THE EXPLANATION OF HOW AND WHY THERE IS AN ISLAMIC STATE IS SIMPLE

…The Islamic States official flag

There’s a simple answer to a complex question.

I have previously avoided writing or giving any more exposure to the horrific actions of the Islamic State (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.  I have from day one, been against this group that has created a public theater of death on the Internet by beheading people, drowning them, burning them, and sometimes just blowing them up.

They have used tremendous ingenuity and gone to great strengths to show extreme brutality as being a major part of their Islamic State’s brand.  It is meant to horrify…and it has succeeded, apparently beyond even their own expectations.

What has been the most devastating to me has been how well their ultra-violent efforts have succeeded in using this brutality for recruiting non-Muslims.  These naïve individuals have either gone to join them in the field, or they attempt to perform this same brutality as lone-wolf extremists against innocent civilians in America or other Western countries.

The question that made me decide to write a column on them was my desire to understand where and how these extremists became what they are today…?

Was it just a bunch of thugs that were able to organize and that had access to supporters that knew how to use the latest Internet technology?

Or were they just opportunists that enjoyed killing others, and they saw that by becoming totally immersed in the ways of the Islamic extremists, they could use that approach for becoming the Islamic State?

I guess my curiosity was to try and honestly discover how they became what they are.

However, after all the research, it appears that if you dig really deep, the reality is that it’s even worse than anyone imagined, and it’s not going away soon.

The truth is the fellowship that the Islamic State truly embraces is that everyone that doesn’t believe as they do are all referred to as “others”.  The ISIL group as a whole shows that they have a near-universal human capacity to identify all those seen as “others”, also as “non-believers”.  Therefore, being a “non-believer” can easily then be treated as a different form of human life.  A life that does not deserve to live and these "non-believers" should be shown to the ISIL’s followers and other non-believers, to severely suffer as they are being put to death.

As time has past, the Islamic State has become aware of their ability to remain anonymous on the internet, while they could also using this latest technology as a an international stage for performing their horrific acts.  And they learned how to do this, while they were giving it the slick look of a child’s video game.

History shows that In medieval times, the venue for the showing power was to use the community’s gathering places as one would use a theater stage. The sense of theatricality is a prime example of the display of their power over all of the “others”.  It is not accidental that they make each killings a center stage performance for maintaining their control of all “non-believers”.  They use a foundation of many parts of the Muslim ways, but only where it fits them, and they just discard or ignore those ways when it doesn’t.

The reality is that their video images evoke a barbarism that transcends any religion or culture. Their actions stand there rightfully alongside the Nazis of the Holocaust and the tortures by the confessor-priests of the Spanish Inquisition.  But for the Islamic State, it’s just another way for promoting their show of power over the “non-believers”.

The Islamic State is basically taking their approach to non-believers back to the ways of the gruesome public executions that were common in Europe until the late 18th century.  Slow, painful deaths were often a normal part of the spectacle. It wasn’t until the French revolution that the guillotine was seen as being a “humane” way of killing, because it was considered a “machine for the production of quick, easy and discreet deaths.”

With ISIL’s bazaar mix of modern and medieval, the Islamic State has just revived the old practice of torture as a public exhibition.  But they now can do it on a stage that can be viewed by millions in real time.  In addition, they’ve also learned how to give their executions the color and the high-definition of an X-Box video game.

So, it appears that I have learned from my research, why ISIL is that what and why they are……and the answer appears to be quite simple. 

When we remove today’s technology from the Islamic State, for their ultimate goals, they may use parts of the Muslim religion and some other ways of the Middle East.  But as a group, they have no religious foundation that they are using as evidence of anything but a gigantic and tragic capacity for taking pleasure in the killing and suffering of others.  And they do this to finance, promote and recruit others for maintaining their power and control over all the “non-believers”.

That’s appears to be it in a nutshell.

Copyright G.Ater  2015