Obama seems to think that ISIS is a new incarnation of the People’s Temple. Is he right?

Last updated on: February 24, 2015 at 7:21 pm by Jane the Actuary

Obama seems to think that ISIS is a new incarnation of the People’s Temple. Is he right? 2015-02-24T19:21:43-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Spoiler alert: no.

But here’s what I’m thinking:

Obama repeatedly insists that ISIS is “not Islamic” and calls it, when he’s willing to label it at all, a “death cult.” And he likes to speak of young people being lured into the cult, as if they can’t help it and don’t really know what they’re doing. And he and his spokespeople like to say that these perverted offshoots of religions have happened all the time, to Christians, too, and he tends to imply that it’s just bad luck that it’s Islam’s turn this time.

I think that what he has in mind is something like the Jim Jones’ People’s Temple cult, except that instead of drinking kool-aid, devotees are barbarously murdering others.

Some time ago, I read a book about the cult. (If it was in the past 1.5 years, I’d pull up the summary I would have written on it, but it was longer ago than that.) This is what I remember of a story that was a lot more than “brainwashed crazies killed themselves” (fair warning, this is from memory and details may be inaccurate):

First, Jim Jones had his start as a “faith healer” in a church that claimed to be “Christian” — but he himself never actually believed; he just found it convenient to let his followers think that he was Christian, but his preaching wasn’t about that, but about two things, primarily: racial justice, and his own claimed ability to heal, which he “proved” via plants in the audience. Later on, he simply abandoned any pretense of a link to Christianity, and wanted his followers to consider him as God. Early followers believed they were founding a new, racially inclusive and just community, others believed that they had been healed or that Jones would someday heal them, but soon enough, many were trapped. I remember one family where Jones commanded the dad to sign the bottom of a blank piece of paper, that would later be used to blackmail him, by adding in a typed “confession” above. The wife was a true believer, and the husband was as much trapped by the need to protect his family, especially his children.

Once they arrived in Guyana, everyone was well and truly trapped. They started out enthusiastic about the vision of cultivating this new land, but the land was not especially fertile. (It seems to me that Jones also spent too much of the cult’s money, that is, money turned over to him by members, on luxuries for himself, but I’m not sure of the degree, in his case.) And Jones raved about the need to follow him unquestioningly, and had “drills” in which he previewed for them their final fate, calling on them to drink from what was claimed to be poison, as a loyalty test. When he made the final decision that everyone should die, the inner core were willing to follow him in any case, others, the first ones, complied because they thought this was another test, but when it was clear what was happening, others tried to escape and were hunted down, though some did escape, either by running into the jungle, or hiding, or some sort of “playing dead.”

That’s what I remember. Bottom line: the “rank and file” members of this cult were victims, manipulated and trapped and controlled by the inner circle.

And that’s what Obama is claiming about ISIS and its recruits. ISIS leadership is like the inner circle of a cult like the Jonestown cult, and its recruits are not joining up of their own free will with their eyes wide open, but doing so as a result of manipulation and deceit.

And just as Jonestown had its roots in Christianity but was in no way Christian, so, too, ISIS has Islamic roots but is not Islamic.

Is that right? Does that make sense?

It goes back to Obama’s, and many ecumenists’ and secularists’ fundamental misunderstanding of religion. “All religions are basically the same: love God and love your neighbor.” No: Jesus said that this was the Law, distilled. He did not say this was the core fundamental truth that all religions profess, or even that this was the core fundamental truth about God that he came to teach.

Christianity says: God sent his (divine) Son, Jesus to save us from our sins.

Islam says: God wants us to submit to him in the manner prescribed by the Quran and the example of Mohammed.

Hinduism says: the sort of life you live now, determines the life circumstances you’ll be born into next time around. Plus, here are some rituals to gain favor with God/the gods.

etc.

Jim Jones abandoned, or, rather, never believed in the first place, that core Christian belief. ISIS absolutely proclaims that they observe the core belief of Islam in its purest form.

And, by the way, does this matter? Surely we can bomb ISIS strongholds whether or not we’re correct about their beliefs. But we can’t get a handle on the ever-multipling number of “lone wolves” and recruits from Western countries if we’re unwilling to talk openly about what they believe. And the fundamental problem that the administration and its favored Muslim leaders are unwilling to address is this: it’s simply too easy to transform the Islam that ISIS recruits and sympathizers have been taught in their homes, into the Islam preached by the Islamists.

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