The Islamic in the Islamic State

Last week I gave a talk to the Holbrook, MA Tea Party. In it I addressed the comment Mr. Obama made in a recent speech that “ISIL is not Islamic.”

I said, “The approach to take to this question is to look in the history of Islam. What are the great currents? What are the great intellectual trends? What were the key, pivotal moments, and so on? And once you understand those, see how ISIS fits into that.”

Here’s how my talk started,

And here it is in its entirety,

BTW, The book I'm holding is The Incoherence of the Philosophers, by the 11th Century scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Its publication was one of those key, pivotal moments; I talk about it in the video.

(Thank you TR for the videography!)

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com