Video on how pearls are formed Naturally – YouTube – 1/3/2012.

” . . . a tapestry of light and color.”

Keep that in mind.

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“With its actions and way of thinking, the ISIL proved to all Arabs and Muslims that it is just a collection of sick individuals who love murder and blood without thought or specific identity,” said political analyst Zuhair Abbas al-Anzi, professor at the University of Anbar in Ramadi.

Al-Qaeda brings suffering, hardship to Syrians and Iraqis: activists | Al-Shorfa – 1/14/2014.

Related: Fallujah residents set to return: Anbar governor | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

Today’s notice in al-Shorfa leaves much to be desired even if “clear, accurate, and complete”: it’s a little ahead of the story, perhaps as cocky as it may be encouraging.

Related: Al-Qaeda affiliate’s tactics in Syria reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban | Al-Shorfa – 2/5/2014.

That last citation goes on to this contemporary sentiment:

The group’s statements distort Islam and alienate people from the religion, she said.

“With statements like these, ISIL is killing the revolution, for Islam is a religion of forgiveness, tolerance, amity, acceptance of others and respect for all religions,” Nawfal said. “It was never a religion of killing, intimidation or restriction of worshipers’ livelihoods and freedom, nor is it a religion of slaughter, hate or deception.

“It is a religion for all mankind, not a particular group,” she added.

I’ve chosen to respect the sentiment even though a host of anti-Jihad sites like Answering Muslims: The Islamoblog of Acts 17 Apologetics remain but a mouse-click distant in time.

The way one feels about a religion, especially one’s own, may differ from the expression in history of it, but the contemporary personal interpretation nonetheless would seem to express the attitude and beliefs possessed today and put to the test by Muslim security forces throughout the range of the Islamic Small Wars, essentially confirming the presence and strength of modern views.

Alternatively stated: the various flavors and strains of Islamic legacy have their sway if not in scripture and tradition as promoted or enforced by zealots then in the actual preferences in behavior and tastes embraced by greater Muslim societies according to other cultural legacies (like the Pashtunwali) or aesthetic or sentimental values (e.g., Sufism and the poetry of Persian theologian Rumi).

On this blog, I continue to endorse “shimmer“, the idea that the conflict table — the basis for moral entrepreneurship — may loom large, but the assembly developed on top of it is actually small, by comparison, and largely rejected, or most Muslim-majority states would be strict sharia states instead of confused amalgams of autocratic and archaic practices and contemporary make-do laws.  While the personifications of excessive pride and vanity in malignant leaders and their followers attempt to leverage the Qur’anic script (see this blogs comment on programming and scripting) for themselves, or, more accurately, use the template to deal themselves their own self-aggrandizing and glorious role in lives, those caught unluckily in their path struggle mightily to repulse or contain them.

Not the first time have I used this metaphor: as a grain of sand may be to an oyster, so “the terrorists”, so hard to define at times, so painfully present at times, may inspire their own worlds to work around them, envelope them, and vanish them in another more formidable, more beautiful, more radiant peace.

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