The culture that gave birth to ISIS and the mind that uses it

First of all, we must accept that the phenomenon that has emerged under the name ISIS is not one that can be answered with a few sentences of hatred, or resolved by appealing to Islams qualified as "real, moderate, authentic." The matter is far more complicated than supposed.

Undoubtedly its ideological framework is fed by an extremism that could emerge at any time in history in the Islamic world. Even in the time of the Prophet there were those who, not satisfied with the perfect exemplariness of Islam displayed by the Messenger of God himself, supposed it more correct to do more. It is reported that when, on a Ramadan day at the Battle of Badr, in the conditions of war, the Prophet broke his fast and advised the companions to break theirs too, there were those who resisted this in the name of piety.

Likewise, among the companions there were those who supposed that spending all their days fasting and not approaching women was a more pious conduct, and they were the addressees of the Messenger of God's famous warning, his warning that preaches respect for human nature and the desires of the body as well.

In the Islamic world the Kharijite tendency has always been a potential problem. Starting from apparently extremely simple truths, it displays an approach that arrives at absolutist conclusions that also paralyze the ground of discussion among Muslims. When they raised, against Ali, an indisputable principle by saying "judgment belongs to God alone," they were committing a vandal assault on the being of the Commander of the Faithful, who had practically become a walking Qur'an. Ali described this outburst by saying "they spoke the truth, but they displaced the truth from its place."

"Speaking the truth while intending falsehood," or making the truth undebatable, unthinkable, unspeakable... We see that the Kharijite attitude has always represented such a vandalism against thought and politics in Islamic history.

At first glance a political attitude appears to demand more, tighter, more radical. Yet a radicalism that stands against human nature severs one from religious life, dries up its ground, destroys its meaning, paralyzes its will.

Worse still, this radicalism finds mass appeal. In an environment where, with today's mass communication devices, every kind of message can be amplified excessively and its effect likewise excessively increased, the word or message retains no meaning. Imagine once more, if you like, the concepts "Islam," "Islamic State," "Allahu Akbar," "the Messenger of God," "salaf," "jihad," excessively rammed in our faces by ISIS, with the effects of the pornographies of death and violence that accompany them. What ISIS aims to destroy is none other than the whole conceptual set and the political legitimacy of Islamic politics.

All these symbols, each turned into an object of popular culture, are sure to find a serious customer base in the global market. Once demand is created in the market, there is no need even for a successful presentation; the customer finds what he is looking for.

Undoubtedly, the management of this market, which has caused structures like ISIS to shine as firms operating in this field, is on one side closely tied to the Western policies being pursued in the Middle East.

Coming to that side of the matter, we cannot forget that right after the September 11 attacks George W. Bush, in a rather naive reaction to the event, asked this question: "Why do they hate us?"

Beneath this question lay a detailed accounting of what great sacrifices the US was making for the development of the Middle East. Among these details there was not the slightest mention of the US's unconditional support, since the early years of the Cold War, for the long-lived dictators who had been plaguing the peoples of the Middle East, nor of the US's tolerating, with its infinite compassion in spite of everything, the existence of Israel, lodged like a dagger in the region's heart, and the crimes against humanity it commits against the Palestinians.

Even if we disregard the possibility that today's ISIS or al-Qaeda, or their activities, are planned somewhere, nobody can ignore that they are the result of a hatred produced by an environment of violence constantly fed in the Middle East. In fact, more than the answer to Bush's question, it was more astonishing that he had asked it with real belief. So much so that it was impossible to believe Bush was really curious about the answer to this question. Because it is impossible not to see that the US's present relationship in the Middle East, both with existing regimes and with Israel, produces nothing but hatred toward it.

When the political ground is paralyzed, as the expression of people's efforts and quests to improve their own lives, it is quite natural for cynicism, radicalism and violent reactions to become the attitudes that determine the environment. In the environment determined by these attitudes, politics is suspended on one ground or another and states of emergency become permanent.

Structures similar to ISIS do of course have a side that can be seen as a result of mis-feeding from Islamic culture, but in its emergence in this form today there is another dimension that far exceeds the pathology performance of Islamic culture.

How much is ISIS a product of this culture, and how much a result of the mind that instrumentalizes it? This question must be addressed with care.