ISIS Is Islam

“ISIL” is how President Barack Obama refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He pronounces it as one would the last syllable in “Moishel,” giving it the ring of a Yiddish diminutive. Yiddish adds an “-l or –ele” suffix to signify affection. “ISIL,” the more expansive appellation preferred by the president, stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Obama was set to tee off on the golf course, when the outfit released footage of its latest bloodletting in Iraq: a video clip depicting the handsome head of American photojournalist James Foley being sawed off by a masked man with a British accent—yes, the West either admits these Muhammadans through mass immigration, or grows them at home in hothouses of multiculturalism. The life of another journalist, Steven Sotloff, now hangs by a thread.

Unlike our Israeli and European allies, the U.S. government does not haggle for the lives of its countrymen. In fairness, Obama had at least made attempts to rescue poor Mr. Foley. His predecessor, Genghis Bush, sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to spare Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, of blessed memory, who also met the most ghastly fate imaginable: beheading. Even before these men were headless, they were faceless to Bush and his followers.

From Martha’s Vineyard, Obama addressed the media. His response to the beheading of Mr. Foley exhilarated the groupies at CNN. “The entire world is appalled,” the president intoned solemnly. It shocks the conscience of the world. Foley was a good man who stood for “hope and civility.” The killers are craven cowards. They have no ideology, only an “empty vision.” They offer their neighbors nothing but “nihilistic” horror.

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. No faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day,” asserted Obama, before scampering back to his game.

Don’t be too harsh on the White House’s current occupant for symbolically severing the ISIS snake head from its Islamic body and tail. His predecessor was as devoted to promoting the Religion of Peace pie-in-the-sky. When it comes to anodyne assurances about Islam’s compatibility with diversity and democracy, Bush was every bit the delusional dhimmi that Obama is.

As Paul Sperry documented in “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington,” Bush inaugurated the practice of always mentioning the nation’s churches and synagogues in tandem with its mosques. As did he promise Muslim leaders never to pair “Islam” with “terrorism,” a promise he kept. And never did Bush utter a peep about “Islamic terrorism,” emphasizing only equal-opportunity terrorism.

Bush hosted regular iftaar fast breakers, and had selected as his “expert” on Islam a dabbler—a law professor called David Forte who doubled up as a “religious pluralist.” Forte crafted one of the Bush administration’s central stupidities: the notion that the essential Islam has been hijacked by a few bad-assed Arabs. Bush was forever offering incantations about Islam’s compatibility with liberty and tolerance; a faith based on love, not hate, ad nauseam.

As the ideologues that purport to be saving us from the scourge of Islamic terrorism see it, the Religion of Peace was doing what it does best—inspire peace and prosperity—when, out of nowhere, radicals materialized and derailed it. This is contradicted by history as well as an important primary source: the Quran.

The first attests that the sword has always been integral to Islam, and that conversion has invariably meant conquest and carnage. The second proves that Islam’s alleged “hijackers” have done no more than heed their scriptures. The soldiers of ISIS or ISIL are obedient Muslim. They’ve obeyed the Quran. “The Call to Jihad” instructs Muslims that, “When you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them.”

“Holy war, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not defensive war as the Western students of Islam would like to tell us,” cautions Serge Trifkovic, author of “The Sword of the Prophet.” Even apologists for Islam à laJohn Esposito admit that murderous missionizing is a filament of the Islamic faith: “Jihad means to fight to spread Islam, not just to defend it, and to wage war against [Jews and Christians] who refuse Muslim rule.”

What can the aspiring dhimmi anticipate? Peace has its place in Islam, promises Sperry, who has mined the Quran, but “only after the entire world is conquered in the name of Allah.” And even then, peace is the province of Muslims, mainly, while others are subdued and must pay for protection.

The Quran’s ruthless particularism runs counter to the universal concepts of justice and love of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. The tenet of religious literalism, moreover, explains why Islam has changed little over 1,400 years. Unlike the Jewish (and no doubt Christian) holy texts which have been reinterpreted by the sages over the centuries, the Quran has not—its decrees are not debatable and are to be taken literally.

Before being hushed, the greatest theologian alive—no, he’s not Pope Francis I—worried out loud that Islam was a closed and irrational system, impermeable to reform. Pope Benedict XVI was threatened, in 2006, for marshaling yet more primary sources to show that Islam does not brook reason or reformation and is commanded to will the world to its ways.

You might say that the term “radical Islam” is something of a redundancy. Islam is radical, and by extension, so are its true believers. Some, like ISIS or ISIL, are simply more devoted than others.