The Atlantic, The Intercept, and what the story is actually about

A few days ago, I read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/. I thought it was outstanding, both as a piece of writing and as an example of journalism that can actually clarify horrifically complicated questions and help people make decisions with significant real-world impact.

Today, I read https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/20/atlantic-defines-real-islam-says-isis/ via the twitter account of Glenn Greenwald (which, despite my enormous respect for the work he does, I find very irritating; everything he tweets or retweets seems to start from the base assumption that American foreign policy can do no right, end of story.)

I think the author of the second piece is misreading Wood's article as badly as he or she accuses Wood of misreading Islam.

The point of the Atlantic piece is not to establish which variant of Islam is correct or 'most Islamic', and neither does it claim to do so. Wood's stated goal was to determine what ISIS wants, and he persuasively argues that what they want is based on a very strict reading of the founding texts of Islam. That hundreds of millions of Muslims, including many highly knowledgeable and deeply devout Muslims, disagree with this interpretation has little bearing on whether or not ISIS will base its actions on these beliefs, which is entirely what the article was about in the first place. And while I wish he hadn't used the phrase 'cotton-candy view of their own religion', it is true that many both in and out of the Muslim community have denied that ISIS has any connection with Islam out of disgust and embarrassment rather than scholarly and doctrinal grounds.

If you read the Atlantic article as trying to determine whether ISIS represents "true Islam" (a phrase which, despite the headline of the rebuttal, never appears in the original article), of course it is hilariously unbalanced. But *it isn't trying to do that.* What he is trying - and I think he succeeds - to do is to shed a light on the way a very particular group thinks and the reasons it thinks that way. One can have “a coherent and even learned expression of Islam" and still disagree with other members of the faith, or even be a minority. And while he does not stress of the many non-ISIS Muslims that "their version of the religion is more genuine," neither does he claim that ISIS's version is more genuine. All he's doing is describing what their version is, where it comes from, and what it means in terms of predicting the future actions of the group.

And as an American voter who needs to have an opinion about ISIS and what the U.S. should do about it, I'm very grateful that he did so.

I sympathize with the author of the second piece, Murtaza Hussain, who I assume is Muslim. It must be horrifying to see and hear about such acts perpetrated in the name of your own faith when your own understanding of that faith is so radically opposed to such acts. It's ridiculous that, like far to many Muslims, I'm sure Hussain has been called on repeatedly to defend his faith or to publicly denounce the actions of ISIS and its ilk, like a sort of loyalty test for 'the good Muslims.' I'm equally certain that many of the people already inclined to blame Islam as a whole for the actions of some adherents have misread Wood's piece just as Hussain has, and that he's already had to deal with repeated doses of idiocy from such folk.

But make no mistake: although very narrow in its scope (and http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/in-defense-of-islam/?_r=0 and http://www.unz.com/gnxp/islam-is-not-a-religion-of-the-book/ both discuss important factors to consider that fell outside the scope of Wood's article), this is journalism that we need. The fact that Wood's article will inevitably be misinterpreted by readers with a prior agenda against Islam is no reason to misinterpret it in the same way. Because ISIS is a problem, and anyone trying to grapple with that problem, whether from a doctrinal or foreign policy perspective, must be willing to confront why ISIS does and believes what it does ... no matter how uncomfortable such a study is likely to be.

EDIT: Another good article on the distinction between labeling a group Islamic on a theological level rather than a sociological level. I think it's fairly clear that the original article dealt with Islam as a sociological phenomenon, but I can see how some readers who regard Islam as a theological system could misinterpret Wood's statement that the group is 'very Islamic' as an endorsement of their interpretation of the faith.