When people say Islamic State is "very Islamic" (as that Atlantic article that has been posted on here before does), the term carries a theological meaning, but when people say in a global sense that "Islam is the problem" they speak demographically.
It's not fruitful to use the theological relationships between the whole world's population of Islamic believers and Islamic State to govern our understanding of populations. The "version of Islam" promulgated by Islamic State is not similar to the Islam practised by your neighbours and coworkers.
Let's be absolutely clear, it is downright insidious, lazy thinking to draw an equivalence between the two. And it is exactly the kind of polarised thinking that Islamic State sets its hopes on. It is shit thinking, it is unscientific and unempirical thinking. And if you are an atheist, well it's exactly the kind of vague and religiose thinking that you affect to despise.
Likewise, when speaking of "radicalisation" it's not useful to make ominous claims about the Islamic populations of western countries—saying for example that a fifth of Muslims are "already radicalised" as if innocent, law-abiding people who idly answer leading questions about the propagation of shari'a (which means something quite different to a Muslim than it does to a racially fearful westerner) are a step away from participating in a martyrdom operation.
That is contemptible. Spreading that sentiment is putting your fellow citizens in danger of idiotic and misplaced reprisals because they happen to be Muslims. It's putting Muslim refugees already in flight from Islamic State into a parlous and precarious position.
So long as Islamic State continues to exist and control territory, it will attract supporters and "foreign fighters" from overseas. Most, as we have seen, will be extremely socially isolated or disadvantaged and disaffected boys and young men, like the Kouachi brothers, or Farhad Khalil Mohammad, or Jake Bilardi. Some of these will be sent back to attempt to carry out terrorist plots: that's a central plank of Islamic State's political strategy.
What the attacks on Paris show is that Europe, the US and the rest of the "developed world" are unalterably connected to the violence occurring overseas, whether or not imperialism created Islamic State. (All I will say is that it's an orthodox view that the negligent withdrawal from Iraq by Coalition forces created the conditions for IS, a variant of salafist Wahhabism, to flourish.)
This is where we need to reconsider the posture of western power (or "the developed world" or "the international community"—take your pick) towards the Middle East. We've seen a chilling demonstration that IS is not so far off that it cannot strike, that its terrorist activities are not limited to blowing up marketplaces in Beirut. There have been six or seven coordinated attacks in a European capital, none of which seem to have been registered in any way by surveillance or counter-terrorism operations.
As others have noted, the end of Saddam's Ba'athist regime had serious repercussions for which the rhetoric of "regime change" and the Bush administration's stated democratic mission did not allow. Ten years ago we did not hear from anyone that if the secular tyrant was deposed, an Islamic cult with ties to Al Qaeda would rise up in the territories liberated from rule.
It's worth calling that to mind when thinking about the present day calls to end Bashar al-Assad's regime and to support "moderate" Syrian rebels. As was the case with Iraq, western nations are playing out many-splintered strategies in relation to Syria—strategies that encompass such questions as the extraction of oil, the continued trade in arms, and the futures of Iran and Israel.
Reading Dabiq, it's clear that Islamic State regards secular nationalism—such as the Ba'athism of the former Iraqi regime, and Syria—to be one political strain capable of impeding its progress in the region.
I'm not an expert on the Middle East by any means, but based on what I have read I'd predict that if Assad's regime is ended (a process that would start with the imposition of a no fly zone over Syria) then Islamic State will see an increase in its influence. In Europe, the US and the rest of the developed world the public needs to think very hard about this possibility when asked by its leaders to support an increased bombing campaign in Syria.
At this point people in the developed world should be focusing with real intent on tragic events in Paris, and in Beirut, and trying to work out how to stop this violence from continuing to affect their lives, and the lives of their children. We shouldn't be allowing ourselves to get caught up in a phony ideological confrontation with a half-cooked and ignorant notion of Islam, as we'll be encouraged to do by every shitty tabloid rag in the coming days.
