There’s a claim in the Wall Street Journal editorial that continues to explore the subject I touched on here that caught my attention:
But there is a deeper problem with the Administration’s semantic dodges. Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram and other jihadist groups are waging more than a military conflict. They are also waging an increasingly successful ideological war for the soul of Islam and its 1.6 billion followers.
That made me wonder how you would go about evaluating the truth of that claim?
I’m pretty confident that counting the total number of Muslims and dividing it by the number of adherents of DAESH wouldn’t do it. I also don’t believe you can track its success of failure by counting corposes, measuring the area or population of the territory it controls, or determining how many hot lunches it serves to schoolchildren.
I’m not entirely sure how one could determine whether it’s “waging an increasingly successful ideological war” or even what that means. Suggestions?
I would read the opinions of leading writers in the Muslim world. Our coverage of these issues is fairly narrow. We read about IS killing some people. We rarely see published the reactions of Muslims from the rest of the world. When we do see published polls, it is clear that they are lacking in nuance.
Steve
So, you’re saying that an opinion poll of “leading writers in the Muslim world” will be more reliable and less biased? An interesting assertion.
I’m actually thinking of more objective measures than opinion polls or op-eds provide. Or are objective metrics irrelevant? That’s certainly possible but if that’s the case I’m not certain that your recommendation strengthens.
How would you determine whether anything were failing or succeeding? How about a treatment for cancer? Would you determine its success or failure based on the writings of medical opinion writers?
The leading medical writers cite statistics and provide evidence. They have intimate knowledge of the research and treatments being provided. Do they have some bias in that they may be fishing for more research grants? Sure, but if they provide consistent evidence that can be confirmed with secondary sources, I am good with that.
So in the case of the Muslim world, I am not suggesting we look for their equivalent of Tom Friedman or Fox News. I suggest we look for writers who know the language (note how many of our “experts” on Islam can’t read or speak the language and have never been to the area. Most of those “experts” don’t have the humility of an Adam Silverman.) Writers who know the culture. Writers who can cite actual evidence. Writers who actually live within the cultures where this clash of ideologies is taking place. Absent blogs that cover the ME, would there even be much awareness from reading our regular media that there has been significant pushback against IS in the Muslim world?
Steve
We are unable to make that distinction. The best we can do is take someone else’s word for it. I’d accept taking the word of someone recommended to me as an authority by a third party as evidence but not as a metric.
I’m not sure how they are measuring it, but I’ve seen reports of the number of recruits somewhere in the 10,000’s.
If accurate, that still represents a small fraction of worldwide Muslims but if, for instance, it is a larger (and growing) number when compared to al Qaeda recruits in the ’00s then I think this metric would support the claim.
According to a piece published last August ISIS recruiting numbers were higher than estimated — that was six months ago.
In a more recent Daily Beast article dated this month there remain real concerns regarding the continuing trend of new ISIS members freely flowing into the fight, adjusting to the U.S. bombing — even “spurred” on by it — with seemingly no end in sight.
I’m not entirely sure how one could determine whether it’s “waging an increasingly successful ideological war†or even what that means. Suggestions?
When masses of people stop believing in the previous shit they believed in and start believing in ISIS’s shit, then ISIS will be winning.
Examples of what I mean: The criminals that turned to ISIS in Paris and Copenhagen in recent weeks stopped believing the shit they were hearing from French & Danish societies and started believing in ISIS apocalyptic & (in their cases) suicidal shit. When significant numbers of Muslims in France, or Denmark, or Germany, or Old Blighty, or American opt out of our shit for the other guy’s shit, the other guy will be winning.
It’s all about George Carlin & tee shirts.
I doubt the Germans will have problems, as aren’t most of their Muslims Turks? Outside of POSSIBLY attracting some recruits from Afghanistan, has ISIS had any real appeal to non-Arabs? This may not be just a problem with religion, but a problem with race, as well. Not that we’re allowed to mention that the members of ISIS are anything other than upper crust WASPs from Eton & Harvard in good standing with the Church of England, of course. Because no Arab or Muslim, much less an Arab Muslim, would ever under any circumstances do anything that wasn’t both saintly and brilliant. Because algebra, and NASA.
It’s an ideology/religion like any other. How would you measure how well Islam or Christianity did at their inceptions? Or, more similarly, Baptists? How about Communists Back in the early part of the 20th Century? At some point numbers of recruits, territory controlled, resources and whatnot ARE measures of how successful they were. Body counts can do that, too. Get back to me in five years and I’ll tell you how well they’ve done at winning the heart and soul and BODIES of Islam.
A lot of the problem resides in the liberal Western democracies. They began to rot philosophically some time back, and large numbers of the populations are no longer able or willing to distinguish right and wrong. Hence, there are no evil acts or actors. There are only misguided individuals.
It ties in with my Camus comment and my other philosophy comments. Islam is only a symptom or a reaction to what is occurring in the West. Islam has no compunction about stating what is right and wrong, and they also are more than willing to provide consequences for wrong actions.
They are rejecting the post-Sartre deconstructed world, and Islam offers to reconstruct it for them. If a few or many people have to lose their heads for some comfort, so be it.
I’d measure enrollment in the new Obama State Dept Middle Eastern community colleges. If it’s up, DAESH is losing.
I think you will find it a definitive statistic.