A fanatic commits to an ideal to whatever end. A fanatic throws everything aside to pursue their idea. Take something which it would be good to be committed to, like basic human rights. You might campaign for such a thing. You might spend every day of your life pursuing such a thing. But once you become fanatical about it, anything can happen.
Neoconservatism is not what people think it is. It is not a party or a group. Many people popularly seen as neocons - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld - are no such thing. Most neoconservatives reject the term. And those who accept it generally don't know each other and certainly don't act as the cabal that conspiracy-lovers imagine.
A good cause need not be tarnished by its most fanatical expressions. But it is rarely helped by them.
ISIS may seem un-Islamic to President Obama, but to anybody who has read Islam's core texts, it might appear to be a fairly straightforward attempt to create a state based on Mohammed's instructions as laid down in the Koran, in hadith, and in Mohammed's own example.
It's unwise to say nation-states wanting to retain their national identity in Europe should be dissuaded or stopped from doing so. Nationalism can go wrong, sure - but everything can go wrong.
Rather than being a 'perversion' of Islam, it is truer to say that the version of Islam espoused by ISIS, while undoubtedly the worst possible interpretation of Islam, and for Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere obviously the most destructive version of Islam, is nevertheless a plausible interpretation of Islam.
