ISIS is not re-enacting the seventh-century Arab conquests, even though some among its ranks may think they are. They’re nostalgic for a make-believe past, and those among them who know plenty about Islam’s first decades have conveniently revised medieval history to fit modern ideological needs…
Islam’s early spread focused on expanding the number of believers without wholesale destruction of existing social structures. In contrast, ISIS’s determined lack of capacity for negotiation is what sets it apart from the early Islamic conquests.
Given this context, ISIS’s insistence on an all-or-nothing caliphate isn’t “medieval” at all. It is a thoroughly modern group.
—John Terry
Why ISIS Isn’t Medieval
Lack of capacity for negotiation, all-or-nothing, religious zealots whose extremism is based on a false reading of their religious texts? They could be Republicans.
It doesn’t much matter what dogma they follow, fundamentalists are all the same. It’s interesting because we saw a lot of this kind of stuff on the left many decades ago. But now we really don’t. Just the same, we hear all about “political correctness” as though it were (1) something important and (2) at all limited to the left.