I have been closely following the debate between those that suggest Islamic State is a natural product of Islamic belief and those who claim that it is an aberation that has little if anything to do with Islam. The former is typified by Sam Harris, the latter by Karen Armstrong. The review of Armstrong's latest book (link below) quite neatly sums up the arguments, but my conclusions are slightly different. It seems to me that Islam is the primary cause of Islamic State. Without Islam, people would be angry about the state of the Middle East and the West's contributions to its problems, but they wouldn't be gleefully chopping off aid workers' heads.
Don't think it's a binary choice. Is it likely there will always be violent and fundamentalist strains within Islam? Yes, they haven't disappeared from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or even Buddhism, so yeah it will always be a problem. But are groups as large, active, and dangerous as IS a necessary feature of Islam? Not at all.
IS is of course rooted in Islam but was forged under particular objective historical conditions. If the Iraq War had not happened they likely wouldn't exist at all. Now of course other similarly-minded groups like Al-Qaeda would exist Iraq War or no, but they too were created in particular historical conditions apart from Islam itself. Today's jihadism only goes back to about 1979 or so after a long period of increasing secularization in the Muslim world since the 19th century so in that sense it could be viewed as aberration as well-- like I said it's not an "either/or" scenario. Today's groups are the result of both internal forces in Islam and external forces such as the undermining of secular governments and movements in the Muslim world by "the West" during the Cold War, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Iraq War, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and subsequent division amongst the European powers, etc.
It is worth noting, however, that IS does tend to play fast and loose with sharia when it doesn't suit their desires. Yeah some of what IS does is definitely motivated by their belief in sharia, while other things (such as enslaving Yazidis or executing an aid worker after their own sharia court cleared him of espionage) are pretty much just them doing what they want and making a weak and tortured religious argument to justify it. Even Al-Qaeda has denounced a lot of the shit they've been doing as "unislamic."
Or is Islam (not Muslims note) as dangerous as I think?
That depends entirely on where you live. Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, even Egypt and Algeria, yeah it can be pretty fuckin dangerous. But in the UK or US? I can think of at least a hundred things that are more dangerous to me than Islam. Much, much more likely to get killed by a cop, neighbor, coworker, jealous boyfriend, or some random dude in this country than a Muslim terrorist. And it's not Muslims doing the oppression and taking away my rights in the US, it's my own countrymen. Both nominal/secular and religious Christians and Jews are doing way more damage to my country than any Muslim could dream of. So yeah, it's all about perspective.
Topic: Is Islamic State Islamic?