Should we stop calling ISIS terrorists and start calling them crusaders?

Not long ago on my Facebook feed I saw an advertisement for this t-shirt:

It got me thinking a bit about what exactly this message was trying to convey and to whom. Do a google search for ‘crusades t shirt’ and you’ll see a lot more like this. References to current anti-terrorist operations around the world and trying to link it to the crusades.

On one hand this is a childish finger in the eye. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and their ilk keep calling us crusaders and bringing those wars up as reasons for their grievances? Fine, we’ll adopt that label and throw it back at them.

Unfortunately, like most such efforts, this risks offending all sorts of people, including those we might actually want on our side in the fight against extremism. By explicitly identifying with the crusades, we validate the charge that we are involved in a war against Islam. And for all those Muslims that reject groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS one might worry about which direction the next attack will come from.

But none of this argument is new. George W. Bush made some comments about ‘crusades’ back in 2003 before realizing his error and making serious efforts to make clear he didn’t want to offend the Muslim community at large.

In the Atlantic, Simon Cottee writes about the appeal of ISIS propaganda. It’s an empowering message.

The genius of ISIS propaganda is how skillfully it imbues the idea of jihad not only with traditional notions of honor and virility, but also a strong undercurrent of oppositional, postmodern cool.

And as a counter to that, we have programs that seem to rely on a message which is the opposite of what ISIS is tapping into. Programs like ‘Think again. Turn away’ push a more reactive message than ISIS’s and it’s unrealistic to expect them to be able to carry much of the burden. It’s the radicalism equivalent to the ‘Just say no’ anti-drug campaigns of the 80s and already receiving a similar level of disdain.

CVE [Countering Violent Extremism]practitioners can’t possibly hope to challenge the glamor, energy, and sheer badassery of violent jihad as an ideal, still less the wider emotional resonance of the warrior ethos on which it draws. But they can reasonably hope to subvert ISIS’s claim to embody that ideal. What isn’t yet clear is at precisely whom CVE programs should be targeted, how their counter-messaging should be framed and delivered, and, crucially, by whom.

And it was in reading that paragraph above that got me thinking about the T-shirt. Looking a bit deeper at it’s intent and the message kind of falls apart. At the most basic level, this seems a bad example to emulate since, you know, the crusaders lost (at least in the Middle East). But, look even a bit deeper at what the crusades resulted did and maybe there is a way to use the label to great effect:

• They killed thousands of people, including thousands of their own faith.
• They destroyed historical and sacred sites.
• They took captives as slaves
• They were widely regarded as a de-civilizing force in the region

Is this starting to sound a bit like a group we know, right?

While I was turning this idea around, I read this piece by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Nathaniel Barr over at War on the Rocks. In it, they propose a framework for thinking about CVE in terms of audience, objective and policy.

It occurred to me that as we struggle to find a counter-narrative to ISIS that goes beyond our efforts at creating a terrorism equivalent to the DARE program, maybe one good way would be to hoist the ‘crusader’ label upon ISIS. In terms of narrative I think it would address two objectives: Undermining ISIS’s core narrative and provide potential recruits with an alternate pathway. Regarding the former Gartenstein-Ross and Nathaniel Barr write:

[Part of ISIS’s] core narrative is the assertion that it has established a religiously and politically legitimate caliphate. As Charlie Winter noted here at War on the Rocks, the Islamic State has devoted considerable resources to portraying its caliphate as an Islamic utopia, where food is abundant, public services top-notch, and Islamic law (sharia) implemented as it was during the Prophet Muhammad’s time. [emphasis added]

So, how would this labeling of ISIS as ‘modern day crusaders’?

The Muslim world is already familiar with the crusades and why they don’t like them. No need for lengthy explanations or hoping a new term will go viral. They get it and they already use it as a pejorative.

It doesn’t require anyone to get into theological discussions. It’s silly when a non-believer gets into a theological debate with a believer. Regardless of how valid the argument might be, the fact that you aren’t a believer is reason enough to dismiss it. Besides, the ISIS theologians are no slouches. They can quote the Koran better than folks at the State Department are ever likely to. History is available to everyone however and anyone can make historical comparisons and ISIS can’t even pretend to have access to a hidden understanding of the medieval world.

Is it possible to come up with a more biting insult? After throwing the crusader pejorative around for years, what could be more poetic than turning around and saying ‘Hang on…actually, YOU guys are the crusaders in this story.’ Granted, it’ll be kind of hard to put on a t-shirt but if you’re into to that whole ‘Annoy an X, do Y’ sort of thing this is probably more effective than ‘Yeah, we’re crusaders, what are you gonna do about it.’

Perhaps most important, this narrative is something that can be done without the assistance of the West. An ‘ISIS are the 21st century crusaders’ narrative can be pushed just a forcefully by an atheist in Cairo as a Jabhat al-Nusra fighter in Syria or a diplomat in Belgium. It requires no allegiance to western liberal values, religious beliefs or calls to nationalism nor does it require an explicit rejection of them. This would allow the emergence of a unified ‘ISIS vs. the world’ story instead of the ‘Islam vs the West’ one that ISIS keeps pushing.