Since the rise of ISIS/ISIL there has been a proliferation or articles and opinion-pieces claiming that its members are not really Muslim, or that they don't represent the true Muslim faith. The president made this remark directly in his speech to the United States. We hear this type of claim all the time, most often when a sect within a particular faith has exhibited what many of us agree is bad behavior. One thing that interests me is what statements like this really mean when one unravels the underlying principles.
In the case of Islam, the situation is unclear because there is not much in the way of organization or hierarchy. Islam has four guiding principles: the Koran, the Hadith, the consensus of orthodox religious scholars, and the method of reasoning by analogy. Thus the only real heirarchy other than the authority of the actual written words resides in the consensus of religious scholars. The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has a PhD from the Islamic University of Baghdad in Islamic Studies, so if he doesn't qualify as an Islamic religious Scholar I don't know what else would. Courts in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt regularly dispense and uphold sentences of death, stoning, and public lashing for offenses against Islam. These brutal and unbalanced sentences (for victimless- or thought-crimes, no less!) are the product of direct readings from either the Koran or the Hadith and are certainly the consensus of the leading Islamic scholars in the respective states. In fact, in many of these states it is the religious scholars that hold the very reins of power. Most if not all of al-Baghdadi's proclamations and actions are rooted directly in the writings of either the Koran or the Hadith. So too were those of the Taliban. Without a doubt there exist many Muslims of a more moderate mindset, but it is not at all clear that the scholarly consensus is completely against the actions of groups like ISIS. It is difficult to get even a moderate Muslim to agree that anything in the Koran or the Hadith might be untrue or even problematic - to even suggest such a thing in many parts of the world is to invite a death sentence. How, then, can an outsider judge with any accuracy what is the truest version of Islam?
What about Christians? Their case is thankfully less fraught with outright violence, but this was not always so. There are any number of organizations and sects within Christianity, and they run the gamut from pacifist (as are many Quaker churches) to angry Old-Testament bible-thumpers (such as Joseph Kony or the Westboro Baptist Church). As is the case with Islam, I'm sure that the majority of members are in the middle and would prefer to keep their heads down and remain out of the way. Where do we look for a firm and undisputed definition of what comprises the true faith? We can listen to the words of those throughout the entire spectrum from fundamentalist to liberal, all of whom believe just as ardently that what they profess is the true essence of Christianity. The largest Christian denomination is the Catholic Church, and they also have perhaps the most rigid and well-defined hierarchy. Are they the keepers of true Christianity? They can lay claim to many of the most influential thinkers and have the longest history - they say that they are in fact the original Christians, and they make a good case for it. On the other hand, they have certainly done some despicable things, such as running the Magdalene Laundries and shielding pedophile priests from common justice. It's unfair to judge all members of the Catholic church by the actions of its clergy, of course, but the clergy are the ones that maintain the official theology of the church (to which its members are called upon to profess their agreement), so we should at least pay attention to their pronouncements on what makes a true Christian. We could also look to The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints - this too is an institution with a well-defined order but also with what many would characterize as some very bizarre notions - is there anything that inherently gives their opinion lower standing than the official Catholic church, though? In truth, there are very probably nearly as many interpretations of what makes a true and pure Christian as there are professed Christians. Should we take some kind of "average" from among them all? Does the largest group's conceptualization carry the most weight?
In one respect, Christianity and Islam share a common problem - the texts which are their foundational bedrock each contain writings that speak to our better natures as well as writings that are barbaric and backward. In another important respect they are very different: for the most part, Christian theology has softened to the point where it is capable of jettisoning the deplorable aspects of the text (and of the faith itself) while Islamic doctrine remains rigidly attached to the inerrancy of each and every word in the Koran and the Hadith. Thus, outsiders find themselves unable to engage in any serious dialogue about what they percieve as problematic with Islam. For example, watch just about any conversation where a Muslim is asked whether the proscribed sentence of death for apostasy is just and right; you will very likely hear either a straightaway affirmation of the fitness of such a sentence, or the respondent will perform a fantastic contortion of semantics to avoid admitting directly that it is (or might be) wrong while simultaneously trying to give the impression that he does in fact believe it is wrong. Apart from the distortion this reflects in the mind of the respondent, it poses an untenable difficulty for the rest of us: there seems to be no means of distilling such a faith down to its essence - everything is fundamental in a system that affords neither discussion nor disagreement with any of its tenets. Any attempt at distillation would merely pass the entirety of the original contents through - one always ends up with exactly the same thing with which one started.
All this indicates that to say so-and-so is not adhering to the true such-and-such faith carries little of coherent practical value. I think it is time we admitted that when one says things like, "He's not a real Christian," or "ISIS does not truly represent Islam," what one really means is that such persons or institutions do not represent one's own vision or understanding of the faith. Disagreement with this represents a lack of imagination, or perhaps a failure of empathy, that everyone who professes to believe what they say really and truly believes what they are saying; this is especially true when what they say is in clear opposition to what we ourselves honestly believe.
So, what does this mean with regard to utterances such as that made by our president? Surely, he is trying to make the best of a bad situation. It would be unproductive for him to attack the ideology of Islam directly in a presidential speech; it is clearly not something that can be done given that the only diplomatic way to accomplish it would of necessity be so thorough that it would in all likelihood fall victim to the short attention-span of today's viewer - this kind of argument requires deep thought, reflection, and can't be reduced to 10-second sound-bites. Such an attempt, while failing to make headway with the majority of his potentially sympathetic audience, would simultaneously provoke the anger and resentment of the Islamic faithful.
I believe the key to understanding this is to see that, in large part, the harshness of Christianity has been attenuated due to close contact with a culture that is neither in thrall to nor subject to the absolute authority of a faith. Western culture, and in particular those aspects of western culture profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment, has unwittingly waged a war of ideological attrition against the most rigid aspects of faith, and has gained considerable ground. There has been no such cultural war in the sphere of Islamic influence; at least, not until very recently with the advent of easy access to global communication networks and cross-cultural social media. While repressive regimes have always sought to limit and control access to information, we can see that modern versions are ever more desperate and brutal in their attempts at this - they fully realize how swiftly the tide of modern culture will weaken their grip on power. So, given our apparent reticence to prosecute this war of ideas directly and with full awareness, we are left with only one alternative: continue our efforts to culturally encroach upon the isolationist mindset of such ideologies. The question then becomes one of how long we can wait for this approach to make significant headway.
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