Much has been made of President Obama’s reluctance to use the phrase Islamic Terrorism and Bill Maher has famously gotten into arguments with folks like Reza Aslan and I’m sure his “Vice” co-producer Fareed Zakaria.
The two keys to begin a conversation about whether there is such a thing as “Islamic Terrorism” is whether the Quran led to a legal system known as Sharia law and whether the Prophet Muhammad left a succession in place, like a Caliph and a caliphate.
The Quran in the Aleef Laam Meem states right in the beginning that “This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah." The Quran is meant to be a guide. There is only one Quran and thus no ambiguity about its Arabic. The guidance is also contained in the Hadiths (the examples of the life of the Prophet Muhammad).
The rulers of Arabia following the Prophet had to deal with other tribes and peoples that were conquered and thus had to incorporate their customs and practices in some form of jurisprudence.
The Prophet Muhammad was a Messenger of God could not have generated a succession as he was the last of the Prophets and a mere Messenger. There are those on the Board who can contribute to the question of the form of governance intended for people who followed the Quran.
The genesis of the two terrorist groups that are at the center of this discussion is interesting. Al Qaeda was born following the disapproval of the Saudi ruler to have the American-trained and supplied Mujahedin (fighting a proxy war on behalf of America to rid Afghanistan of the Russians) fight Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait. Osama did not want American boots on the Holy Land and vowed to fight this. ISIS is really the disbanded Baathists of Saddam Hussein (that name again) who suddenly felt outcast in their own land and dispossessed of power by the American-backed Shiite Al Maliki (even though Shiite Iran was America's sworn enemy).
Interestingly enough Saddam was telling the Gulf Cooperation Council with the US as an observer status member about the iniquities of the Saudis over its own proxy war fighting the dreaded Shiites of the Ayatollah's Iran on behalf of America and the slant drilling of the Kuwaitis thus stealing their oil.
President Obama knows these things as well as America lost a couple Trillion dollars on Bush's adventures in Iraq (and I'm even talking about the first Bush) and the soldiers' families are tired of losing their loved ones in futile overseas adventure. Raqqa versus Damascus and Badgad is a civil war - pure and simple and San Bernadino, Paris and Brussels pale in comparison to what goes on with Boka Haram and Al Shabbab. Is this civil war another man's Islamic Terrorism? You tell me!
