Want to know what ISIS is up to ? Just take it from their official magazine - it is right there, explicit. The strategy is called "The extinction of the gray zone" - it is about polarizing western society by eliciting islamophobia: "Muslims in the crusader countries will find themselves driven to abandon their homes for a place to live in the Khilāfah, as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western land. [..] Eventually, the gray zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of īmān versus the camp of kufr". So, if you want to counter ISIS influence in our society, you know what to do: love each other... Turning to epidermic identity politics won't help a bit. Even ISIS remarks that our "response is often violently reactionary instead of forward-thinking" - and that is just the way they want it.
Everybody should read this. I'm skimming through it, and I'm realizing how little I know about the complexity of Daeshi culture. I think many of us, whose extent of exposure to the subject is listening to and watching the news, have no idea what is actually happening, and are completely unaware of what life is within ISIS borders. This magazine is first hand information from inside the minds of ISIS members. Yes, it's a propaganda magazine, but how can we even being to try to understand ISIS without knowing what they believe, and what their media says?
Their definition of an apostate Muslim is basically identical to our definition of an assimilated Muslim. Simply being more tolerant may avoid one horn, but gets you gored by the other. They are not dumb, their strategy is more complex than what they lay out in their official publication. Their goal is to put the West into an unwinnable situation no matter what we do. When you say "erase identity politics" well this applies to a massive chunk of non-radical Western Muslims as well, you are in effect talking about eliminating the gray zone also. That is why their strategy is so threatening, there is no winning move for the West as long as the West holds on to its ideological contradictions.
> Their goal is to put the West into an unwinnable situation no matter what we do.
No, their goal is to place Muslims in a situation where the fear of hatred from the West against Muslims (which Daesh kindles by provocative attacks on the West designed to get the West to blame, and retaliate against, Muslims generally) and fear of the consequences of defying Daesh (which Daesh creates by violent attacks on those Muslims who defy them) leave Muslims to perceive accepting the dominion of Daesh as the least bad option open to them. That's how the Caliphate is formed and grows.
So you are proposing that the French should respond to having over a hundred of their fellow citizens killed, and hundreds more injured by loving the supporters and leaders of ISIS?
No, I think he meant other Muslims that aren't/weren't involved with ISIS. Remember, ISIS is still a radical minority, and there are Muslims who don't support ISIS.
If what you are supposing is true, it fails to address what should be done now; should the French increase air attacks on ISIS, abandon their effort, or lead a ground incursion?
Over 50% of the population in many Muslim majority states believe that terrorism is at least 'rarely', and over 5% (, which is a large number of people,) believe it is justified 'often'.[1] There are obviously a large number of Muslims who do not support ISIS (probably a great majority, given sectarian and other considerations), but ISIS is not the only extremist Islamist organization in conflict with western values and/or governments.
I made no straw-man; I would actually like to know what the parent was proposing the French should do. The parent proposed that Westerners should be kind to everyone, but that does not address what should be done about the current problems.
Ok, let me make this a little bit more clear then. Taken straight from wikipedia we have the definition of a straw man argument.
A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.
Your reply to the parent poster was "So you are proposing that the French should respond to having over a hundred of their fellow citizens killed, and hundreds more injured by loving the supporters and leaders of ISIS?".
I was correcting you because you suggested that the parent was "proposing that the French..." and leaving the absurdity of the proposition to be its own refutation, when in fact the whole statement was "an argument which was not advanced by [the parent poster]".
Let us be clear that you can still desire to know what the parent was proposing the French do while also attacking his original position with a straw man arguemnt, which is exactly what occurred.
This is what makes me upset about the many US governors who say they will refuse Syrian refugees. They are playing right into their hand: letting their fear guide their politics.
Source: http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-... - (WARNING: shocking images, including severed heads - on top of the shocking text)