Why It's A Mistake To Call ISIL "Medieval"

"Medieval" is a term we've heard more and more frequently over the years to describe Islamist militants such as Al Qaeda and now ISIL. Given the cruelty of their tactics, it's understandable. But it's also a misleading label that obscures the ideology and motivation of what are, in fact, modern political movements.

Historians of the Middle Ages will tell you that ISIL bears little resemblance, in words and deeds, to actual people of that era. The Islamists' particular brand of religious fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon. And their brutal executions are carefully choreographed spectacles, created to take full advantage of spreading terror through contemporary viral media.

As professors Clare Monagle and Louise D'Arcens write in a recent essay, the tendency to describe Islamist terror as "medieval" lies in the longer history of how the Middle Ages came to be perceived in Western cultural imagination.... Read more

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‘Medieval’ makes a comeback in modern politics. What’s going on?