During Secretary of State John Kerry’s second day of testifying on Capitol Hill, today before the House Foreign Affairs Committee following yesterday’s hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry emphasized that the Islamic State (what the Obama administration insists on calling by the legacy acronym ISIL) is not only not Islamic, it is anti-Islamic and Satanic. This is what Kerry said exactly:
 In addition, we have a major effort to undertake to repudiate the insulting distortion of Islam that ISIL is spreading. I was very encouraged to hear yesterday that Saudi Arabia’s top clerical entity, 21 clerics, unanimously came out and declared again that terrorism is a heinous crime under Sharia law, and more importantly declared that ISIL has nothing to do with Islam and that it is, in fact, the order of Satan. And this is vital because we know that preventing any individual from joining ISIL, from getting to the battlefield in the first place, is actually the most effective measure that we can take. The top – the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia last week said that ISIL is the number one enemy of Islam and it might serve us all well to focus on it not in a name that gives it a state, but to focus on it as the enemy of Islam.
Later on during Q&A, Kerry made this point again refusing to link the Islamic State with Islam and using as his proof that the Islamic State was not Islamic the earlier citation to the Saudi-government paid clerics who presumably know something about true Islam and their ruling that the Islamic State was Satanic. Fine. We get that. Although we’ve ridiculed President Obama’s statement to the American People last week, also taking the tack that the Islamic State was not Islamic, our critique of the president’s statement was easier because his only proof was the logic that no true religion would give sanction to murderous terrorists beheading and raping as they gobbled up more and more real estate. Since history is replete with such religions and religious behavior, Obama’s definitional proof (that is, ISIL cannot possibly be based upon any religion, much less the religion of Islam, because by definition religions don’t behave that way) is both factually wrong and logically a tautology.
Kerry’s denial of any connection between the religion of peace—yes, Islam—and the Islamic State was based essentially on a religious proof: If real Imams of the true religion of peace—yes, Islam—have come out publicly and forcefully to deny any connection between Islam the religion and the Islamic State, to counter this clear and public ruling of these real and authoritative Islamic religious scholars, you must present a counter proof from a group of equally authoritative Islamic religious authorities. And, of course, as Kerry knows, once you get into the “they said versus the others said” warring fatwas, the public dozes off or switches the station to watch a reality show about shallow wives or people on an Island or some variant thereof.
But surprisingly, we neither saw nor heard any Senator jump out of his or her seat to ask the obvious follow-on question to Kerry that would have undermined entirely his claimed proof for the un-Islamic character of the Islamic State (although we didn’t listen to the entire hearings so we concede we might have missed it). Specifically, Kerry informs us, like President Obama before him, that religions don’t behead innocent people and treat women like slaves. He proves this by relying on the leading and most authoritative Saudi Imams, who are the watchmen over Saudi’s true implementation of the religion of peace’s sharia—or Islamic law. Yes, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries in the world that claims to enforce all of Sharia through state action.
And, this being the case, one imagines that the perfect follow-on question to have asked Kerry after he delivered his religious proof for the unIslamic if not anti-Islamic ISIL pedigree would be: Mr. Secretary: if you are using Saudi Imams to prove to us that ISIL is not Islamic, are we to understood that the Islam of these Saudi Imams is the true Islam?
Of course, the good Secretary would have had to answer in the affirmative or he would have lost the force of the argument—that is, relying upon authoritative exemplars and scholars of Islam. That being the case, we would have a perfect model of how peaceful and noble the true Islam is, at least as understood by Secretary Kerry. And, as we all know, the Islam of Saudi Arabia beheads apostates—that is, those who wish to exercise the essence of religious freedom by choosing their own religion by leaving Islam. The true Islam of Saudi Arabia also subjects to capital punishment those who might exercise a bit of free speech by blaspheming Mohammed, the man Muslims claim as their prophet. The noble Islam of Saudi Arabia will arrest a woman who dares to go out in public without male escort. The civilized Islam of Saudi Arabia still countenances slavery and human trafficking.
So, now we know what the true Islam is according to Secretary Kerry.  And, more important, we now know that the Islamic State is but an enhanced version of true Islam—but Islam it most certainly is—at least according to Mr. Kerry.