One can be more specific: They should be Sunni Muslims, since this is the community from which ISIS has emerged. (God knows, Shiite Muslims, with Iran in the lead, have engaged in their own variants of terrorism, but ISIS is the more immediate issue.) But also it should probably not be individuals with Muslim backgrounds who are so Westernized that what they say has little resonance among most Muslims\u201d\u201dAyaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie come to mind. In other words, the want ad should be for conservative Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n
(I speak of ISIS. I\u2019m annoyed by the practice of constantly listing every acronym by which this odious outfit has been called: \u201cIslamic State\u201d\u009d won\u2019t do, because supposedly that legitimates the pretension that it is the Islamic state. So we get an endless serving of all the acronyms: \u201cIS, ISIS, ISIL, Deash\u201d\u009d. This is silly. We know who they are. I prefer the most descriptive acronym \u201cISIS\u201d\u009d\u201d\u201dthe developing Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. No legitimacy implied.)<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, there have been a good many voices raised. Here is a partial list, who spoke up in the course of 2014: Probably the most significant has been that of Shawki Alam, Grand Mufti of al-Azhar in Cairo, the most prestigious Sunni center of learning in the world. He described ISIS as \u201ccorrupt\u201d\u009d, \u201ca danger to Islam\u201d\u009d, \u201cviolating Sharia law and humanitarian law\u201d\u009d. There have been statements by the Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Shaikh, Saudi Arabia\u2019s highest religious authority, who spoke of ISIS as \u201cthe number one enemy of Islam\u201d\u009d; by Mehmet Gormez, the highest cleric in Turkey, who saw ISIS as \u201chugely damaging\u201d\u009d and \u201ctruly awful\u201d\u009d; and rather amazingly, 100 Sunni and Shi\u2019a imams in Britain issued a joint statement (this unusual collaboration probably easier in Europe than in the Muslim heartland) calling ISIS \u201can illegitimate vicious group, who do not represent Islam in any way\u201d\u009d. What has been the effect of these statements? I don\u2019t know. But this is not a story of tacit acceptance.<\/p>\n