British media analyst and digital anthropology argues that ISIL and ISIS members are Muslims.
‘’I need to urgently request that all my non-Muslim ally friends please stop saying ISIS is not Islam’’, wrote Christa Blackmon in her article titled ‘ Who Are We to Label ISIL Members non-Muslims’ published on Aljazeera.com on the 29 of July 2016
Christa Blackmon
‘’ We may call ISIL a group of militant Muslims, but we cannot deny the identity they have chosen for their militancy. We may add a qualifier to their label, such as “fundamentalist or non-practising, but never do we deny their chosen identity altogether’’.
Blackmon’s argument is solely based on the self-proclaimed religious identity of ISIL members. According to Blackmon, ISIL members are Muslims just because they say so and their say cannot be denied because religious identity is a personal choice.
. ‘’ Whatever religious label one personally ascribes to is what we recognize them to be. ‘Self-identification cannot be dismissed even if it’s for a good cause. In Western thought, religious identity is a personal choice ‘’
Blackmon recognizes that the vast majority of Muslims are opposed to violence in the name of Islam, however, she maintains that ‘’ ‘’ There is no supreme authority in Islam. We cannot privilege one version of Islam over another just because it feels good to us… But does the majority get to define the identity of the minority? Surely they may reject it and ostracise that minority, but never do we deny their chosen identity altogether ’’.
OPINIONS
Christa Blackmon claims, ‘’there is no supreme authority in Islam’’. If so, must it not be the supreme authority, the vast majority of Muslims who are, indeed opposed to violence in the name of Islam?
As far as Islam is concerned, the Koran is Islam’s supreme authority unless Christa Blackmon would like to portray Islam as an anarchic religious system. .
In the Koran we find verses that legitimate violence. But does it necessary means that Islam is what motivates all these self-proclaimed Muslim terrorists? If yes, Christianity is also what motivates the KKK and Judaism is what motivates the government of Israel to massacre Palestinians. As in the Koran, we also find verses in the Christian Bible and Jewish Torah that legitimate violence.
The only difference is that the word ‘’Islamist’’ has been accepted to designate a radical or a Muslim terrorist. While terms like ‘’Christianist’’ and ‘’Jewist’’ wanting to designate a radical or Christian and Jewish terrorist are not yet accepted, so far these terms are deprived of any meaning, they are linguistic error.
This shows an asymmetry in the analysis of terrorism by dominant and ubiquitous opinion of great media powers. Several times had we not seen white American Christians open fire against unarmed civilians and never words such as Christianist, white or terrorist were mentioned and above all, they were offered bullet proof vest and sandwiches. When the same attacks are committed by Arab this time media brilliantly use word like Arab, terrorist and Islamist.
Any Roman would say that they are Catholics although they don’t go to Church and read the bible. They are Catholics simply based on the fact that their forefathers were Catholics. In the same way ISIL members are Muslims.
According to the website of the British newspaper DailyMail.co.uk, the perpetrator of the Nice’s attack in France that killed 84 people received € 100 000 a few days before the killing of Nice. Then he sent the money to Tunisia through friends who went to the hometown of the parents of the killer.
In its article titled: ‘’ L’auteur de l’attentat de Nice aurait-il gagné au Loto peu de jours avant ?’’, Reseau International wrote :
‘’Those who paid are the real perpetrators of the massacre of Nice’’
Are ISIL members Muslims? Does not matter, what matter is: Who are behind ISIL? If we really want to see the end of all these indescribable atrocities that question our humanity we have to ask the right question and I am sorry to say that in the fight against terrorism question like: ‘’ARE ISIL MEMBERS MUSLIMS’’ are irrelevant, unhelpful, obstructive, and evasive.
‘’ WHO ARE BEHIND ISIL’’ is the question that matter. There are plenty of undeniable evidences today that show that terrorism is not religious but political. So to keep asking or answering out dated questions such as ‘’ ARE ISIL MEMBERS MUSLIM’’, covers up the political enterprise that is being Islamic terrorism.
Islam still has millions of years in front, so for all those who are obsessed to link terrorism with Islam, they forever condemn us to live with terror.
MASSOCKI MA MASSOCKI