Prof. Abdallah Schleifer on ISIS recruitment: “What we need is a counter jihad.“

One of the characteristics of Arab-West Report is that we are ready to listen to anyone. We are also ready to document contradictory views. The purpose is to listen to different views and encouraging debates.

We earlier asked Shaykh Dr. Muhammad Ṣalāḥ to discuss the October 6, 2015, report, Inside the Jihadi Mind: Understanding Ideology and Propaganda”.of the Centre on Religion & Geopolitics at the Tony Blair Foundation . Dr. Muhammad Ṣalāḥ agrees with the report that there is a need for an ideological debate with ISIS.  Prof. Abdallah Schleifer knows Islam inside out. He disagrees with Dr. Muhammad Ṣalāḥ and explained this in an interview with our intern Felix Wellisch.

Schleifer stated in this interview "I truly believe that all the volunteers that join them - whether they come from an Arab country, or the Franco Algerians, or Anglo Indians, or converts - all of them are attracted by the videos of ISIS driving triumphantly through towns with the black flags and their weapons, chanting. They are going into combat for their cause. It is almost as great as you can imagine being in the Red Army in  1919, fighting the White Armies in defence of the Bolshevik revolution. That is what turns these people on, not the ideology. The ideology is the justification for being turned on by this comradely romantic terrorist organization which you can now be a part of. Ideology is the rationalization for it. In the end you can come to believe in it sincerely, but that is not what attracts you."

"It is good to win a theological debate, but since my thesis is that the volunteers are not primarily attracted by the ideology, you won’t solve the problem by debating. And by the way, as ISIS is cherry picking the Qur’an for justifications, the ‘Ulamā᾿, the Azhari sheikhs should expose this perverse cherry picking."  

The opposition to the religious cherry picking, however, brings one back to the need for an ideological debate because only this can expose the cherry picking Schleifer is so angry about. But, as Schleifer demonstrates, it is not ideology alone one should look at. 

February 6, 2016

Cornelis Hulsman,

Editor-in-chief Arab-West Report

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Correction: 

With my apologies - the link to the interview with Prof. Schleifer was missing. The full text can be read here.

February 6, 2016

Cornelis Hulsman,

Editor-in-chief Arab-West Report