets him, same as it's gotten me.

And there you have it --- some ironic detachment on my part, equating a six-figure job in a downtown office with being put in chains by a bunch of murderous fanatics. Even I have trouble believing in the sincerity of their beliefs. But, as I've often said, the thing about reality is this: even if you don't believe in it, you're still subject to its whims.