{"id":10180,"date":"2016-08-04T18:08:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T18:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=10180"},"modified":"2016-08-04T18:08:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-04T18:08:22","slug":"isis-god-and-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/isis-god-and-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS, God and The Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ISIS\"Austen Ivereigh\u2019s <\/a>defense of Pope Francis\u2019 response to ISIS appears to be, well, evolving.<\/p>\n

Just the other day, he was arguing this:<\/a><\/p>\n

[ISIS] is a wholly modernistic creation, a vehicle of power, the \u201ctechnocratic paradigm\u201d of domination and exploitation, applied to an ancient faith. ISIS militants are engineers, IT experts, lawyers and literalists; they are utterly Western, utterly modern, utterly unreligious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now:<\/a><\/p>\n

First, the Islamic State might recruit mentally-ill teenagers from the banlieus<\/em>, but it is far from being a bunch of psychopaths. Islamism is a violent ideology drawn from a purist Islamic fundamentalism. It is a version of Islam which radically differs from, and is rejected by, most of the Muslim world.<\/p>\n

Second, a war with Christianity is key to its worldview. The Islamic State awaits the army of \u201cRome,\u201d whose defeat at Dabiq, Syria, will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course ISIS recruits far more than \u201cmentally-ill\u201d teenagers, but Ivereigh\u2019s recognition that it is a religious movement (however repellent) is a welcome acceptance\u00a0 of reality.<\/p>\n

Ivereigh goes on to explain that Francis has a \u201csix-fold strategy in response to the Islamic State provocation\u201d. Apparently it\u2019s \u201cwell thought out, and it is effective\u201d. I\u2019ll leave you to read the full piece\u00a0and judge for yourselves, but this, well:<\/p>\n

For the radicals, violence is sacred, sacrificial, divinely-sanctioned – it is precipitating Armaggedon and the celestial triumph of Islam.<\/p>\n

So when Francis declares that its violence is, as well as being evil and abhorrent, \u201csenseless,\u201d as he described the Nice massacre, or \u201cabsurd\u201d as he said of the violence that slayed Hamel, he is dealing Islamic State a significant blow: the world\u2019s leading religious authority has denied them the legitimacy of a religious justification.<\/p>\n

This is a strategy, but it is, also, genuinely, demonstrating what true religion is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well no. The idea that ISIS or, for that matter, many of the people inclined, however remotely, to sympathize with them will pay the slightest attention to the opinion of a \u201creligious authority\u201d for whom they have no respect is, to put it at its kindest, na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

As to what a\u00a0 “true religion” is, well, let’s just to say that religion takes\u00a0 many forms, not all of them benign.<\/p>\n

And then:<\/p>\n

As a longtime discerner of spirits, Francis has a keen awareness of the workings of the diabolos<\/em>, the great divider, and the subtle ways evil can persuade \u2018good\u2019 people to set themselves over and against \u2018bad\u2019 people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did Ivereigh felt the need for a little Greek, with its suggestion of erudition, to conceal the primitive beliefs that it describes: The Devil. No less.<\/p>\n

Superstition, wishful thinking and denial do not a good \u201cstrategy\u201d make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austen Ivereigh\u2019s defense of Pope Francis\u2019 response to ISIS appears to be, well, evolving. Just the other day, he was arguing this: [ISIS] is a wholly modernistic creation, a vehicle of power, the \u201ctechnocratic paradigm\u201d of domination and exploitation, applied … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[1095,804,998,403,684,489],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10183,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180\/revisions\/10183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}