Projecting the ISIS takfiris as “Islamic”

Second, Wood’s constant attempt to prove how “Islamic” the Western-backed takfiri terrorists are, carries a subtle message to not-so-well-informed Muslims. Wood’s narrative attempts to portray Muslim pseudo-experts like Irshad Manji as the main alternative to Saudi indoctrinated takfiris. Manji is a self-proclaimed Muslim from East African background and is a self-declared lesbian. She has no knowledge of Islam and certainly cannot be considered by any stretch an authority. By constantly trying to prove the Islamic authenticity of ISIS, the corporate media whose ideas Wood manifests, is hoping to shift Muslims toward a more secular thought framework. Within that framework, the Muslim mind can easily be colonized and controlled as it is non-Muslims that dominate the entire realm of secularism in a physical and metaphysical sense.
Promoting Uncle Sam’s best friend, the Saudi monarchy
When it comes to “Saudi” Arabia, it is not what Wood’s says that matters; it is what he does not say. In a video interview with The Atlantic editor-in-chief James Bennett about his essay, Wood states that he realized that in order to find out what ISIS is about it was wiser for him not to travel to Iraq or Syria, but that he would get a better idea about ISIS if he traveled to Australia and London. Apart from exposing Wood’s poor grasp of the subject matter, the statement subtly reinforces the hysteria drummed up by the corporate media that all Muslims living in the West should be treated as potential terrorists.
For some reason Wood fails to do a basic internet search and discover that according to the neocon think tank, the Hudson Institute, “some evidence indicates that ISIS is using textbooks in schools in Raqqa and Jarabulus whose contents and covers have been plagiarized directly from the Saudi Ministry of Education. The textbook on Tawhid (Monotheism): a Central Doctrine in Islam, is the most noteworthy example.” So why did he not travel to the “Saudi” kingdom?
Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the takfiris unleashed upon Muslims knows that their intellectual epicenter is Washington’s beloved kingdom of darkness,“Saudi” Arabia. All takfiri groups in Syria and beyond revere state appointed and maintained scholars of the Saudi regime. From ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz to Abu‘Abdillah Muhammad ibn al-‘Uthaymeen who justified the murder of civilians, state sanctioned Saudi “ulema” are the godfathers of ISIS and al-Qaeda minded groups. Does Graeme Wood not know this? It is highly unlikely. So what was the reason for ignoring this basic factor? It was most probably not to reveal the Western connection to facilitating the growth of ISIS through the Saudi regime.
When comparing ISIS and the Saudi dogma masked as Islam, Wood writes, “…before the rise of the Islamic State, no group in the past few centuries had attempted more-radical fidelity to the Prophetic model than the Wahhabis of 18th century Arabia… Haykel sees an important distinction between the groups, though: The Wahhabis were not wanton in their violence. They were surrounded by Muslims, and they conquered lands that were already Islamic; this stayed their hand. ISIS, by contrast, is really reliving the early period.” This is a direct assault on the noble personality of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by equating the early period of the Islamic state led by the Prophet (pbuh) to ISIS. It also tries to delink ISIS from the archaic Saudi regime.
Disagreement is not an indication of incoherence
Overall, Wood’s essay is shabby journalism with little or no regard to basic journalistic principles and is a poor “academic” piece. Wood’s essay is political anti-Islamic propaganda, nothing more. Therefore, it should be evaluated as a propaganda piece.
With this in mind, it becomes clear that it did well in targeting the Western masses, by throwing in a few Arabic terms with some “exotic” geographical names combined with pictures of men with long beards. This definitely had some impact on the average Western reader and probably convinced many others that to tackle ISIS, the “civilized” West must tackle Islam as well.
The essay also attempts to appeal to secular-minded Muslims. On this front, Wood did not do so well, as his approach of blaming everything horrific in the Muslim East on Islam was crude and shallow. This approach will subconsciously raise tribal loyalty feelings of secularized Muslims and automatically elevate some barriers in accepting Wood’s message in its entirety. Paradoxical as it may sound, Wood’s essay most probably succeeded in appealing to ritually practicing Muslims with a simplistic understanding of the contemporary world order. The essay had a consistent tone of encouraging Muslims to accept ISIS as representatives of the political dimension of Islam. It was probably done in order to reinforce the aspect of discouraging Muslims from thinking about an Islamic model of governance. After the essay’s publication Wood himself acknowledged that his essay became very popular on social media among ISIS supporters.
Apart from secularized Muslims, it seems Wood tried to make a point to the Muslims in general by interviewing adherents of various strands of psudo-Salafism. It appears as if Wood wanted to state that even Salafis cannot agree on key issues, how would you, Muslims, ever be able to establish a government anywhere? Well, no one objects to the fact that Britain and the US have quite different political systems, but yet both are labeled as “democratic.” Why can the British and the US political establishments disagree on what democracy and secularism mean, but Muslims cannot disagree on secondary matters in Islam? Also, why in spite of fundamental differences on secularism and democracy, are Britain and the US able to maintain their partnership? Socio-economic and historical reasons definitely play a role, but one of the main contemporary factors that cannot be overlooked is that no foreign power aggressively interferes in sabotaging the relationship between the UK and the US, a luxury most Muslim states lack, courtesy of NATO regimes.
Whenever there are disagreements between secular socio-political movements, Wood and his ilk are quick to point out that this is a “democratic” achievement and a sign of political maturity and strength. On the other hand when Islamic organizations have different views on certain matters, secularists/hedonists are quick to dub such natural disagreements as a sign of their political immaturity and weakness. Contemporary corporate media constantly tries to bring across the point that the diversity of Islamic movements serves as evidence of the incoherence of the Islamic model of governance. Dr. Salman Sayyid responds to this primitive dogma in his phenomenal book, A Fundamental Fear, by stating that “it is the case that various Islamist thinkers disagree about many important issues; however, disagreement between Western political theorists has never been cited as evidence of the incoherence of Western political thought or even its sub-branches.”
It is becoming increasingly evident that the corporate media and the secular elite of NATO are actively promoting the takfiris as “Islamic.” The reason for this is deep, but not complicated. Using basic analogy it can best be explained as follows: if your competitor is making a mistake, give him a nudge and present the mistakes as correct steps so that your competition ruins itself. Today Islam and secular-hedonism are competing to win the hearts and minds of the global masses. If this competition remained within the economic, intellectual and academic domains it would actually be healthy, but the secular-hedonist camp with the record of the two world wars that resulted in the slaughter of 70 million people knows that it will run out of steam if the competition remains civil and peaceful. Thus we witness global meddling in terms of hard power by NATO countries. Muslims must brace for more “What ISIS really wants?” type of propaganda and learn how to counter it with quality content and clear analysis.