A Propaganda Struggle To Recognise ISIS Members As Victims

Christy Walsh disagrees with Larry Hughes on the status of ISIS members who carry out attacks on civilians.

Myself and Larry Hughes (LH) exchanged opposing opinions about the Manchester Bomber Salman Abedi. LH was critical of the MSM (mainstream media) and thought they were unfair to Abedi who LH believed was a victim of western ‘carpet bombing’ in the Middle East. Our exchanges can be found at Daithi O’Donnabhain’s article Cubs of the Caliphate.

I have heard others make similar excuses for young British Muslims traveling to the Middle East to commit unspeakable war crimes. I remain unconvinced by arguments that young British Muslims face nothing but discrimination and marginalisation in the UK; thus what alternatives have they got? But more, I am repulsed by LH’s view that ISIS members, no matter the atrocity, are victims and not calculated perpetrators of their own acts of barbarity like the one in Manchester.

I do not know if The Manchester Bomber was ever mistreated by the UK. But I do know that he was the son of a Libyan defector, Ramadan Abedi. In the 1990s, the UK provided Abedi senior, and his then young family, safety from the Libyan Gaddafi regime. This is hardly enough evidence of Abedi as a victim of anything other than maybe the Gaddafi regime.

LH’s arguments highlighted the fallacy of trying to apply the logic of freedom or resistance struggles attacking oppressive occupiers on their home territory. This logic does not work with religious fanatics. In attempt to explain Abedi’s actions LH replaces the word ‘Allah’ with ‘retaliation’; in other words Abedi was acting in retaliation to western aggression and not really in the name of Allah. This is the same error others in the West make; they impose their own judgment value on Islamists because an action in ‘retaliation’ implies there was a provocation. This sort of altered narrative suggests that Islamists are acting with noble motives and not out of religious fanaticism in its own right. If Islamists blow themselves up or slaughter others in the name of Allah then we should take them at their word the reason why they do so and not impose our own reasoning in attempt to justify or rationalise their actions in ways that Islamists do not. Islamists are well able to articulate their motives and they do.

In a conventional freedom or insurrection struggle the oppressed demand emancipation from tyranny and oppression. There is a cogent connection or rational between attacks, which tend to be more primitive and understandable than complex or obscure. When oppressed indigenous activists plant bombs in the homeland of their occupier the message is simple; you leave us in peace and we will leave you in peace. Or, an attack might be in direct retaliation for an atrocity committed by the occupying forces.  

My difficulty with LH is that he uses the rational of the oppressed to explain religious fanaticism. This is not to say the fanatic has not been oppressed, maybe they were/are, but their objectives are not one of emancipation. Islamist objectives are to convert everyone to Islam or kill the non-believer where they find them. Although their atrocities might have a retaliatory element at times but that would only be incidental to their primary objective in securing the Caliphate.

The MSM is the creation of various influences and motives which helps maintain its own ruthless self-interests; be they viewer ratings; the wishes of advertisers; or political wheeling and dealing. Their news outputs cannot always be trusted. Unlike LH, I do not fault the MSM for not portraying the Manchester Bomber as a victim because Abedi is not a victim but a cruel perpetrator who deliberately targeted children. The evils of the MSM are much lesser than that of the objectives of the Islamist and the ISIS member Abedi.

Without any direct evidence LH related the Manchester atrocity to bombs being dropped in the Middle East. Based on his speculation, it is LH’s view that ISIS are victims. Conflicts are made up of complex mix of interests and alliances. But neither Abedi nor ISIS ever claimed that the Manchester attack on children was intended as a message to leave the Middle East or was in retaliation for some event committed by western forces. Had they done so then perhaps we might relate 'cause and effect'. But that is not ISIS motivation nor its objective. ISIS readily commit horrific war crimes and genocide out of religious fanaticism alone.

LH attempts to re-interpret ISIS objectives and motives is an injustice to not only the victims of the Manchester Bomb but to all of ISIS victims wherever they might happen, be that in the UK, France or the Middle East. ISIS claim their atrocities in the name of Allah and their objective is a holy war to convert the world to Islam. LH was motivated to explain Islamists in better light; that they, and the Manchester bomber, are fighting a nobler and more just cause. He is mistakenly trying to graft or morph religious fanaticism into an underdog fighting a just liberation struggle. His thinking reveals the dangers of being fixated on the single story of conflict between an oppressor and their down trodden oppressed victims.

Religious fanaticism defies rationale and is self-motivated.