reblogged from today’s Independent.ie
Military analysts in the US said the importance of insight gained using the documents ‘cannot be overstated’
Male, 26, single, quite well-educated but not an expert on the Quran – this is the profile of an average fighter joining Isis.
Analysis of thousands of entry documents leaked from the terrorist group has provided vital new insight into the background and expertise of its international jihadists.
The US military’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) said all evidence pointed to the cache being genuine, exposing personal details of 4,188 militants who joined Isis in 2013 and 2014.
Another startling finding was the level of education listed, with most of the recruits saying they had completed secondary school and many listing higher education and university degrees.
The report described the group as “generally well educated” and said that although some of the fighters recorded no formal education, a roughly equal number held advanced degrees.
PhDs in economics, computer science, English, physiology and teaching were among those listed, with Western fighters being more highly educated on average.
The one area of education that was noticeably lacking, however, was that in Islamic law, or Sharia.
Of those who answered a question on the level of their religious knowledge, 70 per cent described it as “basic”, while those citing greater expertise were mainly Saudis, Egyptians, Tunisians and Indonesians.
The finding supports analysts’ assertions that Isis has twisted the Quran to serve its purposes, introducing brutal and “un-Islamic” punishments in its territories.
An open letter signed by more than 100 Muslim scholars accused Isis of deliberately misinterpreting the holy book in 2014.
“It is forbidden in Islam to oversimplify Sharia matters and ignore established Islamic sciences,” said the missive directed at the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“One cannot ‘cherry-pick’ Quranic verses for legal arguments without considering the entire Quran and Hadith.”
When asked about their previous occupation, the most-cited role was unskilled labourers, then trade and “student” in third place.
More than 200 listed themselves as unemployed, while double that number left the field blank, suggesting they were also without work.
“The average recruit either was a student or had a job, just not a particularly high-paying one,” the report said.
Read the full article here
Blogging Theology 
Of course, there are very, very, very few people on the planet who can call themselves (or rather self-proclaim) experts on the quran since Islamic clerics insist that you have to spend years learning classical arabic in order to do so. What you have left are a multitude of followers who are ignorant of their own faith who need the the shepherding of these self-proclaimed experts. Hence, easily led and gullible cannon fodder for the vicious and wicked clerics who lead extremism.
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No doubt that one needs to learn classical Arabic in order to become an alim (scholar). Learning
the fundamentals of the faith, on the other hand, has always been done in the vernacular language.
Examples available are not even remote; e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia, South Asia and China are the
most obvious ones. What seems to be the problem is a lack of humility among large segments
of modern-day, secular-educated adherents of the faith to actually make efforts to learn the faith.
Another point to note is the economic and social situation as indicated in the article above.The fact
that large numbers of youth, especially young men, are unemployed and unable to help themselves
and their families is not new. In fact the adverse effects of sanctions, implemented before the war, on the populace had already been brought up before the US government. The main problem then is that
the US government, instead taking necessary steps to alleviate the situation, aggravated it further with
a war campaign and occupation. Worse still, both the war campaign and occupation are actually real-life examples on how a country should NOT wage war and how NOT to occupy another country. Add in the bloodbath of a civil war in Syria, with even more people getting displaced and tormented, all that is
left for any militant group to do is to just give speeches and weapons.
So with most of the points summed up, a question should be asked. What were they( US and the rest of the “powers”) thinking in the first place?
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