A Muslim friend once told me that it was impossible to understand how people like him felt about the West unless one took into account their deep sense of humiliation.
Partly this was the legacy of colonialism – in the last century or two, few places in the Muslim world had escaped being ruled as part of someone else’s empire.
But it was also profoundly theological.
Fundamentalist Muslims believe that the Quran contains all the answers about how to run a society in accordance with the will of God; and that it was God’s will that such a society should come about. Indeed, if Muslims are faithful to the Quran, Allah will help them achieve it.
“But we have to admit that Western non-Islamic societies are far more advanced than anything we have to offer,” he said. “All the Muslim-ruled societies we can see are backward or dysfunctional or both.”
The fact that many such societies only reached the level they had because of the accident of oil wealth compounded that painful sense of inadequacy.
A significant part of the appeal of the phenomenon called Islamic State, which now occupies substantial areas of Syria and Iraq, is that it offers to correct that humiliation. It tries to show Muslims that Allah’s way, as set out in Islamic teaching, is right after all. It also offers a theological explanation of what went wrong before.
That is why it is very misleading to say that Isis is un-Islamic. It is an interpretation of Islam, and it can even claim to be a purer interpretation than some others.
French airstrikes in Syria: Isis believes that the onset of the apocalypse must include the West challenging their caliphate (PA)
Where it differs is in bringing to the fore the eschatological narrative embedded within Islam and insisting it is relevant to the present day. We are, says Isis theology, in the End Time.
It is true other religions including Christianity and Judaism talk about an eventual apocalypse, initiating the rule of God on earth. Like Isis, some Christian fundamentalists expect it to happen soon. The primary reason many American Evangelicals support Israel is because their version of the conditions necessary for the Second Coming, based on Scripture, include the return of the Jews to the Promised Land.
Nor should the English feel superior. Oliver Cromwell, usually hailed as the father of English Parliamentary democracy, believed the Millennium was imminent and all mankind’s achievements were about to be swept away by God’s hand.
Isis’s primary precondition for the onset of the apocalypse is the establishment of a caliphate, that is to say territory governed directly and exclusively by God’s Law, the Sharia.
But the story does not stop there. The Islamic prophetic tradition, as Isis understands it, goes on to predict that God’s enemies - known as ‘Rome’ but usually interpreted as the United States – will intervene with military force to challenge the growth of the caliphate.
Jerusalem is a key to most narratives of the Second Coming (PA)
After one glorious victory over Rome at a place called Dabiq in Syria, the final act of this eschatological drama takes place in Jerusalem where the caliphate is defeated and its forces slaughtered.
At the end of this Armageddon, when only 5,000 are left, Jesus returns to earth to lead the Muslim forces to their final triumph, and his reign begins. The role of Jesus, the second most important prophet in Islam after Muhammad, shows an extraordinary overlap with Christian eschatology.
Needless to say, most Christians, like most Muslims, deal with these predictions either by allegorising them – “the kingdom of God is here among you” – or by postponing expectations of the Second Coming indefinitely.
Neither Al Qaeda nor the wider Salafi movement, though having some overlap with Isis, supports these prophecies of doom and final triumph. The great majority of Salafis, including those called Wahhabis, leave the outcome of history in God’s hands.
Al Qaeda - whose appeal to Muslims is also a manifestation of the “humiliation” thesis and also has a strong theological programme - is nevertheless opposed to the caliphate and sees the battlefield between good and evil as worldwide.
Isis believes that Allah is willing them to win, but a defeat will call his approval into question (PA)
It is unclear whether Isis, in supporting terrorism globally as it has recently done, is moving towards this position itself or is merely fighting its enemies wherever they are perceived to be.
To be a follower of Al Qaeda one has to fight the global war against “the Great Satan”. To be a follower of Isis, on the other hand, one needs to live under the caliphate.
That is why so many Muslim women, once they are seduced by Isis’s fundamentalist theology, want to move to Syria. They are not necessarily terrorists themselves. And this is why they often report back home that they are happy. All the petty irritations of being a Muslim in the West, and especially the feelings of humiliation from being on the losing side in the clash of histories and cultures, are behind them.
Clearly Western strategy towards Isis must not ignore this theological-prophetic scenario. One thing that stands out is that military defeat would call in question the belief that Allah wills Isis to win, and is helping it do so.
Military victory in Syria and Iraq so far has fuelled this ideology/theology; and this is part of the case for decisive Western intervention.
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Even more to the point, Isis needs to hold physical territory in order to justify its claim to be a caliphate. Deprive it of that and its raison d’être collapses.
If the civilised world is to commit itself to the defeat of Isis, as the Security Council resolution last week implies, it needs to understand what defeat would look like.
And another part of that would be to tackle and if possible reverse the humiliation narrative that drives many young Muslims into the arms of Isis or Al Qaeda and their associates.
We have to make room for them to be proud of what they are. Not so difficult, once one considers that it was Islamic civilisation which pulled Christian Europe out of the Dark Ages, and gave us the basis for our medicine, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, engineering, architecture and philosophy.
We would be nothing without Islam.
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User comments (3)
"We would be nothing without Islam"
Frankly ridiculous. What about the Greeks, don't they deserve a mention; they were rather good at mathematics.
“All the Muslim-ruled societies we can see are backward or dysfunctional or both.” duh! and the reason would be....??
Could it possibly have anything to do with a faith-based ideology with no conception of equality or human rights, and no political philosophy but a caliphate where church and state are one?
And that intra-Islam fighting between Sunni and Shiite sects is a leading cause of "humiliation"?
"we would be nothing without Islam" sounds like a piece of ISIS chest thumping and I am surprised that Tablet editors let that through. This is one more fuzzy wooly article by a Islam apologist trying to put all the blame on the West for poor Muslims feeling humiliated--- tell that to Parisians.
Really not a bad article until the end: "we would be nothing without Islam"? What utter tosh! We were Catholic Christians before Islam and we still are!