Sufism, which some people consider to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam, is the belief of so-called moderate Muslims. If the Beatles had chosen Islam instead of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, they would have chosen Sufism, though they may or may not have fed Pakistani Sufi's crocodile pets. However, many Sunni Muslims, especially al-Qaeda, Daesh (a/k/a the Islamic State, the JV team, and the Islamist group which has been contained) and other Islamist groups, consider Sufism to be heretical. It is not possible for Muslims to create a version of the New Testament, but they could certainly initiate a reformation movement.
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We currently only have three solutions to Islamists within our midst: imprison them, deport them, or allow them to stay but keep them under surveillance. However, each of these strategies has serious flaws.
With respect to the first option, it costs $2.7 million per inmate per year to house Islamists at Guantanamo, an unsustainable amount. And Barack Obama is only the most prominent leader to willfully ignore how countries have treated POWs in past wars: imprison them until their side surrenders. By this long-established reasoning we should hold them indefinitely, but we cannot afford it.
With respect to the second option, this results in jihadists running wild in the Middle East, with each one free to rape any non-Muslim woman because "the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her -- it condoned and encouraged it." Not surprisingly, those women have a high rate of suicide as a result. Jihadists also kidnap and/or kill Christians, with Assyrians being just one example. Even though the Yazidi women have access to cell phones, we have not made it a priority to rescue them, with the killing of their Daesh captors being a bonus.
With respect to the third option, French authorities estimate that as many as 1,400 people need 24-hour surveillance in the wake of the Paris mass murders. The FBI has approximately 900 active investigations pending against Daesh inspired operatives across the country. Given that 24-hour surveillance is exceedingly expensive in terms of man-power, this option is actually worse than the first. And it will eventually result in mass murder and raids to round-up the thugs as we have seen in France and Belgium.
Both Bush II and Obama have opined that Daesh is un-Islamic or misunderstanding Islam, but that's demonstrably false. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Daesh, is a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and possesses both a master's degree and a PhD in Islamic studies from a Baghdad university. Everything he does is in accordance with Islam. Not to mention that when a group of Islamists take hostages, they often ask their victims if they can recite passages from the Quran, and if they can, they are released. This happened most recently in Mali.
A former interior minister for France and the leader of Austria's Freedom Party have proposed a Guantanamo-style prison on a Mediterranean island. This would appear to solve the problem as long as we simply drop them off and use naval patrols to ensure that they do not escape, but employing guards on the island would be very expensive. However, it ignores the motivations of Daesh jihadists to take part in the caliphate in the Middle East, in other words, they would still be traveling there. But it would be better than what we are doing now.
The ultimate solution would be to redraw the map of the Middle East, giving Sunni and Shia their own country. Currently we are stuck with the aftermath of the Sykes-Picot agreement which artificially divided the Middle East into unstable territories. Turkey would never agree to the creation of a separate territory for Kurds, as its main goal is to prevent Kurdish autonomy. And we'd need to move the populations of Yazidis, Christians, Zoroastrians, and other non-Muslims to safer locations.
The situation in Syria has become much more volatile now that Turkey, a country which actively aids Daesh, has shot-down a Russian fighter in Syria. This really is a battle between equals, given that Russian President Putin believes that he has the right to intervene anywhere in Eastern Europe where Russians live and Turkish President Erdogan warned Russia recently to stop bombing ethnic Turks in Syria. Putin has his tzar-like Black Sea palace and Erdogan has his palace fit for the sultan he believes himself to be, three times the size of Louis XIV's Versailles. Putin described the shoot-down as "a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists." Yeah, we know just how he feels after what he did in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Men from the so-called rebel groups that the Obama administration is supporting were heard to say via radio as they approached the crash site: "a Russian pilot ... God is great." The latter is what we always hear from Islamists as they prepare to kill an infidel.
The solution starts with Kurdistan. Give the Kurds all the arms and air support they require and they can serve as our boots on the ground, especially considering that the Kurds and the Israelis are the only forces which include a large number of female fighters. If the Kurds and Yazidis (ethnically the same) can take Sinjar from Daesh with only minimal air support, imagine what they could do with full support. Demand that Turkey stop sending air strikes into Syria and Iraq to kill Kurds, and if it refuses, throw it out of NATO and treat it like other Daesh accomplices. Turkish air strikes are mainly hitting the Kurds, so losing it as a partner against Daesh will cost us nothing, not to mention that Turkey has declared war on the Kurds. Have a serious conversation with Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad to convince him to give autonomy to the Kurdish portion of Syria, thereby saving him from defending it. When Erdogan whines over the Kurds being armed, tell him to pound sand. Once Kurdistan is consolidated, we can work on the rest of Syria and Iraq.
But first we need to change the Obama administration's policy of requiring the military to only bomb targets far away from any mythical, moderate Muslims, as 3/4 of planes return to base without dropping their bombs. We need to destroy every tank, self-propelled artillery, APC, artillery piece, and pickup truck with a mounted gun in Mosul and Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the caliphate, and that won't happen without a little collateral damage among Daesh sycophants.
And tell the U.S. Air Force to stop dreaming of ridiculously expensive toys and retrofit the A-10, the best ground support aircraft ever created, with new electronics for the brave new world of Islamic wars. We should be using it on every Daesh parade.