ISIS, Hamas with or without beheadings is the same ideology, the same enemy.
President Obama is outraged at the beheading of journalist James Foley by ISIS — it’s a “cancer,” not a religion, says Obama. It must be wiped out.
Selective outrage, we would say. Hamas murdered its own people in the public square this week with their heads covered. Woe unto us if a beheading is “worse.” As if cold-blooded murder is divisible. As if Hamas’ use of babies as human shields is morally or tactically less dangerous to civilization. As if the latest “creativity” in murder — tunnels, suicide belts, buses, tractors — clouds the goals of the murderers, colors the ideology of hatred, or camouflages the perverse dedication to death.
As if, somehow, things would be better if ISIS, with its especially brutal tactics, were defeated, but the likes of Hamas, which “merely” murder countless innocent people without beheading them, were left in place.
No man is an island . . . the bells toll for all the innocent, for all the murder victims of radical Islam, however they were murdered. The threat to freedom and democracy is the same, whatever the method of violence, since the ideology is the same: Expel Westerners. Defeat political pluralism. Eviscerate democracy. Expel Western values, whether borne by Jews in Israel, by tourists in Iran, by journalists in Pakistan (think Daniel Pearl), by young girls in Nigeria (remember them?), or by freedom-loving Arabs or Muslims in Egypt or Syria or anywhere else.
And yes, the ideology of ISIS, of Hamas and of the other variations thereon, is a religion. It may be a “cancer” metaphorically, but it is a religion factually. Islamic extremists practice vile violence in the name of a religion, in the name of Islam, in name of Allah. They do it wearing their religion on their sleeves. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck . . .
As Israel Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts it, “ISIS is Hamas. Hamas is ISIS.” Shock value, such as beheading, is secondary. Murder is murder.
To deem the terrorist acts committed by Islamic extremists not reflective of the very religion that its practitioners avow is to slow the defeat of this version of Islam. To deny the religious motivation of Islamic extremists is to deflect the name of the enemy. One cannot defeat an enemy whom one cannot name.
One cannot simply impose Western perceptions on the rest of the world — “all religions teach peace and brotherly love” — and hope to come up with an accurate reading, an effective strategy or a powerful will to prevail.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
