Shadi Hamid begins his essay on “The Roots of the Islamic State’s Appeal” by noting first the tendency of political scientists, including himself, to see “religion, ideology, and identity” as “products of a given set of material factors.” In the…
#Islamic State
Islamic Statism and Historical Necessity
Posted in History, notes, On Liberal Democracy in Relation to Islamism, Religion, War Tagged with: IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Reformation
replying to a comment on comments – part 2 (us v is)
(continuing reply to jch’s comment, with same proviso as before) 4 – Current Events or: Hegemony, What Is It/Good For? Now to current events, as we return to the original point of my intervention under the Quiggan post. jch says:…
Posted in History, Neo-Imperialism, notes, Political Philosophy, War Tagged with: Hegemony, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria
To Degrade and, Ultimately, To Destroy (1)
The President’s summary of his policy on the Islamic State or on “the group known as ISIL” was not elegantly enunciated: “To degrade and ultimately destroy” is a compound infinitive phrase that is pitched to the demotic or colloquial in…
man-killers
As for our Achilles-Nemesis, what reason is there to believe, along with apparently the professor, that it is our decision alone, or within anyone’s ability, to define the fight in some essentially different way, and still to fight at all?
Posted in Art, Books, Featured, Movies, notes, Political Philosophy, The Exception, War Tagged with: Iliad, Islamic State, Parthenon, sacrifice, The Exception
Global Fight Club
What exists now is domestic & international momentum to finally address the larger Syrian conflict, and not just the limited problem of ISIL — Zeddonymous (@ZeddRebel) August 27, 2014 The Caliphate is an image or idea, expressed in a dogmatic…
Essential Threat
In light of the ritualized sacrifice of a single man, on the altar of what we cannot help but believe – no possible justification – the many may be revealed to us as allies, as “with us,” perhaps first symbolically, but now also practically. Put simply, Foley’s death marks if it does not itself restore American re-engagement on behalf of those we had all but abandoned in the region.
Posted in Featured, Neo-Imperialism, The Exception, War Tagged with: Daesh, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria
Fact, Value, and the Destruction of Daesh
Not very long ago, “Islamic state” might have referred to a Western stereotype of “Mohammadean” passivity and fatalism. Today, while the West sometimes seems to have been overtaken by the condition or some version of it, the phrase now stands…
The Egyptian Exception and the Other Islamic State
The alternative resolution or the other Islamic state, the one that avoids the tyrant’s despair – or, put more politically-philosophically, allows for a liberal-Islamic assimilation that would also be integrative or unitary rather than irrecuperably conflictual – would appear to rely on modes of idealization of religion that would evolve simultaneously and bi-conditionally, or, as Fadel or Fadel’s Khaldun puts it, “organically.” Their current impermissibility is a reflection of the same problem.