Crafty political bills have, inserted within them, all kinds of surplus material, around other things that are agreed upon by all as being important. The opposing party is put in a bind. If they vote for the measure because of the stuff agreed upon, they end up also subscribing to other things they are not fond of. If they vote against the measure because of the extraneous things, they are accused of also rejecting the important central issue. Something similar is happening in the debate about whether ISIS is Islamic or not. I would like to break out the issues included in the "bill" I am being asked to accept, so I can make it clear what I am voting for and what I am not voting for.

1) ISIS is Islamic. 

My vote: Yes. To ignore this is to miss critical information about how this group thinks and operates.

2) ISIS is Islam. I feel this is what some are asking me to accept. To accede to this would be to accede to the notion that ISIS is the definitive statement of what Islam is, or what it must inevitably become. 

My vote: I reject this. It is entirely possible to condemn ISIS, yet to affirm the positive capacity and potential evident within Islam. It is possible to oppose ISIS in the name of Islam – a different interpretation of Islam than the one put forth by ISIS, and one which I would argue is a better interpretation. Millions of Muslims agree with me.

3) Only literalistic interpretations of a religious tradition are the true and real representations of the religion. Understandings that rely on a degree of symbolic reading of sacred texts are just wannabes. 

My vote: No. Religious understanding has always walked hand-in-hand with poetic understanding. In fact, religions that recognize the object of their discussion as being transcendent take for granted and state axiomatically that language about divine things is necessarily symbolic and figurative. Religion has been in the business of allegory from the very beginning.

4) All faith is bad. There is no such thing as good faith.

My vote: No. There is a huge difference between faith that expresses itself in the form of someone going to help ebola sufferers, and faith that expresses itself in the form of trying to provoke an apocalypse. To condemn, in a broad brush way, all faith – or to say that all notions of "God" are equally empty or dangerous – is simply to turn our back on the variety of meanings these things have for people, and the variety of ways in which they motivate people to live in this world.

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