The burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State (IS) was a horrific act, and deserves to be wholeheartedly condemned by everyone. It is, sadly, true that people are incinerated during war, both combatants and non-combatants. But the burning alive of Lt al-Kassasbeh was a brutal crime, since he was a prisoner of war and also because of the 'production' made of the whole miserable episode.
The IS compounded this vicious act by committing a second abomination: claiming that this punishment was administered according to the tenets of 'Islam'.
This 'Islam' that the IS adhere to is a simplistic, medieval code derived from the Wahhabi creed, which is the usual religion of Jihadis. But this creed is not the Islam that was first taught by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century CE. It is not even the Religion of Islam that began to be formulated some 200 years after the Prophet and, over the centuries, developed into a complex structure with many variations in different parts of the world (the usual trajectory of religions that start from a simple, fundamental ideology).
Unfortunately (for Islam and Muslims), the Wahhabi creed is spreading in the Muslim world and has become the face of Islam for many on the outside. It is important to understand how this has come about.
This creed arose in Arabia in the 18th century and advocates a return to the purity and simplicity of early Islam through a purging of all the 'dross' that the religion has subsequently acquired. The "early Islam" that it seeks is that of the first few generations of Muslims, but the sources it relies on are of much later provenance and of very mixed quality. Inevitably, the picture that emerges from them is of life in an early medieval time, requiring much interpretation and extrapolation to apply it to current conditions.
This creed gained some local standing by allying itself to the Ibn Saud family that went on to ultimately achieve power in that backward and poor desert country. It then became the state religion, and also spread among the Gulf Arabs. With the discovery of oil the Saudi kingdom and the Gulf emirates vaulted from a poor backwater to important players on the international stage. It was not until the 1980s, however, when the US began its campaign to push the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, that the Wahhabi creed started to spread outside its home base.
The Saudis, urged by the US to assist the Afghan Mujahideen fighting the Soviets, poured in money, weapons, and a number of Arab volunteers, along with their creed. The latter appealed to the unsophisticated Pashtun tribesmen in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and, boosted by the accompanying financial incentives, soon spread widely among them. At the same time, Gen Zia-ul-Haq assumed power in Pakistan and eagerly embraced Saudi assistance to Islamicise the country, mainly through generously financed Wahhabi madrassahs (religious schools). In time this creed became the religious belief of the Jihadi movement, first in the form of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and later the Pakistani Taliban and other offshoots. And, of course, the IS.
The Saudis have consistently sought to increase their influence and standing in the Muslim world through a combination of their huge financial resources and the propagation of the Wahhabi creed. They have found a receptive audience among Muslims of many lands, either fed up with the misgovernance, corruption and lawlessness in their own countries or living alienated lives in other countries.
Muslims generally have also felt themselves to be under pressure or outright attack by the West, with the only obvious resistance coming from the Jihadis (with their Wahhabi creed). Its status is also much burnished when they see the leaders of the powerful West bow and scrape before the Saudi monarchs, its patron.
The fall of relatively secular Muslim regimes and their modernising agendas has also fueled its rise; Jihadis, often backed by Wahhabi money, exploit the chaos and resulting power vacuums. This has happened in Afghanistan (yes, the Soviet-backed regime was one such!), Iraq, Libya, and Syria (while Egypt and Tunisia have progressed only part way through this scenario). No doubt these regimes were authoritarian, often harsh, and corrupt, but no more so than most other Muslim countries, and indeed many others. That this fate has befallen all of them makes many wonder whether Ian Fleming's classic formulation applies here: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, Mr Bond, it's enemy action!
It seems odd that the West continues to support, and even show deference to, the Saudis and their Gulf satellites, given their support for anti-West Jihadis and their efforts to radicalise more and more Muslims around the world. It becomes understandable, however, when one realises how many constituencies in these countries and governments benefit from this situation. There is the boost this 'terror threat' provides to their militaries, security agencies and their supporting structures (corporations, think tanks, the media, etc). The former acquire more power and financing, while the latter stand to make lots of money. A frightened citizenry accepts the promise of increased security in lieu of many of their rights and freedoms, while marginalised groups can legitimately be denied resources.
For many Muslims this onslaught of Saudi money and ideology is deeply disturbing. It is leading to the rise of fundamentalism, and pulling the religion of Islam more and more towards the Wahhabi model. (Since, at its core, the religion also presents a medieval ideal as its standard, this results in the shedding of more and more of the ameliorating beliefs and practices that it has acquired over the centuries). Such Muslims are faced with the difficult choice of either abandoning their aspirations for a progressive system of life or adopting the hypocrisy of a purely external belief.
This agonizing choice can be avoided if Muslims realise that the religion of Islam as they know it is not the Islam that the Prophet Muhammad received. That original was a profound and powerful set of beliefs relating to the existence of God, the relationship of humans to the deity, and our role in the world. This Islam was recorded in the Qur'ān, and is still available to us today to study and rediscover these fundamental, nurturing beliefs.
(Anyone interested in seeing how this can be done, and what these beliefs are, can refer to my paper Understanding the Qur'ān's Message. Interestingly, if they explore these issues in some depth and without preconceptions, non-Muslims, even atheists, can arrive at pretty much the same conclusions, as discussed here).