Many Left Liberal commentators have struggled to understand Islamism or explain the violence and hostility of the Jihadists and Islamist terrorism. Underlying this is an inability to see Islamism for what it is, a reactionary and often very violent political ideology. This misunderstanding by the western Left is based on an inherent intellectual assumption that the political calculations of the Islamists are similar in some way to the Left Liberal world view. Perhaps the biggest intellectual error of the Left Liberals in relation to the Islamists is to assume that the violence and hatred of the Islamist towards the west and its liberal democratic values is really the fault of the west in some way because of what ‘we’ have done to ‘them’. In this reading Islamism is just the understandable if unfortunate response to the egregious misdeeds of the west. This type of analysis is very comforting. If Islamist are just reacting to western imperialism and aggression then it can be explained away in terms that are familiar and unchallenging, it is also comforting because if the violence of the Islamists is the result of our misdeeds then in order to stop further Islamist violence all the west has to do is stop doing bad things to muslims and then the Islamist will calm down and stop carrying those pesky suicide attacks. In fact this can go further because maybe if Islamism is caused by western imperialism and aggression then Islamists might be allies in putting a stop to those things.
In fact it is relatively easy to understand Islamism ii if one simply listens to what they actually say. They do not hide what they think, why they do what they do, what they want to do, and why they hate us.
Before it was broken up ISIS published a monthly magazine, printed and online, called Dabiq in English. Its name was taken from the town of Dabiq in northern Syria, which is mentioned in the ‘hadith’ (sayings of the prophet) about the End Times. ISIS believed Dabiq was where Muslim and infidel forces would eventually face each other, and that after the Crusaders’ forces were defeated, the apocalypse would begin. Although it is really hard to get now I read some editions of the magazine at the time and is was striking for its very high production standards, its clear and modern layout and design, and the clarity of its prose as it explained the ISIS world view and ideology. It was written in such clear and correct English because many of the people working on its production were from Britain.
In edition 15, its final edition, there was an article entitled: “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You”
Here is an excerpt summarising its position – my comments are non-Italic and in bold the rest are the unedited words of ISIS. I link at the end to a longer extract from this article.
Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You
1. We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah.
Furthermore, just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you and fight you, as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizyah and living in humiliation under the rule of the Muslims.
Even if you were to stop fighting us, your best-case scenario would be that we would suspend our attacks against you in order to focus on the closer and more immediate threats, before eventually resuming our campaigns against you. You cannot halt our war against you. At most, you could only delay it temporarily.
2. We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited while banning many of the things He has permitted. Your secular liberalism has led you to tolerate and even support “gay rights” to allow alcohol, drugs, fornication, gambling, and usury to become widespread, and to encourage the people to mock those who denounce these filthy sins and vices.
As such, we wage war against you to stop you from spreading your disbelief and debauchery – your secularism and nationalism, your perverted liberal values, your Christianity and atheism – and all the depravity and corruption they entail.
3. In the case of the atheist fringe, we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator.
At this point the article gets onto terrain that Left Liberals may feel more comfortable about – “ahh they hate us because we are Islamaphobic!”
4. We hate you for your crimes against Islam and wage war against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion. As long as your subjects continue to mock our faith, insult the prophets of Allah, burn the Quran, and openly vilify the laws of the Shari’ah, we will continue to retaliate, not with slogans and placards, but with bullets and knives.
Now its gets really comfortable for Left Liberals “ ahh they hate us because of Western imperialism and wars”
5. We hate you for your crimes against the Muslims; your drones and fighter jets bomb, kill, and maim our people around the world, and your puppets in the usurped lands of the Muslims oppress, torture, and wage war against anyone who calls to the truth.
6. We hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out. As long as there is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim, jihad will continue to be a personal obligation on every single Muslim.
But here comes the kicker – at this point it’s as if the the ISIS writers can see the sort of misunderstanding going on in the heads of western Left Liberals and they go out of their way to make sure there is no misunderstanding.
What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end.
Even if you were to stop bombing us, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
What’s equally if not more important to understand is that we fight you, not simply to punish and deter you, but to bring you true freedom and salvation.
We fight you in order to bring you out from the darkness of disbelief and into the light of Islam.
Why They Hate Us (in Their Own Words) By Konstantin Kisin
