ISIS and the Challenge of Interpreting Islam Text, Context, and Islam-in-Modernity

Abstract

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) organized an “ISIS and
the Challenge of Interpreting Islam: Text, Context, and Islam-in-Modernity”
panel at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting held on
November 21, 2016, in San Antonio, TX. After the panel, it held a reception
and presented the al Faruqi Memorial lecture. The panel brought together senior
scholars of Islam, history, and cultural studies.
Moderator Ermin Sinanović (director, Research and Academic Programs,
IIIT) divided it into three rounds and allowed questions after each round. Each
round addressed an ISIS-related question: (1) “How should we best understand
ISIS? Is it a product of Islamic tradition or something inherently modern? What
is ISIS an example for?”; (2) “What role does the Islamic tradition play in enabling,
justifying, or delegitimizing ISIS?”; and (3) “Is ISIS Islamic?”
The first speaker, Ovamir Anjum (Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic
Studies, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of
Toledo) reminded the audience of the commonality of violence for political
ends in history by arguing that this is not a uniquely Islamic phenomenon. According
to Islamic tradition, groups like ISIS that employ violence to kill Muslims
and non-Muslims are ghulāt (extremists), rebels, or khawārij. One must
understand ISIS within the Islamic tradition, because the group is using Islamic
symbols. But this does not mean that it is an Islamic phenomenon.
In the second round, he contextualized the issue by stating that the number
of Syrians killed by Bashar al-Assad is seven times higher than those killed
by ISIS. He remarked that “ISIS is horrifying for psychological reasons because
they use the pornography of violence, for example, not because they
are a uniquely murderous threat. There are a lot of those in the world.” Anjum
also found its acts dangerous because its members justify their own biases in
the name of Islam. He restated that the group is khawārij, enslaves and kills
non-combatants, and rejects the authority of existent Islamic scholarship because
the Islamic juristic tradition forbids killing non-combatants.
Anjum responded to the final question by refusing to call ISIS “Islamic,”
for “Of course ISIS is making Islamic claims, but Islamic tradition is very
complex and has been very difficult to agree on things except for a very, very
few fundamentals throughout Islamic history.” He also argued that “those who
excommunicate Muslims en masse and kill for that reason are khawārij, and
they must be fought. This is agreed upon by both Sunni and Shi‘a scholars.” ...