Will It Take The End of the World For Obama To Recognize ISIS As ‘Islamic’?

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At the White House summit on “countering violent extremism,” President Obama declared that violent jihad in the name of Islam isn’t the work of “religious leaders” but rather “terrorists.” American-Muslim leaders, attending the summit, cheered and applauded, later taking selfies in front of the president’s seal.

But, as liberal Muslim feminist journalists who reject the vision of the Islamic State, we can say that the Islamic State, al Qaeda and the alphabet soup of Islamic militant groups, like HUM (Harkut-ul Mujahideen) and LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), rely very much on the scholarship of “religious leaders,” from Ibn Tamiyyah in the 14th century to Sayyid Qutb in the 20th century, who very much have credibility and authority among too many Muslims as “religious leaders.”

A very nuanced and thorough Atlantic article by journalist Graeme Wood this week, arguing “The Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic,” set off a firestorm of “derision,” as labeled by an article at ThinkProgress,

Don’t know if anyone here has linked to it, but it’s been all over the place this week.

Wood argues the Islamic State views itself as “a key agent of the coming Apocalypse.” He is absolutely right, and we have been seeing the symbols for months. After spending about 200 hours combined over the last few weeks, analyzing every word and symbol in the burning video of the Jordanian Air Force pilot and the execution video of the Coptic Christians, we can tell you that both videos reveal Islamic State strategists, propagandists and recruiters are very much grounded in a logical interpretation of the Quran, the hadith, or sayings and traditions of the prophet Muhammad, and fatwa, or religious rulings.

They are also hell-bent on one mission: Chasing the apocalypse, according to Islamic eschatology—the study of the end of the world.

Doing a verbal tap dance around Islamic theology and extremism, even calling it “whatever ideology,” Obama and his policy team have it completely wrong. We have to own the issue of extremist Islamic theology in order to defeat it and remove it from our world. We have to name it to tame it.

Among Muslims, stuck in face-saving, shame-based cultures, we need to own up to our extremist theology instead of always reverting to a strategy of denial, deflection, and demonization.

While Rome burns in the war plans of the Islamic State and other militants, it is important to identify the enemy clearly. As sixth-century Chinese military strategy Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy.” This is particularly important in the kind of asymmetrical war America has been fighting for 14 years since the 9/11 attacks. We know “America is not at war with Islam.” We settled that in the days after 9/11. But we are at war with an ideology and theology of Islam.

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Obama bowed to the late Saudi king.
That same king sent out his Wahhabists to the entire planet.
Many of America’s most recent newer Mosques were financed by Wahhabists and espouse the Wahhabist view of Islam.
ISIS, al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, and most Islamic terror organizations also espouse this Wahhabist viewpoint.
Wahhabism wants a worldwide caliphate by any means possible from ”lawfare,” to violent jihad and suicide missions.
Iran has been led by ”end-of’the’world,” Ayatollahs for over 35 years.
That particular style of thinking demands chaos.
They actually believe the 12th imam will come in the midst of worldwide chaos and fix everything just right for faithful Muslims.
As such they do not fear or shrink back from chemical, biological or even nuclear war.

If Obama keeps waiting for it to be late enough before calling ISIS ”Islamic,” he might just be too late.

OTOH, Christian end-of-the-world sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists have been around for about a hundred years without violence against non-believers.

How long will it take people to realize that Obama has an entirely sound reason for not wanting Muslims to perceive America as the enemy of their religion, rather than as the enemy of terrorist extremists?

This particular anti-Obama tactic seriously endangers American interests. Just as an important rift is widening between the Muslim community as a whole and terrorist extremists—witness the recent actions of Egypt and Jordan, if you wonder how important that might be—people want to make damn sure the Islamic sticker is firmly affixed to the element we would like for them to help us destroy.

@Greg:
good words, Greg, but they would carry much more power IF Obama was re-arming either Egypt or Jordan.
But he refuses.