Metamorphosis

17 October 2017

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

ISIS Capital Raqqa Falls, but ISIS Won't Die

Raqqa, Syria, has served the demonic Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since the monstrous polity was born in early 2014. Earlier today, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced victory over ISIS in Raqqa. There will be mopping up of sleeper cells, but the major fighting is over. That, however, doesn't mean that ISIS is at an end. It will know shift shape from a proto-state to a hazy concept that will inspire weak-minded individuals to engage in terrorism. ISIS is beaten to be sure, but it is not defeated. That will take a different kind of fight.

"Everything is finished in Raqqa, our forces have taken full control of Raqqa," SDF spokesman Talal Sello told AFP news agency on Tuesday afternoon. "The military operations in Raqqa have finished, but there are clearing operations now under way to uncover any sleeper cells there might be and remove mines."

This isn't the final liberation of ISIS-held territory. The BBC notes, "The jihadist group still has a number of footholds, the largest of which runs along the Euphrates river valley in the south-eastern province of Deir al-Zour. However, the SDF and Syrian government forces - which are backed by Russian air strikes and fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement - have launched separate offensives in the province with the aim of taking control of a key crossing on the border with Iraq. IS has also suffered a series of defeats in recent months to Iraqi government forces, who are advancing along the Euphrates on the other side of the border." Without air power and facing the Russian- and US-backed troops, it is only a matter of time before ISIS holds no land at all.

There will be territory held in the minds of wannabes, however. The propaganda on the internet will be there to warp some to the ISIS point of view. The glory of the caliphate, cut short by infidels, will take on a life of its own. Bombings, shootings, and a panoply of other terrorist acts will follow, all in the name of ISIS.

In order to truly defeat ISIS, the west (or civilization in general if one prefers) will have to take away the air and light that allows a group like ISIS to recruit. Young people, mostly men, in countries ruled by repressive regimes are prime candidates for the appeal of ISIS or others of their ilk. These people need hope and opportunities, and that probably means that they need to live in more open societies. That means a social transformation in the Islamic world.

Islam was, once upon a time, a progressive force in human development. One only needs to look at the liberal society (relatively speaking) under the Moors in Cordoba, Spain. It was the Islamic world that gave humanity algebra and the names of the stars. It did not achieve these glories with the backward Wahhabi teachings that the Saudis have been subsidizing with their oil money for a couple of generations.

There are strands of Islam, just as there are in Christianity, that are tolerant and intellectual. Sufism, Ijtihad and related approaches to the Quran can free the faithful from the dead-end many of their societies have reached. Just as the Saudis have spent on the Wahhabi, others must invest in the more humane teachings of others.

This journal would prefer that everyone simply keep their religious beliefs to themselves (and even better, they should have none), but so long as converts are sought, let them convert of a version of belief that makes them universalists, cosmopolitans and progressives.

In the meanwhile, there is a generation of ISIS-friendly young people who will have to be weened away from the evil. When the Third Reich fell, the individual Nazis remained. The same is true of ISIS. Two cheers are in order for the news from Raqqa.

© Copyright 2017 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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