“Islam is the fastest growing religion, geographically, in the history of the world,” according to Dr. David Carlson, professor of philosophy and religion at Franklin College. And ISIS/ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), he added, is easily the fastest growing threat.
Carlson told audience members at a discussion forum held recently at St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church in Zionsville that he was gravely concerned by ISIS, “and I wish we didn’t have to be here.”
Carlson pointed out that understanding ISIS, who they are, why they are so angry and why they have declared war on all non-Muslims and even some of their own faith – requires an understanding of recent Middle East history.
It began, he said, at the outset of World War I. At that time the Ottoman Empire was a vast Arab nation which controlled much of the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, Syria, Turkey, Greece, parts of Russia and the northern regions of Central Europe including Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia.
“The problem was, the Ottoman Empire had allied itself with the Germans,” Carlson said. As a result, the Mediterranean Sea and virtually all shipping routes in the region were dominated by the enemy, a fact that cast a serious shadow on potential British victory.
In an attempt to neutralize the threat, the British government sent a young army officer by the name of T.E. Lawrence of “Lawrence of Arabia” fame to the region with the mission of convincing the Arabs to fight against the Germans and the Ottoman Empire. In return, Lawrence promised them rule over a new Arab Kingdom, which would include modern day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, parts of Iraq and Jordan. The Arabs agreed.
Regrettably, England had no intention of keeping that promise, and even as Lawrence was swaying the Arabs, Britain forged a secret deal with France dividing the entire area between them and Russia. The result was a dismembered mishmash of nation states, Carlson said, and two colonizing powers – England and France -that treated Islamic society, culture and religion as inferior and backward. To make matters worse, an agreement forged in 1917 by Britain’s Lord Balfour supported a Jewish state in area instead, a state which emerged in fact 29 years later as modern-day Israel.
It was this humiliation that spawned Islam’s hatred of the West, Carlson said, and launched the current reign of terror by ISIS. Their single objective is to “right the wrongs of history and to establish the Islamic State promised them in 1916.”
Radical Islam is also at war with itself, Carlson added. Approximately 85 percent of all Muslims are Sunnis while the remaining 15 percent are Shi’ite. Sunnis believe the Prophet Muhammad wanted the community to select a leader, or caliph from their own number, while the Shi’ites claim the Prophet insisted the leader be one of his direct descendants. Last summer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a Sunni and the militant head of ISIS, declared himself the new caliph. Not surprisingly, the Shi’a rejected al-Baghdadi’s authority.
“The Sunnis hate the Shi’ites even more than they hate the West,” Carlson said. Alliances have been further muddled by a lack of consistency between leadership and the population of the various nation states, he added. “Syria, for example, “is Sunni while its leader Assad is Shi’a. Iraq, on the other hand, is predominately Shi’a while Saddam Hussein was Sunni and built his powerful Baathist party around Sunnis. ”
After the Iraq war the Sunni Baathists were stripped of power and a powerful Shi’a dissident Kouri Maliki came to power as Prime Minister. Under Maliki, revenues from Iraq’s oil fields went almost exclusively to Shi’ites while Sunnis got virtually nothing, a situation which further nourished extremist feelings.
Another source for this article, Louise Shelley, international affairs professor at George Mason University, claims the spawning ground of ISIS, ironically, was Camp Bucca, the American prison in Iraq, which once housed as many as 100,000 prisoners, many of them extremists. Included in that number was al-Baghdadi who used his years of incarceration to organize the ISIS movement. Seventeen of the top 25 ISIS leaders got their start in Camp Bucca, Shelley said in a recent article published in The American Legion magazine.
The single objective of ISIS, Carlson told the audience, is to “establish an Islamic State everywhere. No more Syria or Iraq, just the Islamic State.”
According to Fr. James Schall, SJ, professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University, the objective goes far deeper than that. In a paper published in 2014, Fr. Schall points out that the roots of Islam – and thereby ISIS – are theological.
“… Islam, in it’s founding, is intended to be – literally – the world religion. It is to bring the whole world to worship Allah according to the canons of the Qur’an. In Muslim doctrine,” he adds, “everyone born into the world is a Muslim. No one has any right or reason not to be. Hence, everyone who is not a Muslim is to be converted or eliminated.”
Elimination includes all structures, monuments, art and literature that is not Muslim, he adds, which explains ISIS’ ruthless destruction of Christian churches and religious antiquities.
While Carlson agrees Islam’s original hope was for it to be the all-inclusive world religion, he doesn’t believe that Muslims in general hold that view today.
“The same was the original hope of Christianity,” he said. “The American Muslims that I work with understand that religious pluralism is part of God’s plan.”
He does agree, however, that Muslims have never ceased trying to overcome their early humiliation. The short-lived United Arab Republic between Syria and Egypt is one example. The UAR, established in 1958, lasted only until 1962 when Syria defected and joined forces with North Yemen. This alliance dissolved in 1971.
The re-emergence of radical Islam came into sharp focus in Iran at the end of 1979 when the Ayatollah Kohmeini forced the ailing Shah to flee the country, abolished the monarchy, severed ties with the West and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since World War II the Shah had been supported by the United States and Britain as a means of securing valuable oil revenues.
An exhaustive eight-year war with Iraq and the ultimate death of Khomeini in 1989 left the West largely unconvinced of any serious Islamic threat, Carlson said. Even so, Muslim influence continued to build in other parts of the region including Lebanon where a decades-old Western style government collapsed in a lengthy civil war, which saw the Christian population diminish from 29 percent to less than 16 percent.
At the same time as many as 400,000 Palestinian refugees fled Israel into Lebanon, a factor which fueled Al-Qaeda claims that the West in general and the United States in particular were disinterested in the welfare of the Palestinians – one of several stated reasons given by Al-Qaeda for the attacks on 9/11. Al-Qaeda also blamed the US for sanctions against Iraq, which they claimed caused the deaths of a half-million children, Carlson said.
All of these factors plus the emerging civil war in Syria, rampant corruption throughout Middle East governments and military forces created a vacuum that ISIS eagerly began to fill. To make matters worse, Carlson said, confusion in US foreign policy has created the perception that the United States is weak, a further advantage for ISIS.
Carlson pointed out that while ISIS was essentially a child of Al-Qaeda, goals for the two movements differ dramatically. Al-Qaeda, he said, wants separate branches of Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq along with the total withdrawal of American forces. ISIS, on the other hand, seeks nothing less than the total dissolution of all national boundaries and the establishment of an Islamic State as the Glorious Caliphate.
The spread of ISIS has been rapid and extensive, Carlson said. They currently operate openly in a dozen European and Middle East countries, and have published a five-year plan, which includes Morocco on the African continent, Sri Lanka and the coast of China. Boko Haram, a Nigerian terrorist group that recently beheaded a number of Coptic Christians and holds others captive, has joined forces with ISIS.
Recent “lone wolf” shooting sprees in Paris and in Garland, Texas have claimed to be the work of ISIS. After the Texas killings, ISIS publically promised it would strike again, “and next time it will be worse.” The threat specifically said Christians would be the targets.
ISIS is a master at recruiting, Carlson said. “They rely heavily on social media, offering disenfranchised youth a chance to change the world.” He added that ISIS targets 18 to 30-year olds, and capitalizes on their common addiction to violent video games. “They’ve played it, now they are invited to come and live it,” Carlson said. “In addition, they are offered jobs, homes, money and a sense of purpose.”
Many believe the way to defeat ISIS is to cut off their funding. Carlson disagrees. “They are extremely well funded through the sale of black market oil,” he said, “as much as $3million a day.”
As foggy as the horizon appears, Carlson believes there may be hope in any of several options available to the United States. The first relies on Iraq developing a Western-style power-sharing government, which could serve as a model for the region.
“The question here is, is Iraq committed to this possible future, or is corruption in the military and government too rampant?” he said.
“If this could happen,” he added, “ there is still the issue of Syria. If Assad is ousted, who will rule the country, the democratic-minded rebels or ISIS?” He also pointed out that Lebanon may get drawn further into the Syrian conflict which would likely engage the Shi’ites in Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.
“Oddly, this scenario would put Israel, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and the United States on the same side,” he added.
The Kurds in northern Iraq offer another possibility, Carlson said, pointing out impressive Kurdish victories against ISIS. “They might do even more with US military aid,” he added.
Carlson believes the best opportunity for inroads against the advance of ISIS may be inter-faith bridge building. He pointed to the Tri-Faith Initiative of Omaha, Nebraska as a working model. The Nebraska group is comprised of Christians, Jews and Muslims successfully working together for inter-faith peace.
Carlson makes no predictions about the future. He does believe that the spiritual element of ISIS is leading the world to what he calls a powerful “spiritual wave” involving all religions all over the world.
“Which begs the question,” he said, “are we at the end, the beginning – or both?”