ISIS jihadists are not medieval – they have taken shape from Western philosophy.

We must look to the French Revolution if we are to understand the origin of the ideology and violence of the Islamic State. For some weeks now there have been insinuations that the Islamic State and its ideologies are some kind of throwback to a distant past.
Frequently couched in language such as that used last week by British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said ISIS was “medieval.”
Although in fact, the terrorist group’s ideal more closely resembles the modern Western tradition.
Clegg’s intervention comes as no surprise.
Given the extreme violence carried out by ISIS members and the frequent images of decapitated bodies it is understandable that we try to make sense of these misdeeds by radically calling them of “others.”
However, this does not help us understand what is at stake.
It especially tends to make one of the essential claims of contemporary jihadism acceptable, namely, that it extends back to the origin of Islam.
As an Isis supporter I follow on twitter often says, “The world changes, Islam doesn’t.”
This is not just a matter of academic debate.
It has big consequences.
One of the things that attracts young people to jihadist ideology is that it shifts generational power in their communities.
Jihadists, and Islamists in general, present themselves as faithful to their religion, whereas, according to them, their parents are steeped in tradition or “culture.” It has to be said clearly: contemporary jihadism is not a return to the past.
It is a modern, anti-traditional ideology, with a patent debt to the history of Western politics and culture. When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave his speech in July at the Grand Mosque declaring the creation of an Islamic state, proclaiming himself caliph, he quoted at length the Indian/Pakistani thinker Abul A’la Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in 1941, and originator of the current term Islamic state.
Maududi’s Islamic state is organized under Western ideas and concepts.
It takes beliefs shared between Islam and other religious traditions, i.e., that God is the One and the Ultimate judge of people, and transforms this by changing God’s possession of judgment to the possession of, and essentially monopoly of, “sovereignty.”
Madudi also deals with the understanding of nature as governed by laws that are expressions of God’s power – ideas at the heart of the scientific revolution in the 17th century.
He combines this into a view of God’s sovereignty, and later defines this sovereignty in political terms, stating that “God alone is sovereign” (The Islamic way of life).
Consequently, the state and the divine merge, making God becomes political, and politics becomes sacred.
This sovereignty with a fragmented world and different sources of power does not exist in medieval culture.
Its origin lies rather in the system of national sovereignty of states and the modern scientific revolution.
However, Maududi’s debt to European political history extends beyond his understanding of sovereignty.
At the heart of his ideas is his understanding of the French Revolution, which he saw as promising a “state based on a set of principles,” as opposed to one based on a nation or a people.
For Maududi this potential would wither in France, its success would have to await an Islamic state. In revolutionary France, it is the state that creates the citizens and nothing should be allowed to come between the citizen and the state. This is why, even today, government agencies are prohibited from collecting data on ethnicity, considered a possible intermediary community between the state and the citizen.
This universal citizen, separate from community, nation or history, lies at the heart of Madudi’s vision of “citizen in Islam”. Just as the French revolutionary state created its citizens, it being unthinkable for the citizen to be outside the state, so does the Islamic state create its citizens. This is at the incoherent basis of Maududi’s arguments that one can only be a Muslim in an Islamic state.
Don’t look to the Quran to understand this – look to the French revolution and ultimately to the secularization of an idea whose origins go back to European Christianity: extra ecllesiam nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation), an idea that with the birth of modern European states was transformed to extra stato nulla persona (outside the state there is no legal ‘personhood’).
This idea is still of great importance today: it is the origin of what it means to be a refugee. The state of ISIS is thoroughly modern, as is its violence.
Fighters do not simply kill; they seek humiliation, as seen last week when they herded to death Syrian reservists wearing only underwear.
They seek to dishonor the bodies of the victims, for example by manipulating them after death.
The aim of these manipulations is to mangle the bodies as a peculiarity.
The body becomes the manifestation of a collectivity that must be eliminated, the manipulation makes what was once a human body into “a detestable stranger”.
These practices are increasingly evident in today’s wars. At the heart of ISIS’s program is its proclaimed Muslim heritage – as shown by al-Baghdadi’s clothing.
An understanding of the contemporary sources of its ideology and violence is necessary to oppose it.
In no way can it be understood as a return to the origins of Islam.
This is at the heart of the thesis of his followers, who should not be given any credibility. Kevin McDonald theguardian.com