V. S. Naipaul on the Islamic State

V. S. Naipaul
Daily Mail Online

For a scathing critique of the Islamic State (IS aka ISIS), read V. S. Naipaul's article, "A grotesque love of propaganda. Unspeakable barbarity" (Daily Mail Online, March 22, 2015), for he does not hold back one iota, and here's a sample:

Imagine a world in which a young man is locked in a cage, has petrol showered over him and is set alight to be burnt alive.

Imagine the triumphant jeering of an audience that has gathered to witness this. Imagine, also, a 12-year-old child with elated determination on his features shooting at close range a kneeling man with his arms tied behind his back.

Then picture the spectacle of a hundred beheadings of victim after victim in humiliating uniforms, their hands and feet bound, kneeling with their backs to their black-robed executioners who wield knives to cut their throats as though they were sacrificial lambs.

Picture queues of helpless men and women being marched by zealous executioners who nail them to wooden crosses and crucify them, howling and bleeding to death as crowds watch.

Then picture thousands of girls and women, their arms tied, being marched by hooded and armed captors into sexual slavery. And then, if that is not enough, picture men being thrown off cliffs to their deaths because they are accused of being gay.

And this is only the beginning of Naipaul's masterful takedown of the IS in all its disgusting barbarism, savagery, ignorance, and destructiveness, for he understands what he's talking about and doesn't mince words, nor is he politically correct:

Are Isis and its followers heretics? The politicians of Europe and America, including David Cameron, Barack Obama and Francois Hollande, after every Islamicist outrage insist on describing them as a lunatic fringe. Their constant refrain is that these perpetrators of murder and terror have as much to do with Islam as the Ku Klux Klan has to do with Christianity or the testament of Jesus Christ. But does such political assurance bear scrutiny?

Of course the politicians, church leaders and others who say 'these atrocities have nothing to do with Islam' are not making a researched or considered theological statement. They are attempting, quite rightly, to prevent civil discord in a world in which there are considerable Muslim immigrant populations in most countries of Europe and in the US.

This tendency to distance Islamism from Islam is understandable, says Naipaul, given the large numbers of Muslim immigrants living in Europe, but he clearly thinks that the frantic distancing is barren nonsense, void of substance, obvious falsehood.

Read the entire article.