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The U.S. keeps repeating the same mistake in the Middle East: overestimating the power of religious ideology and underappreciating the impact of misgovernance. Sarah Chayes, who long worked in Afghanistan and has written an important book — “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security” — about how government corruption helped turn Afghans away from us and from the pro-U.S. Afghan regime, argues that “nothing feeds extremism more than the in-your-face corruption and injustice” that some of America’s closet Middle East allies administer daily to their people.
The third ISIS faction is composed of the true ideologues, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They have their own apocalyptic version of Islam. But it would not be resonating were it not for the fact that “both religion and politics have been hijacked” in the Arab world and Pakistan, creating a “toxic mix,” says Nader Mousavizadeh, who co-leads the global consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners. The Arab peoples have been mostly ruled by radicals or reactionaries. And without the prospect of a legitimate politics “that genuinely responds to popular grievances,” no amount of top-down attempts to engender moderate Islam will succeed, he added.
CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY<button class="button comments-button theme-speech-bubble" data-skip-to-para-id="story-continues-6"></button>Islam has no Vatican to decree whose Islam is authentic, so it emerges differently in different contexts. There is a moderate Islam that emerged in decent political, social and economic contexts — see Indian Islam, Indonesian Islam and Malaysian Islam — and never stood in the way of their progress. And there are puritanical, anti-pluralistic, anti-modern education, anti-women Islams that emerged from the more tribalized corners of the Arab world, Nigeria and Pakistan, helping hold these places back.
That’s why ISIS is not just an Islam problem and not just a “root causes” problem. ISIS is a product of decades of failed governance in the Arab world and Pakistan and centuries of a calcification of Arab Islam. They feed off each other. Those who claim it’s just one or the other are dead wrong.
So, to defeat ISIS and not see another emerge, you need to: wipe out its leadership; enlist Muslims to discredit the very real, popular, extremist versions of Islam coming out of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; stem the injustice, corruption, sectarianism and state failure now rampant in the Arab world and Pakistan; and carve out for Iraqi Sunnis their own autonomous region of Iraq and a share of its oil wealth, just like the Kurds have. I know: sounds impossible. But this problem is very deep. This is the only route to a more moderate Arab Islam — as well as to fewer young men and women looking for dignity in all the wrong places.
can change if only they can start eating pig 
William Alan Shirley
59 minutes agoThe statement, "Those who claim it's just one or the other are dead wrong." is dead wrong. It is neither failed government nor...
rebecca1048
1 hour agoI find it odd the group bears the same name as the ancient pagan Egyptian god.