The media war between ISIS and mainstream Muslims

An interesting development, courtesy CNN’s Beliefs blog: 

The challenge was directed at the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But the impassioned message, laced with Islamic phrases, sought a much wider audience.

The statement came from Barak Barfi, a spokesman for the family of slain American journalist Steve Sotloff. Sotloff, who reported for Time and other publications, was beheaded in a video ISIS released on Tuesday.

Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, where he specializes in Arab and Islamic affairs. On behalf of Steven Sotloff’s family, he had tried to secure the journalist’s release.

On Wednesday, Barfi stood outside the Sotloff family’s Miami home, with dozens of microphones and cameras thrust before him, and stepped into a fierce war of words between ISIS and the rest of the Muslim world.

“I am ready to debate you with calm preachings,” Barfi told al-Baghdadi, directly addressing him in Arabic. “I have no sword in my hand and I am ready for your answer.”

Speaking briefly to CNN on Thursday, Barfi said he doesn’t expect the reclusive ISIS leader to accept the invitation. But his challenge had other aims, the young scholar said.

“The Muslim and Arabic world needs to realize the threat that ISIS poses to their communities,” he said. “Everything in the statement was meant to send a message.”

The idea of debating militants who behead innocent journalists may seem pointless or even foolish to some observers. But it’s the audience who hears the challengethat matters, Muslim leaders said. In this case, young Muslims who may be lured to join ISIS under Islamic pretenses.

…Barfi said he is not Muslim himself, but has studied Islam in depth. Couching his argument with several citations of the Quran, Barfi said al-Baghdadi violates the faith’s tenets.

“Where is your mercy?” Barfi asked al-Baghdadi on Wednesday. It was an allusion, Barfi later said, to a speech in which the ISIS leader referred to Ramadan as the “month of mercy.”

Mercy is an essential idea in Islam, said al-Marayati. “God delivered Prophet Mohammed to humanity to make us more merciful to one another,” a message that ISIS seems to miss, he added.

Barfi cited several passages from the Quran, which Muslims believe to be a direct revelation from God.

“I know the Quran, and it teaches: Fight for the sake of God, do not exceed the bounds. Verily God does not love the aggressor,” Barfi said.

Muslim scholars said the key part of this passage, which forms the backbone of Islam’s “just war” theory, is that, while self-defense is allowed, violent aggression, especially against innocents, is a grave sin.

“This verse is about self-defense,” said al-Marayti. “It allows one to protect civilians by fighting combatants who attack first.”

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