With the horrific events this weekend in Paris and Lebanon, the words ISIS and Islam are sure to be on the tips of everyone’s tongues as they try to make sense of the atrocities. Unfortunately, many believe that the two words are one in the same, and that ISIS represents the ugly side of Islam that many don’t see.
This begs the question - is ISIS pulling directly from Islamic text, or is it merely distortion and lies? Is it conducive with Islamic law? And just exactly how Islamic is the Islamic State?
The belief that Islam is to blame for ISIS’s atrocities has lead to the blame of many innocent and peaceful Muslims, expected to answer for the atrocities committed by ISIS in the name of Islam. After 9/11, anti-Muslim hate crimes became five times more common than they were before, a trend that is only increasing as ISIS continues to terrorize. And this sort of blaming begs yet another question - is ISIS the way that it is because Islam is inherently violent?
While there is sure to be much debate over the next couple of weeks and the hate crimes and attacks show no signs of stopping, this thirty-second clip in which historian Reza Aslan answers to the question of whether Islam is inherently violent offers a valuable insight.
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE pic.twitter.com/8QqzRl8wWQ
— amina (@MadrihdMiley) May">https://twitter.com/MadrihdMiley/status/6050954581... 31, 2015"Islam doesn't promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion and like every religion in the world it depends on what you bring to it. If you're a violent person, your Islam, your Judaism, your Christianity, your Hinduism is gonna be violent. There are marauding Buddhist monks in Myanmar slaughtering women and children. Does Buddhism promote violence? Of course not. People are violent or peaceful and that depends on their politics, their social world, the ways that they see their communities."
Aslan makes an important point—religions are diverse and full of different people, and they are only what people make of them.
Just as the Westboro Baptist Church or the Ku Klux Klan are not representatives of Christianity; ISIS should not be seen as a representative of Islam. Admittedly, there is extensive research and scholarship showing that Islam is indeed relevant to ISIS’s cause, specifically the Islamic idea of religion being a state. Shadi Hamid of the Bookings Institution says that this distinction is “crucial for understanding ISIS and its obsession with a caliphate.” But while ISIS’s beliefs may be partially rooted in scripture, this still poses a weak argument that the entirety of the Islamic religion should be held accountable for ISIS’s crimes.
As Aslan says, people get from religion what they bring to it. Islam is over a thousand years old, and over time a host of texts, rituals, ideas, and institutions have been brought forth. With this host of material, if someone were to approach Islam with violent intentions, they would likely find a way to justify, as well as find ideas on how to act on, their desire for political violence. But on the other hand, the same could be said for someone who comes with a tolerant and peaceful disposition, as most looking for religion do. Just as some Christians justify the bombing of Planned Parenthood clinics in the name of religion, people with violent intentions in Islam can find a way to channel their hate through violence. But it is not Islam and its principles that make them violent. And this is a distinction that we must make clear in the months going forward.
