Salafist Takfiri did not even exist until very recently, with its origins in folks living near the end of the 18th century. It gained power along with the rise of Arab Nationalism near the end of the 19th century and into the 20th. Islam went along just find for thousands of years (experiencing both peace and war, just like Christianity was doing at the same time) until the rise of these groups. "Reading the Quran" is meaningless here - the Quran was read for thousands of years and most people who read it didn't run off with swords to behead unbelievers. Takfiri don't use the Quran to justify their actions anyway, but specific "scholars" of the Quran (from the last couple of centuries) who basically made up whatever they wanted to support their political goals (much like Khomeini completely reversed the old policy of Shi'a staying out of politics and sticking to scholarship, instead preaching that as the best scholars, it was their duty to rule.)
Hell, folks held prisoner by ISIS have reported that they saw no Qurans, and the soldiers never prayed.
I know you've got an obvious counter-argument to my statements above about radical Christians vs. radical Muslims: "But these Christians aren't actually killing anyone - Muslims are, and the so-called 'peaceful' Muslims aren't speaking out against it, or fighting it!"
Ignoring the examples I showed of Christians actually killing people, that kind of statement merely betrays ignorance as to the actual facts. Christian murder is still going on, all over the world, every day! - and there's silence from your everyday Christian. (This is not a criticism, most Christians just don't know about it.) Meanwhile, Muslims are out there protesting, every day, and speaking out - even in Middle Eastern countries, against these atrocities! And there are thousands of thousands of Muslims putting their lives on the line to fight groups like ISIS in Afghanistan and Iraq, dying to try to preserve freedom from these groups. The Kurds are actually seeing some success, and have taken back some land from ISIS. They loudly say: "ISIS does not represent Islam."
In fact, the people most loudly saying "ISIS represents all of Islam" or "Islam is at war with the West" are ISIS themselves. That's the narrative they want everyone to agree with. That's the purpose of these attacks. They want the West to see "Islam" as the enemy, to treat all Muslims as suspect, for people to burn down mosques (as just happened in Canada.)
They want us to do their work for them.
I am not making you out to be the enemy. I don't think you are an enemy. But I think all of us are so easily tempted to react in an all-too-human way to attacks like these. We react in fear. We want to fight back. We want a concrete foe to point at, to hate, to get revenge on. And there is a concrete foe - but it's not "Islam," it's not refugees fleeing these monsters, and it's certainly not the average Muslim.
We should fight back (and we have been. The military has been conducting thousands and thousands of air-strikes against ISIS targets over the last few years, and have been very successful. The fact that ISIS is now resorting to this kind of attack, instead of their previous strategy of merely "state-building" is actually a testament to that.) We should all stand strong against extremism (in any ideology that preaches violence!) but what we must not do is agree with the terrorists. We must not let them frame the conditions and the battleground for this fight. We must not let them define for us the nature of this war (or the nature of the faith of billions of people who live in peace - because let's be honest, if "Islam" really was the enemy, we'd all already be dead.) We must not let them win, and giving in to fear is surrendering to them before the fight's even really begun.
Part 2
Hell, folks held prisoner by ISIS have reported that they saw no Qurans, and the soldiers never prayed.
I know you've got an obvious counter-argument to my statements above about radical Christians vs. radical Muslims: "But these Christians aren't actually killing anyone - Muslims are, and the so-called 'peaceful' Muslims aren't speaking out against it, or fighting it!"
Ignoring the examples I showed of Christians actually killing people, that kind of statement merely betrays ignorance as to the actual facts. Christian murder is still going on, all over the world, every day! - and there's silence from your everyday Christian. (This is not a criticism, most Christians just don't know about it.) Meanwhile, Muslims are out there protesting, every day, and speaking out - even in Middle Eastern countries, against these atrocities! And there are thousands of thousands of Muslims putting their lives on the line to fight groups like ISIS in Afghanistan and Iraq, dying to try to preserve freedom from these groups. The Kurds are actually seeing some success, and have taken back some land from ISIS. They loudly say: "ISIS does not represent Islam."
In fact, the people most loudly saying "ISIS represents all of Islam" or "Islam is at war with the West" are ISIS themselves. That's the narrative they want everyone to agree with. That's the purpose of these attacks. They want the West to see "Islam" as the enemy, to treat all Muslims as suspect, for people to burn down mosques (as just happened in Canada.)
They want us to do their work for them.
I am not making you out to be the enemy. I don't think you are an enemy. But I think all of us are so easily tempted to react in an all-too-human way to attacks like these. We react in fear. We want to fight back. We want a concrete foe to point at, to hate, to get revenge on. And there is a concrete foe - but it's not "Islam," it's not refugees fleeing these monsters, and it's certainly not the average Muslim.
We should fight back (and we have been. The military has been conducting thousands and thousands of air-strikes against ISIS targets over the last few years, and have been very successful. The fact that ISIS is now resorting to this kind of attack, instead of their previous strategy of merely "state-building" is actually a testament to that.) We should all stand strong against extremism (in any ideology that preaches violence!) but what we must not do is agree with the terrorists. We must not let them frame the conditions and the battleground for this fight. We must not let them define for us the nature of this war (or the nature of the faith of billions of people who live in peace - because let's be honest, if "Islam" really was the enemy, we'd all already be dead.) We must not let them win, and giving in to fear is surrendering to them before the fight's even really begun.