Violence related to religion is obviously very much in the news right now. I want to address one aspect of the topic that I think has escaped the attention of virtually all commentators, and that has to do with raw numbers.
Recently, Graeme Wood wrote an excellent piece in the Atlantic on the theme of What ISIS Really Wants. He stressed the specifically religious aspects of ISIS ideology, and how it fitted into one particular strand of extremist Islamic thinking. Any suggestion that the Islamic State is in any sense truly Islamic is deeply controversial, and Wood was attacked by, among others, Mehdi Hasan, who pointed out how utterly most Islamic authorities rejected the movement. Hasan declares that â??To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet.â? This debate has policy consequences, in deciding how the US should categorize the Islamic State, Qaeda, and their followers. Are these truly religious movements, or is it all generically â??violent extremismâ??
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