Countering Islamic State Ideology: Voices of Singapore Scholars

The most recent of its delectable fruits is the book, Countering Islamic State Ideology: Voices of Singapore Scholars, which delivers religious counterpoints to the main conceptual themes of the IS in order to stop young, impressionable minds from joining the IS and other jihadist groups. [...] Edited by acclaimed counter-radicalisation analyst Professor Rohan Gunaratna and noted Islamic scholar Muhammad Haniff Hassan, the book takes an important step towards filling the lacuna in the field of counter-narratives, a sore spot poignantly noted in the introductory chapter: ‘The centre of gravity of the (jihadist) threat is ideological, the Achilles heel of the western-centric counter terror. [...] The scholar then cites the well-known story of the Yemeni migrant Uwais Al Qarni in Hadeeth literature and asks why did the Prophet accord him the status of a Sahabi (companion), even though Uwais never met the Prophet, for he had to abort his migration to Madinah in order to tend to his blind and ailing mother. [...] The Hadeeth literature in this prophecy is very vague in its details and speaks of a group bearing black flags emerging from Khurasan—the region covering north-eastern Iran, southern Turkeministan and northern Afghanistan (and not IS that has emerged out of the Levant)—in order to fight the evil forces of the mythical Dajjal (Anti-Christ) before the end of the world. [...] Thus, the essay states: The impermissibility of suicide bombing arises not only from the immorality of the act itself, but also from the wickedness of killing civilians.