By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY
Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) and al-Qaeda are useful fictions. “Islamicist” is another ill-used word.
Has anyone ever identified the borders of the so-called Islamic State, identified the site of its central government, attributed to it a president, prime minister, cabinet, parliament, or congress, or anything resembling such? Even the most primitive of the newly arrived nations of the world boast of a Westernized form of government.
We are told that U.S. aircraft struck Islamic State vehicles and a tank in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. Oh! Perhaps ISIS has an embassy or consulate there.
In The Washington Post (July 28, 2016) we read about “the Islamic State-inspired attack on a quiet village church in northern France.” We are told on the same day by a New York Times correspondent writing from Berlin, “The Wurzburg and Ansbach attackers claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.”
That Islam may be engaged in a Holy War against the West goes unnoticed. One may ask: If you can’t name the enemy, how can you confront it? “Islamicist” is another term used to disguise the truth, positing a distinction between Islam and extreme or violent Islam.
Sometimes the word “Arab” is used when clearly the perpetrator of a deadly attack is a Muslim.
James B. Comey, the director of the FBI, in a widely reported interview (July 27, 2016), said, “At some point there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria.” The battlefield gains against ISIS in Syria will have the effect of scattering terror cells across the globe. Not all of the ISIS killers, he contends, are going to die on the battlefield. If defeated extremists flee to the United States, they may use the same techniques here.
Is this not a clear admission that ISIS is not a state in any sense of the word but an Islamic mindset? One might say, a characteristic wherever Islam prevails. If one calls himself a “soldier of the caliphate,” should we not look into the meaning of that declaration? It may provide some useful information about the Islamic mind.
Another useful fiction, prominent during the Bush administration, but not so much used since the creation of ISIS, is that of a phantom enemy, al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was thought to be a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to attack. In spite of its image as a unified terrorist threat, the bogeyman was nowhere to be found. Terrorism is both real and frightening, but centralized and commanded from a cave in Afghanistan proved to be a useful fiction for the U.S. administration’s political agenda at the time.
We read, almost on a daily basis, that the Islamic State claims responsibility for this or that atrocity across the globe, as this is written, that is, the twin attacks on oil and gas facilities in northern Iraq, as memories of attacks in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Orlando, and Nice begin to fade.
A list of other abused terms would certainly include “militant,” “activist,” “scandal,” and “epidemic.”
Newspapers create scandals at will; a few instances of something or another become an epidemic, busybodies are called “activists.” Terrorists are often called “extremists.” Moderate often means “left.” A suicide bomber is a “martyr.” An immigrant of questionable status is a “refugee.”
Nouns, adverbs, and adjectives often seem inserted into what otherwise would have been a straightforward report, inserted to reflect the editorial policy of the news organization.
“Said to have” is another useful fiction. Upon examination, “said to have” is not news but an allegation. We often find a reporter who knows the mind of the official he is writing about better than the official himself. He may report, without any evidence, that the official who yearned for European disintegration “must see Brexit as a victory.”
It should not come as a surprise that the Pew Research Center reports that Americans have lost confidence in the media. The polling organization Gallup.com, supporting Pew, also reports that confidence in the American press is at an all-time low. According to its recent report, only 7 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the press; only 10 percent say they have confidence in television reporting. An interesting datum to say the least.
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