The other week I posted a piece on my blog and at Sojourners — a progressive Christian publication associated with the work of Jim Wallis — about why Westerners join ISIS. The piece focused on some of the more sociological reasons Westerners choose to connect to such an violent group. The piece attracted some critics. Most notably, an ISIS supporter contacted me on Twitter to let me know where I got it wrong.

@DarAlHaq, who has an ISIS flag and symbol as his cover photo on Twitter and regularly posts photos and stories from the front in Syria and Iraq, told me, “the article doesn't give the reality of why a young western Muslims wants to leave the comfort.” Fair enough. This is my effort to share his views and problematize my previous presentation.

Many politicians, pundits, and everyday people are wondering why Westerners are joining ISIS and the answer is not singular, static, or straightforward. Westerners, who some surmise make up a significant segment of ISIS’s some 20,000 - 40,000 fighters, are joining ISIS for various reasons, but three categories of thought are worth considering — the theological, the societal, and the sociological.

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood

Theological

As I argued previously, there is a sense in which (no matter the political rhetoric) ISIS is Islamic. It is Islamic insomuch as ISIS’s leaders, and many of its outspoken supporters abroad, contextualize ISIS’s cause within a theological framework.

Specifically, many media sources and ISIS spokespeople are explaining ISIS’s thought and action in terms of Salafism. Salafis are Islamic reformists who view their movement as a return to the roots, to the ways of the 'as-Salaf as-Saliheen', the first three generations of Muslims — the pious “predecessors” or “ancestors” of Islam. They hold to a literalist and individual interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah and a strict science of tawhid — the oneness of Allah. Their theological idealism leads them to contest and combat what they see as contaminated innovations (bida’) in Islam — such as veneration of saints, visiting graves, various forms of Sufism and Islamic mysticism, and even other Muslim schools of thought (an extreme view of taqfir, which leads ISIS to murder other Muslims they do not see as “pure” or “authentic” enough).

Salafis have a superiority complex, emerging from their understanding of their reform movement as a pure and perspicuous manifestation of Islam. As Roel Meijer said, “the basic power of Salafism lies in its capacity to say ‘we are better than you.’” This superiority bleeds not only into thoughts on theology, but also in terms of discourse and action. For Salafis, right thought must lead to right moral acts. Of course, not all Salafis are violent, but those who are — Jihadi-Salafists — theire superiority complex is on steroids because of the ultimate demands their philosophy makes of its adherents. This would be the case with ISIS fighters who go to Iraq and Syria and put their lives on the line for their brand of theology.

Yet, to say ISIS Islam is too simplistic. There are too many other Muslim communities and expressions of glocal (localized forms of the one global faith) Islam throughout the world. Islam is a diverse global faith, which takes on a different form, with varying interpretations of the Qur’an and the tradition of Muhammad where the local Muslim community deals with dissimilar concerns about local realities and contrasting views on religious violence and Westernization. It is unsophisticated to simply posit that ISIS represents Islam or is Islamic in a general sense with no further discussion or clarification. As Alireza Doostdar shared via Sightings at the University of Chicago, not only is there great theological diversity within Islam in general, and Salafism in particular, but also within ISIS itself. Furthermore, he opined, “the view that one particular religious doctrine is uniquely extremist will not help us understand the cycles of brutality that have fed on years of circulating narratives and images of torture, violent murder, and desecration.” Theology alone does not explain the allure of ISIS.

Societal Ideology

This is where my Twitter pal @DarAlHaq comes in. His handle name means, “Land of Truth” or, perhaps, “Land of the Right” or “Land of God,” depending on the translation. He is, evidently, in search of the “Land of Truth” where he feels he can live out his faith without the corrupting influences of modern, Western, society.

As Olivier Roy wrote we underestimate just how much Westernization contributes to the radicalization of Muslims and other extremists. @DarAlHaq is not alone in struggling with how to authentically practice (according to his view of what is “authentic”) his faith and remain pure in a context he is convinced is corrupting at its core.

In response to why he thinks Westerners leave “comfort” to join ISIS where “death and constant war” are guaranteed, he said to me:

these young [ISIS recruits] are fed up with [the] West and its lies, they don't want to see Muslims die and humiliated. They feel the [sense] of responsibility to protect them and free them from [the] hegemony of [the] U.S. and it’s corrupt agents and puppets who rule Muslims and plunder the little food they have left. They are sick and tired of western life. They are constantly bombard[ed] by prostitution, clubbing […]. The young muslims who knows their religion love to live a life of piety and faithful muslims, but the society they they live in is full of evil and that is [why] they seek salvation and join [a] group who truly believe in the same goal they want to establish a society where there is zero corruption, full of piety and [a] high standard of morals. These Islamic movements offer them a structural society where God[’s] words are above everything. They believe in the freedom of people, [but it has turned them] in[to] animals [who] have no second thought as to what the purpose of life is.

Because of this, he challenged, “we are eager to meet death, but what about you?”

@DarAlHaq’s sentiments echo a broader revitalized, and reformist, call from many Muslims whose lives are fragmented by Westernization. They see “the West” as responsible for immorality, widespread death, and a loss of purpose for life. Their ideological interpretation of Western society leads them to join groups like ISIS who, at the moment, are the foremost adversaries against “Western hegemony.” In this way, @DarAlHaq and others like him buy into the identity politics of Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” binary between “Islam” and “the West.” In so doing, they mirror the multiculturalists and “Islamophobic networks” in “the West” who and form a strange partnership with them in promoting the idea that “authentic” Islam is not compatible with modernity and vice versa.

In the past, those who wanted to join anti-Western movements would have become communists, joined leftist political or military organizations, neo-Nazi camps, or trained with al-Qaeda. Now, as ISIS seeks to establish an “Islamic state” in the Levant and the Middle East these young men and women fed up with “the West” join their ranks to combat the society they feel is degrading and destroying their lives. This sentiment is not necessarily Islamic, but could stem from various ideological sources including non-conformist sentiment, leftist creeds, or even Christian fundamentalism. Because of ISIS’s Islamic rhetoric it recruits Muslims, but any number of organizations opposing the “Western world” (notably, the anti-globalization camp) attract people from other backgrounds with similar attitudes toward the unethical lifestyle of “the West.”

Sociological

As I mentioned in my previous blogs, many Westerners also join ISIS for social reasons. Most notably, because they are isolated and lonely. In his book Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, Olivier Roy says that in the passage to the West, Islam as a religion (and its practitioners) undergo a deterritorializing, deculturalizing, and destabilizing process that, both of us argue, leaves individuals feeling rejected not only by Western society (see above), but by their fellow Muslims. Thus, these isolated men and women go in search of a new ummah (global Islamic community, on the macro level) and a new local community (on the micro level). Enter ISIS.

This list of reasons why Westerners join ISIS is not comprehensive nor entirely cohesive. There are other reasons why Westerners leave their homes to fight in the deserts of Syria and Iraq alongside other ISIS recruits, ranging from the psychological to the criminal. Furthermore, our understanding of ISIS and its fighters is limited. My contact with @DarAlHaq is just an initial foray, but gaining further access is fraught with difficulty and danger. Thus, intimate knowledge of ISIS recruits’ motivations remains scant. Moreover, understanding why Middle Easterners join ISIS is an entirely different consideration, but I surmise that theological neofundamentalism, societal struggles related to the increased pressure of Westernization, and deculturalization, destabilization, and deterritorialization still play a significant role even there.

Whatever the conclusions, the situation is complicated and in need of further investigation and fine-tuned perspectives that attempt to summarize the multifarious motivations for Westerners to join the ISIS cause. Without thoughtful and nuanced discussion we run the risk of oversimplifying ISIS and its philosophical compatriots, which inevitably leads to exacerbating the issue we set out to solve in the first place.

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

*For more on religion & culture follow @kchitwood

The situation with ISIS/ISIL (Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya) continues to heat up. ISIS continues to post videos of atrocious beheadings of their Western prisoners (two U.S. journalists and a British aid-worker). These digital demonstrations have provoked the Western military powers into intense discussions of reprisals and concrete conversations about constructing a coalition.

*Read "Five Facts You Need to Know about Iraq, its Religious Minorities, and ISIS."

Amidst the flurry of emotion and geo-political crusading an interesting, misleading, trend has re-surfaced: the crafting of Muslim identity by non-Muslims for the latter's own purposes.

President Barack Obama's comments to this effect did not go unnoticed. He said on September 10, just a day before the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

“...let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.”

POTUS's comments echo those of George W. Bush who famously quipped in the aftermath of 9/11, that Islam "is a peaceful religion" (Nov 13, 2002) and that:

“Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.”

— October 11, 2002

Obama used this language before moving on to say, "Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy."

British Prime Minister David Cameron joined in with the ISIS ≠ Islam prose. In the wake of the execution of British aid-worker David Haines, Cameron remarked that ISIS "are not Muslims, they are monsters." He branded the ISIS killings and subsequent videos as acts "of pure evil" and vowed that the UK, "will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice."

Cameron, and Obama, made comments about what Islam is, and what it is not, that allowed them to justify their actions. Realizing that the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric (the "West" versus "Islam") is not popular sentiment, nor is it conducive to building a coalition that would include Muslim-states and Muslim majority nations, the two Western leaders made sweeping statements about what Islam is, and is not, in order to vindicate their aggressive, military-based, retaliations.

Response to Cameron and Obama's comments has been mixed. Many from progressive Muslim communities praised them for drawing a line between their peaceful faith and practice and the brutal extremism of ISIS. Many on the far-right of the political spectrum (and even some from among the ranks of the "New Atheists," including Sam Harris) in the U.S. lambasted POTUS for his "ignorance" concerning ISIS and Islam, saying that he "isn't qualified enough to say what is and what is not Muslim."

At the same time, a Twitter handle by the name of "Ahimla Jihada" (@Ahimla2), which spouted seemingly supportive superlatives for ISIS from an "American-Muslim woman" was found to be a fake. Before the account was shutdown, the tweets of @Ahimla2, which declared her devotion to ISIS and love for terror (from within the United States no less!) produced strong responses calling for her death and the killing of many more Muslims in the U.S. Shibli Zaman at Loonwatch.com lamented:

“There are dubious forces from an increasingly belligerent political Right who are out to brainwash, by hook or crook, the American public into hating their fellow citizens of the Muslim faith and to justify a foreign policy in the ‘10/40 Window’ that has tarnished America’s reputation globally and needlessly puts our men and women in uniform in harm’s way.”

While Cameron/Obama/Bush may be lauded for trying to distinguish between ISIS and global Islam and this Twitter scandal may be mourned as an attempt to justify Islamophobia in the U.S., they are both examples of the same error: Western politicians or popular pundits cannot be the ones to say what Islam is and is not.

*Read "Does ISIS = Islam?"

At issue here is the question -- who has the right to define what Islam is and is not?

Language has power to shape opinions and to galvanize people to action. These leaders and culture shapers understand this. That is why they use essentializing terminology to declare what Islam is and is not. By becoming arbiters of Islamic identity, Western leaders seek to make essentialist claims in order to provide powerful, and useful, rallying-points for their own agendas. In these cases, attacking and destroying ISIS on the one hand, turning on Muslims in the U.S. on the other.

While artlessly defining Islam may prove useful for political purposes, it is not conducive to helping non-Muslims understand what Islam is. Concepts such as 'Islam' are not static. There is no fixed form of Islam that can be found or defined, especially by non-Muslims. Instead, Islam is a diverse stream of various forces, persistently in process, forever in flux, consistently contingent on changing cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and economic realities. Really, the language of Obama, Cameron, @Ahimla2 and others who want to say neatly that ISIS is Islamic, or it is not Islamic, is hegemony at work again -- colonial powers attempting to define the "other" in order to exert their own influence or power in the Islamic world.

My concern here is not political, it is not militaristic. Instead, it is one of religious literacy. Islam is one of the most multi-cultural, multi-generational, multifaceted, and misunderstood religions in the world, especially in the West. In order to understand Islam, we cannot apperceive it according to uncluttered constructs or uncomplicated categories. Instead, the messiness and miscellany of the Muslim world must be explored. This will often mean meeting with local Muslims, observing regional dynamics, and listening, and learning, their perspectives on global Islam. Especially in the West, we need to listen to Muslims speak about their own community, from all sides, before we begin crafting Muslim identities according to our own motivations -- be they benign or malevolent.

If Western powers or Islamophobes want to say what Islam is or is not for their own political ends, so be it. What I don't want to see is the general population getting carried away with a vision of Islam that is founded more in Western hegemony than it is global Islamic reality.