The job of Michael Lumpkin, who left the Pentagon to take the post of counter-propaganda czar in the State Department, deserves to be called a job from hill. Whatever Lumpkin does will remain restrained in a limited space so long as a wider Islamic reform movement is not launched in the Islamic world.
Lumpkin, who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), took the job of head of the Global Engagement Center at the State Department recently. What Lumpkin will face in the near future in an organization determined to preserve its inspiration and symbolism after it is defeated as a “state”. To achieve this, ISIL will have to give an even larger role to its media arm.
Militarily, ISIL will be transformed into an insurgency. The new message of the group in that phase will have a larger dose of religious history and increased justifications of the principle of establishing a caliphal state in order to prevent the erosion of their jurisprudent bases in face of the criticism of their main competitor: al-Qaeda.
We can expect this message to be enveloped in emotional appeals to all “true Muslims” to exact a price in vengeance for the Crusade that destroyed the first Caliphate in centuries.
This shows clearly that the counter-message to ISIL’s propaganda has never been technical. In the complex world of Islamic interpretations and theology, the major part of the counter-message should indeed be religious. Then come the political, personal, behavioral, and other elements which are usually used in similar cases.
Testimonies from Muslims tortured by ISIL, documentation of acts of senseless violence and acts of cowardice from the leaders of the group, taped confessions of lieutenants of the Caliph, a focus on Muslims’ role in defeating the organization, papers documenting theft of funds, etc., etc., are all parts of the package. Yet, the main core of the counter-messaging cannot be done by Lumpkin and others like him.
The reasons for the effectiveness of ISIL messaging cannot be reduced to how professionally their videos are made or how glossy their publications are printed or their active presence on social media sites. This all could be and should be disrupted. But the message is based on a larger foundation.
Let us see for example of the Sheikh of al-Azhar, who is supposedly the “minaret of moderation” for all Muslims. The Sheikh, Ahmed el-Tayeb, refused to consider ISIL members non-Muslims. True that he said that their war is anti-Islamic and they should be considered enemies of all Muslims, but the Imam, and the entire influential board of the Islamic scholars (ulama) of al-Azhar refused, nonetheless, to consider them non-Muslims.
The meaning of a real Muslim has been reduced to rituals and utterances rather than substance and ethics. The deformation in the interpretation of Islam has given jurisprudence and the “correct” form of worship a more prominent role than ethics and the substance of faith.
This deformation has been accumulative and can be explained by many theories. Yet it is only Muslims who can bring back the essence of spirituality to a religion hijacked by centuries of cultural stagnation, social backwardness, political and religious oppression, and a religious establishment that refuses to question the foundation of its understanding of Islam.
ISIL’s real roots are everywhere in the Muslim countries’ common interpretations of Islam. It is based on the parts of the public’s common understanding of Islam, the official Hadith (utterances of the Prophet) literature, the focus on jurisprudence and “forms” of belief rather than substance, and even the central curriculum taught by the so-called minaret of moderation, al-Azhar. Faith has been reduced to a checklist of rites rather than an essence of spirituality reflected in ethics, behavior toward others, and the view of the world and life in it.
This is why al-Azhar cannot consider ISIL non-Islamic. It fulfills all the formal requirements of being Islamic, as al-Azhar understands it. Contents do not matter much. For despite the fact that the organization is described by the very same Azhar as “an enemy of Islam”, it is still Islamic – an internal enemy. The substance of faith is not among the categories that define a Muslim to start with.
But correcting this deformation is essentially the job of enlightened Muslim scholars, not of any non-Muslim. Only enlightened Islamic thinkers who dare to subject texts, interpretations, and unfounded books to a sweeping critical review have a grasp of the current crisis inside Islam.
As for Lumpkin, he still has a lot in his plate. Technical messaging, political counter-propaganda, and even the role of Arab countries who are fighting ISIL, should be carefully structured in order to confront ISIL in the post-defeat phase.
While the whole world should help gather Islamic thinkers in a forum where they study the real roots of the crisis, preparations for a coherent counter-message in the political, military, and social domains must also be prepared. Instead of throwing an enlightened thinker like Islam al-Buhairi in an Egyptian prison, he should be released and given the proper forum, preferably in Europe to avoid assassination, to follow on his critical work.
The Arab governments should help, and should be helped, in confronting ISIL propaganda. By fighting against the organization, governments will be inclined to defend their role in the organization’s defeat. There is only one way for them to do so: prove that the group is indeed un-Islamic in word and action.
Revulsion towards terrorism and extremism should be turned into a tool to mold actively public opinion in the Muslim countries. The media is a powerful weapon in that regard. TV soap operas can be effective if they are intelligently written.
For the bigots who make attacking Islam their job, it is sufficient to ask: What do you want exactly? To convert 1.5 billion Muslims? Distinguish yourselves through looking down on Muslims? Would not it be much better to help find ideas to encourage Islamic reformers? When one considers Muslims a lower species or dangerous threat one unknowingly equates himself with ISIL, which considers all Christians and non-Muslims in general, a lower species and dangerous threat.
Muslims, once they find their road to the real essence of Islam, are the main ally against radicalism and terrorism. Alienating Muslims is a direct aid to terrorist groups. An alienated Muslim is an easier target for terrorists to recruit. Shall we remind the critics how medieval European Christians used to burn “unbelievers” alive under the watch of the Christian clergy? All religions have different phases. And the journey for Islam has to be shortened a bit. For the phase it is now in is too long and extremely painful.
The job of Lumpkin is indeed expansive. Yet, it can never substitute for what the Muslims have to do to save Islam from what the majority of them agree is its first enemy: ISIL.
mebriefing.com
