{"id":2294,"date":"2016-02-02T20:43:27","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T18:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/?p=2294"},"modified":"2016-02-02T20:43:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T18:43:27","slug":"blaming-islam-for-isis-a-convenient-lie-to-prepare-us-for-more-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/?p=2294","title":{"rendered":"Blaming Islam for ISIS: A convenient lie to prepare us for more war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An appetite for war is being primed by absolving America\u2019s guilt over the social chaos it has wrought on the Middle East<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The recent Paris attacks have refocused the American mind on the threat posed by IS. Americans are demanding more boots on the ground, more bombing, more something, more anything \u2013 and like a moth drawn to the flame, the US media is trotting out the disgraced Iraq war \u201carchitects\u201d and neo-cons of yesteryear to not only tell us what IS wants, but also why our violence will put an end to their violence.<\/p>\n

War is always a ratings bonanza for the corporate-owned media class, and we the viewer are addicted to its pyrotechnics, violence and destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWar is the force that gives us meaning,\u201d reminds veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges \u2013 for war not only interrupts the tedious grind of our daily lives, it also \u201cgenerates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbours, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who sell advertising based on ratings, meaning eyeballs, clicks and page turns, are well prepared to sate our lust for drone strikes, combat and carpet-bombing. But to sell a war, the war buyer must be first reassured the mission is noble, reasonable and democratic \u2013 and that the enemy is a figure of its own evil creation, something that is foreign and alienable to our self-righteous sense of morality.<\/p>\n

In other words, the media must first make us feel good about ourselves before it can make us violently hostile towards those we wish to bomb, occupy and belittle.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the front-page headline to the UK\u2019s Sun newspaper read,\u00a0\u201c1 in 5 Brit Muslims sympathy for the jihadis\u201d\u00a0\u2013 based on a poll that has been debunked as dubious at best, sinister at worst. The Sun is not an outlier. The day after the Paris attacks, two leading CNN anchors told a Muslim rights activists that \u201call Muslims\u201d \u201cbear responsibility\u201d for the ISIS attack that left 129 mostly Parisians dead. This is not only a heinous accusation, but may go down as one of the most despicable thing ever said by mainstream journalists on live television.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing Paris, the Murdoch press behaved like the Murdoch Press. The Daily Mail behaved like the Daily Mail. We shouldn\u2019t be surprised. But now we have newspapers in this country right across the board, and that includes serious newspapers that claim to their readers that they have some gravity, some conscience \u2013 like The Guardian \u2013 being part of this escalation of war in the Middle East,\u201d observes veteran UK-based journalist\u00a0John Pilger.<\/p>\n

In America, prominent activist journalist\u00a0Glenn Greenwald\u00a0accused CNN of juicing America\u2019s \u201chunger\u201d for war. An appetite that is being primed by absolving the nation\u2019s guilt over the social chaos it has wrought on the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\"Islam<\/p>\n

The absolution of guilt is made possible via the externalisation of evil. Americans are again being told Islam is responsible for the violence and unrest in the Middle East; and that it is Islam that is responsible for the self-proclaimed Islamic State.<\/p>\n

If one tuned into Fox News, CNN or MSNBC, one could be forgiven for believing the phony pretence for the Iraq invasion never happened; that the Iraq invasion never happened; that de-Baathification never happened; that bombing Libya and Yemen never happened; and that arming the leading sponsor of terrorism in the region \u2013 Saudi Arabia \u2013 doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

Blaming Islam for ISIS is how Americans forget all the above happened. Blaming Islam for ISIS is how Americans are made to feel good about themselves, and blaming Islam for ISIS is how Americans are easily led into supporting hypnotic but counter-productive military missions.<\/p>\n

In March of this year, The Atlantic published an essay titled \u201cWhat ISIS Really Wants\u201d. For those seeking to blame Islam for ISIS, this is the Magna Carta. For neo-cons and right-wing loons, and for those seeking absolution for the Iraq invasion, Graeme Wood\u2019s essay is as purifying as holy water.<\/p>\n

A summation of the piece reads as follows: ISIS is Islamic, very Islamic, uber-Islamic, super-dooper Islamic, and exactly the terrorist group the Prophet Muhammad had in mind when he recited the Quran. So beware, all Muslims have the potential to be ISIS.<\/p>\n

We now know from seized IS documents, interviews with captured and former IS fighters, and those who have spent time in IS-controlled territory that Wood\u2019s essay is wildly ill-informed, stupendously inaccurate and in no way reflects the aims and motives of IS leadership. Yet Wood appears on each of the major cable television networks daily to discuss the hypothesis of his essay.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t defeat ISIS if we misrepresent what and who ISIS actually is. Far from being the apocalyptic Islamist group that Wood contends they are, actual IS\u00a0documents\u00a0and blue prints reveal IS to be methodical state builders, led by secular Baathists \u2013 who aim to restore Sunni-Baathist power in Iraq. These documents also make clear that Saddam\u2019s former generals (anti-Islamists) use Islam as a recruitment tool. \u201cThey [ISIS founders] reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face,\u201d notes the German newspaper\u00a0Der Spiegel.<\/p>\n

These ISIS documents and blueprints are corroborated by interviews with captured ISIS fighters. Last month,\u00a0Lydia Wilson\u00a0of Oxford University published her findings. She found that recruits are drawn to ISIS for reasons that have little to do with extremist Islam. \u201cThey are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the Caliphate,\u201d observed Wilson.<\/p>\n

The social chaos\u00a0and lack of security in Iraq caused by the US invasion features as another theme among ISIS fighters.\u00a0\u201cThe Americans came,\u201d one ISIS fighters told interviewers. \u201cThey took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn\u2019t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn\u2019t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.\u201d<\/p>\n

A US general said this, the above \u201cabsolutely fits the typical profile\u201d of an ISIS fighter. In other words, US military invasions and interventions in the Middle East are creating the conditions for ISIS to thrive.<\/p>\n

Yet the media welcomes only those who blame Islam or \u201cradical Islam\u201d and not those who speak to the conditions that make ISIS appealing.<\/p>\n

Those conditions that place the blame at the feet of US military intervention, US-backed dictatorships, and US arms sales to both sponsors of terrorism and actual terrorist groups themselves.<\/p>\n

But blaming Islam makes us feel good about ourselves. Blaming Islam is good for television ratings. Blaming Islam makes it easier to sell new wars.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0CJ Werleman<\/strong>\u00a0is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Crucifying America\u00a0(2013)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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– See more at: http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/columns\/blaming-islam-isis-convenient-lie-prepare-us-more-war-757116395#sthash.ljMMiUct.dpuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An appetite for war is being primed by absolving America\u2019s guilt over the social chaos it has wrought on the Middle East The recent Paris attacks have refocused the American mind on the threat...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2296,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}