is ISIS evil?

I can't be better than my gut reaction to what happened this morning right now. Yes, yes they are.

After reading through this thread, several things were immediately evident: actions v institutional evil, rationale, and acceptance of ISIL.
While identity isn't wholly defined by actions, the two go hand in hand. It is to the point that you cannot deny ISIL has institutionalised violence in multiple flavors [sic].
ISIL (and Al Quaeda, the Taliban, et al) are rooted in the Mujahadeen. That term can loosely be translated to "jihad people." When the British, Soviets, and Western world in general attempted to control the Islamic-conquered middle east (in multiple instances: crusades, colonialism, cold war), jihad was instituted to drive back the invaders (not always officially). The US armed anti-Soviet groups (similar to Syrian rebels) who successfully bogged down the Russians in an unwinnable war (similar to Vietnam, in that there was no immediate benefit to continuation). These groups were involved in many middle eastern wars, but eventually globalised and turned to standard terrorism.
They often are the only governing authority in rural or poor areas, and have strong, functional economies that care for the otherwise-abandoned (Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, mid-Iraq). At this point, they are only about militaristic expansionism since no active islam-wide jihad bil saif exists as there is no single governing body akin to the Pope. Additionally, communiques from labelled terrorist groups have stood firm in the doctrine that they cannot exist at peace with persons who are not a part of their order. While many tend to criticise the US's labelling of many groups, once moderates have taken over (like in the PLO), they can and do coexist succesfully.
Jediism can coexist with Islam, but not with ISIL. While ISIL justifies their actions with specific passages from Islam, they only use what little out-of-context scripture supports their addiction to systemic violence at the cost of the core pillars of islam. Jihad is a pillar, but the concept of greater jihad is that a believer struggles with themself and the devil.

Tl;dr ISIL is evil af no matter how you define it.

Respond in forum or PM me.

Specific Resources:
Feldman, Noah. The fall and rise of the Islamic state. Vol. 23. No. 3. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Al-Turabi, Hasan, et al. "The Islamic State." Voices of resurgent Islam 241 (1983).
Ahmed, Ishtiaq. The concept of an Islamic State: an Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan. Stockholm: Stockholm UP. 1987.
Ahmed, Saladdin. "Islamic State: More popular than you think." Open Democracy (2015).

Rex wrote: Tl;dr ISIL is evil af no matter how you define it.

Respond in forum or PM me.

Hasn't ISIL openly claimed they want their caliphate to control the entire planet? That would be a crucial part of the puzzle in understanding their motivation, intentions and scope of action if true. I don't follow it close enough to have a source/reference though.

Adder wrote: Hasn't ISIL openly claimed they want their caliphate to control the entire planet? That would be a crucial part of the puzzle in understanding their motivation, intentions and scope of action if true. I don't follow it close enough to have a source/reference though.

Yes, and they're obviously not keen on the idea of voluntary conversion. I would assume that their external propaganda is different from their recruitment rhetoric, but I'm not exactly fedayeen material.

In all reality, could the Jedi defeat ISIS - just like, hey, team up with Anonymous and rush in there, arrest the terrorists, save the hostage, everybody lives apart from those who gave up their lives to capture the killers.

Silas Mercury wrote: In all reality, could the Jedi defeat ISIS - just like, hey, team up with Anonymous and rush in there, arrest the terrorists, save the hostage, everybody lives apart from those who gave up their lives to capture the killers.

if only.
"You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." A man who was shot later for his involvement in civil rights said that.
No one wants the terrorists even though the devil is the "good guys'" selling point. You should read up on Western involvement in the Middle East, I posted a couple good sources just a scroll back

thanks

Rex wrote: While ISIL justifies their actions with specific passages from Islam, they only use what little out-of-context scripture supports their addiction to systemic violence at the cost of the core pillars of islam.

That's a common misconception. Now, I'm no expert on Islam by any means, but I did go to middle school where I learned to summarize and paraphrase texts, compare their parts with each other and the whole texts with other texts in their content, even express my own opinions about them. Now, the Qur'an does not constantly preach violence against the non-believer. In fact, in a few places it says quite the contrary. However, it does insist that they are all wicked and dangerous, hateful towards Allah's people and Allah himself, and hated right back by Allah and either do suffer greatly or will suffer greatly one day when Allah gets his hands on them for it. The Jews in particular are according to it by far the worst, swine is a frequent label in explicit reference to them. So I'm neither much of an expert of literature or textual criticism, so perhaps someone else can educate me on this, but in my understanding countless verses promoting at least hostility, and in many cases also violence are not exactly out of context in a book that is thinner on story-telling than on gloating over the infidel's incoming agony. One of my favourite passages is in Al-Baqarah, commonly verse 216 though I have seen versions where it was 217. It is at any rate somewhere inbetween the commandment to fight the unbelievers to death wherever you find them except holy ground, since apostasy is definitely worse than killing people (2:191) and the verses about love relations (2:221 through 2:223) including a helpful explanation of the purpose of wives: Seed recepticles for their husband (2:223). Anyway, the reason I like 2:216 so much is for it being one of the few and earliest moments the book gains some remote sense of self-awareness. The verse says that just in case you find that maybe murdering people for not submitting to your god may be a tad extreme, you are to rest assured that it is no matter of your choice or opinion but that rather Allah knows best and you shouldn't think for yourself so much but fight that war as you are commanded.

Let's not pretend that the ideas of extremists are out of the blue or a misunderstanding. If they would at all arise without their explicit promotion by the text they refer to, we can be pretty sure that they wouldn't gain nearly so much popularity among people who take any of the rest of the book seriously to any extent. It is not an unwarranted interpretation, it is arguably the one closest to the text. I'm not saying that the text is the only thing at the root of the problem, but it is certainly not a negligible one. Fortunately, some Muslims don't read or follow much of what the text says, but these do and to pretend otherwise is insulting both to them and to ourselves for they know better and so do we.

Some Muslims do read the texts properly, it's just that they are normal people with common sense who see that killing is wrong !

While I agree that the actions of the various fundamentalist organizations that stem from Islam (remember that there are similar groups in many other religions) are reprehensible. Who are we to judge whether those people are "evil"?

Does that not just create more of the "us vs them" mentality to label *them* as evil? Does that mean that *we* are inherently good?