Capture a promotional video with members of the Islamic State.
What is the Islamic State? What are their origins? What about your intentions? The simplicity of these questions is misleading. Few Western leaders seem to know the answers. “I do not even understand the concept,” admitted General Michael K. Nagata, head of special operations in the United States in the Middle East, in a confidential comments published by The New York Times in December. In the last year, Barack Obama has said the Islamic State “is un-Islamic” and, on other occasions, which is a subsidiary of Al Qaeda, statements that reflect the confusion and, perhaps, have been making significant strategic errors.
The Islamic State (EI) took the city of Mosul (Iraq) in June 2014 and now controls a larger than UK territory. Abubaker al Baghdadi is the leader since 2010, but his most recent picture, until last summer, was a blurred photograph of the time who was imprisoned at Camp Bucca, during the American occupation of Iraq. When the July 5, 2014 he ascended the pulpit of the Great Mosque of Al Nuri, in Mosul, to proclaim himself the first caliph in generations became blurred to the high resolution image, and guerrilla in search and seizure to supreme leader of all Muslims. Since then he has not stopped the flow of jihadists from around the world to the territory controlled by the Islamic State
Our ignorance of this movement is, in part, understandable. It is a hermit kingdom and few who They have gone there have returned. Al-Baghdadi has spoken before the cameras only once. But his words, like all other propaganda videos and encyclicals of the Islamic State, are on the Net, and followers of the caliphate have made enormous efforts to make your project known: reject peace principle; hunger for genocide; his religious vision is totally incompatible with certain types of changes that might even guarantee their survival, and considers himself a primarily player-and herald imminent end of the world. The Islamic State, also called Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Daesh in Arabic, English ISIS), is guided by a stream of Islam with a peculiar conception of the way to the Day of Judgment. This belief determines its strategy and can help the West to know your enemy and predict their behavior. His rise to power, rather than look to win the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt-whom the Islamic State considered apostates, it resembles the materialization of a dystopian alternate reality and, like David Koresh or Jim Jones (leaders of two of the most famous in the world) suicide sects have survived to dominate not just a few hundred adherents, but eight million people.
We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in two respects. First, we tend to think that jihadism is monolithic and apply the logic of Al Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed. Supporters of the Islamic State interviewed for this article still refer to Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Osama, “Sheikh Osama”, an honorary title. But jihadism has evolved since the time of the apogee of Al Qaeda between 1998 and 2003, and many fighters despise their current leaders and their priorities.
Bin Laden thought his terrorist activity as a prelude to a caliphate I did not expect to see in life. His organization was flexible and worked as a network of autonomous cells geographically dispersed. The Islamic State, however, needs to control a territory to be legitimate, and a vertical structure to govern.
It has also led to a well-intentioned mistake, but dishonest campaign to deny the medieval religious nature the Islamic State.
Peter Bergen, who published the first interview with Bin Laden in 1997, titled his book Holy War, SA, partly because he considered the jihadi leader as a product of secular, modern world. Bin Laden terrorism became a company and created franchises. Demanded concrete political concessions such as the withdrawal of US forces from Saudi Arabia. Their infantry moved at ease in the modern world. On his last day of life, Mohamed Atta shopped at Walmart and ate at Pizza Hut
It is tempting to fit the Islamic State in this perception and consider jihadists as secular and modern characters, with modern political concerns and a religious guise. But the truth is that many of the things the organization does seem absurd except if analyzed from the perspective of a sincere and thoughtful commitment to push back the current civilization to the seventh century and culminating with the coming apocalypse.
The most eloquent spokesmen of this position are responsible and followers of the Islamic State. When you talk with them, they make fun of modernity and insist they do not want-not pueden- away from the precepts of the Prophet Muhammad and his collaborators. Often they use codes and allusions that sound strange or outdated to non-Muslims and that refer to traditions and specific texts of early Islam.
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. It is undeniable that psychopaths and has attracted adventurers, recruited especially among disaffected populations in the Middle East and Europe. But religion preaching derives its most fervent supporters of consistent and even scholarly interpretations of Islam.
Almost all the important decisions and laws issued by the Islamic State comply so punctilious what their statements, pronouncements, posters, letterheads and coins is called “the prophetic methodology”, ie, prophecy and the example of Muhammad. Muslims may reject the Islamic State; most do. But the effort to say it is not a religious and millenarian group with a theology that we must understand in order to combat it, has already led to the US and support I undervalue foolish to try to end their power plans. You need to know the intellectual genealogy of the Islamic State so that our reaction will not strengthen but to blow themselves will thrust in his own zeal.
I. Devotion
The Islamic State in November issued a video which established its origins in Bin Laden. Mentioned as predecessor
immediately to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the brutal leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2003 until his death in 2006, followed by two leaders before Al Baghdadi, the caliph. He drew attention to the omission of Aiman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon who heads Al Qaeda today. Al Zawahiri has not sworn allegiance to al-Baghdadi and awakens a growing hatred among other jihadists.
The division between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State goes way back and helps explain, at least in part, the bloody excesses of the latter group. On the side of Al Zawahiri is a Jordanian cleric, Abu Mohamed al Maqdisi, who declares with some intellectual reason architect of Al Qaeda and is the least known of the jihadi leaders. Al Maqdisi coincides with the Islamic state in most of the doctrinal aspects. Both are identified with the jihadist wing of a branch of Sunni Islam called Salafism, of the Salaf al Salih, which in Arabic means “ancestors devotees.” These ancestors are the Prophet and his early followers, who Salafists revere and imitate because they are considered models of behavior in war, clothing and family.
Al Maqdisi formed Zarqawi, who was the war in Iraq taking into account the advice of the elderly. However, over time, Al Zarqawi surpassed his mentor in fanaticism and ended up receiving a reprimand from him. The reasons were the fans of Al Zarqawi and the bloodthirsty spectacles, from the point of view of doctrine, his hatred for other Muslims, to the point excommunicate them and kill them. Al Maqdisi wrote to his former pupil to say he should be wary excess excommunication (takfir) and should not “declare that people are apostates because they have sinned.” The distinction between an apostate and sinner may seem subtle, but it is a particularly controversial issue between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Deny the holiness of the Quran or Muhammad’s prophecies is apostasy. But Al Zarqawi and the State engendered by it believe that there are many other actions that can make you expel a Muslim from Islam.
Among them, sell alcohol or drugs wear Western dress, shave his beard, even vote in elections for a Muslim candidate and qualify prevent others from apostates. Be Shiite, as are most Arabs in Iraq, it is also a reason, because the Islamic State considers that Shiism is an innovation, and innovation aspects of the Qur’an is to deny their original perfection. That means put to death about 200 million Shiites (branch of Islam which represents between 10% and 15% of Muslims around the world; the rest are practically all Sufis). And the heads of state of all Muslim countries, because they have located the laws made by man over the Sharia (Islamic law) to stand for election or to enforce laws not written by God.
By following this doctrine takfiri, the Islamic State is committed to purify the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective information impossible to know the true dimension of the killings that are taking place in its territory. But the comments on social networks indicate that the individual performances are more or less continuous, and every few weeks, there are massive. The victims are usually mainly Muslim “apostates”. Apparently the Christians who are resisting the new government are exempt from the automatic execution. Al Baghdadi allows them to live always pay a special tax, called jizya, and acknowledge their submission.
centuries ago that they ended the wars of religion in Europe and people stopped dying en masse by arcane theological disputes . Perhaps that explains the incredulity of Western at reports on the theological foundations and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this organization is as devoted as he claims to be, or as apocalyptic as retrograde or suggest their actions and statements.
Their skepticism is understandable. Not long ago, Westerners accusing Muslims of blindly following ancient precepts criticism from some-particularly intellectuals, the late Edward Said, pointing to call “old” Muslims was granjeaban simply another form of denigrate. Instead, they said these scholars, we should look at the context in which these ideas emerged: poorly governed countries, changing social mores, the humiliation of living on land that is only valued by oil …
Without these factors is impossible to have a complete view of the rise of the Islamic State. But focusing only on them and exclude ideology is a reflection of other Western bias itself: consider that if religion does not matter in Washington and Berlin, should be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. Well, when a masked man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) beheaded with a knife as an apostate, sometimes do it for religious reasons.
Many Muslim organizations claim that the practices the Islamic State are anti-Islamic. It is reassuring to know that most Muslims have not the slightest interest in substituting Hollywood movies for videos of public executions to spend time entertaining after dinner. However, Muslims who called un-Islamic the Islamic State, says Princeton professor Bernard Haykel, the greatest expert on the theology of that organization, “are ashamed and are politically correct and have a sweetened vision of their own religion” that forgets “historical and legal requirements of their faith.” According Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are imbued with religious force. The quotations from the Koran are constant. “Until the release privates nonstop,” he says. “They pose in front of cameras and repeated the doctrines and formulas”. In his opinion, the claims that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam are absurd. “People want to absolve Islam,” he says. “It’s the mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. As if there was a thing called Islam! Islam is what Muslims do, how to interpret the texts. ” All these texts share Sunnis, not only the Islamic State. “And these guys have as much legitimacy as any other” to unravel.
All Muslims recognize that the first conquests of Muhammad were not a neat affair. The laws of war passed both the Koran and other stories about the Prophet were the answer to a turbulent and violent time. According to Haykel, Islamic State fighters have retreated to Islam and first played at exactly their military standards. Including several practices that contemporary Muslims prefer not to recognize as part of their sacred texts are included. “There are some (jihadists) crazed handling the medieval tradition to justify slavery, crucifixion and beheadings,” says Haykel. They are soldiers who “are at the heart of the medieval tradition and apply seamlessly into the present.”
The leaders of the Islamic State believe that emulate Muhammad is his duty and have revived traditions that had hundreds forgotten years. “The amazing thing is not only that applied so literal, but the seriousness with which they read the texts,” explains Haykel. “They show a rare meticulousness and obsession among Muslims”.
Al Qaeda never spoke to recover slavery. Why would I do? Maybe he did not raise the issue for strategic reasons, to avoid losing support among the public. When Islamic State
began to enslave people were even shocked some of his followers. Yet the caliphate is still using slavery and crucifixion undeterred. “We will conquer your Rome will break your crosses and will enslave your wives,” vowed Abu Mohamed al Adnani, his chief spokesman, in one of his messages of love to the West.
II. Territory
It is believed that the caliphate have reached tens of thousands of Muslims. Recruits come from France, UK, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Australia, Indonesia and the United States, among other countries. Many will fight; Many intend to die. Internet has become an essential tool to spread their propaganda and to make sure that newcomers know what to believe, says Peter R. Neumann, a professor at King’s College London. In addition, recruitment in the Network has expanded the demographics of the jihadist community, by allowing conservative Muslim women, physically isolated at home, coming into contact with the sensors, radicalization and organized to reach Syria. With its ability to attract both men and women, the Islamic State hopes to build an entire society.
In Australia is experiencing one of the most important “new spiritual authorities” that guide foreigners who join the Islamic State. It is Cerantonio Musa, a man of 30 who for three years was televangelist in Iqraa TV, in Cairo, but left when the chain to its constant appeals objected to establish a caliphate. Today preaching on Facebook and Twitter. The authorities have withdrawn the passport and can not move from Melbourne. Cerantonio comes from a family half Italian and half Irish, and is a friendly and polite man. He says pales see videos beheadings. He hates violence, although supporters of the Islamic State have an obligation to support it.
The caliphate, according Cerantonio is not merely a political entity, but also a vehícu-what salvation. Islamic State propaganda regularly reports promises Baya’a (loyalty) jihadist groups coming from all over the Muslim world. The Muslim who recognizes one omnipotent God and pray, but dies without having sworn allegiance to a legitimate caliph or to fulfill the obligations of the oath, has not lived a fully Islamic life. Is not that the case of the majority of Muslims in history? Cerantonio agrees: “I say even that Islam has been restored” with Al Baghdadi
Cerantonio, like many followers of the Islamic State, does not recognize the legitimacy of the previous caliphate. The Ottoman Empire, which reached its apogee in the sixteenth century and then experienced a long decline, until the founding of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which finished in 1924. The rejected for two reasons: did not fully comply with Islamic law and caliphs were not descendants of Prophet’s tribe, the Quraysh. To be Caliph, as required by the Sunni code must be a man, an adult, a Muslim, of quraish lineage; showing signs of moral integrity and physical and mental integrity, and possess authority (amr). The latter criterion is the most difficult to fulfill: it requires that the caliph available a territory in which to impose Islamic law
In theory, all Muslims are obliged to emigrate to the caliphate.. After the sermon of Al Baghdadi in July, she began to reach a daily flood of Syrian jihadists. They were more motivated than ever. As Anjem Choudary, Abu Baraa and Abdul Muhid. Live
in London and are willing to emigrate to the Islamic State. But the authorities have confiscated their passports.
III. Revelation
The Islamic State is distinguished from other jihadist groups because it is considered a central character in the script of God. It has its worldly concerns (including garbage collection and water supply in the areas it controls), but its purpose is, above all, the End Times. Bin Laden did not usually mention the Apocalypse and when he did, he seemed to have that glorious moment divine adjustment accounts come long after his death. Instead, the founders of the Islamic State are clear signs of doomsday from the last years of the US occupation of Iraq.
Surrounded by crops, the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo, is key. According to the Prophet, it is where the great battle between the armies of Rome and the forces of Islam will be fought. Dabiq be the Waterloo of Rome. After seizing the city, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of the enemy, whose defeat will start the countdown to the apocalypse. In the videos of the Islamic State, the Western media often overlook references to Dabiq while devoting full attention to the horrifying scenes of beheadings.
The story of the prophet who predicts the battle identifies Dabiq the enemy with Rome. Roma who is the subject of debate. Cerantonio says that Rome represents the Eastern Roman Empire, which had its capital in what is now Istanbul. Other voices from the Islamic State suggest that Roma can be any infidel army, and the US serves well.
IV. The fight
The ideological purity of the Islamic State is a virtue: it allows us to predict some of their actions. Bin Laden was unpredictable. Instead, the Islamic State boasts openly of their plans; not all, but enough to figure out how it wants to govern and expand.
In London, Choudary and his students explain in detail how foreign policy should be the caliphate. It has already initiated the call offensive jihad expansion by force countries ruled by non-Muslims. “So far we simply defend ourselves,” said Choudary; without a caliphate, the offensive jihad is an unworkable concept. Instead, wage war to expand the territory is an essential duty of the caliph.
The Islamic law only authorizes interim peace treaties, which are not in force more than 10 years, according to Abu Baraa, colleague of Choudary. Similarly, the borders are anathema, as stated by the Prophet and repeating videos of the Islamic State. The caliph must do jihad at least once a year.
The modern international system, born in 1648 of the Treaty of Westphalia, is based on each state to recognize the borders, even reluctantly. For the Islamic State, that recognition is an ideological suicide. Other Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, have succumbed to the blandishments of democracy and the possibility of an invitation to join the community of nations, even with a UN site. The negotiation and compromise them also have been useful at times to the Taliban.
The ambitions of the Islamic State and its strategic plans were
clear in their statements and in social networks and in 2011, when he was only one of many terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq and had not yet committed mass atrocities. If we identified early intentions, and understood that the power vacuum in Syria and Iraq would give ample performance, we could have, at least, put pressure on Iraq to reach agreements with the Sunni minority and strengthen its Syrian border. That at least would have prevented the multiplier and propaganda effect of the declaration of the caliphate. However, just over a year, Obama told The New Yorker that, in his opinion, the EI was the weaker partner of Al Qaeda. “If a youth team the Lakers jersey gets, that does not make them Kobe Bryant,” he said. The failure to detect the division between the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and their differences has led to dangerous decisions. For example, attempts by Washington that al-Maqdisi, leader of Al Qaeda, intercede with Turki al Binali, his former disciple and ideologue of the Islamic State today, to save the life of Peter Kassig. The aid worker was beheaded in November. His death was a tragedy, but tragedy would have been the success of the plan. A reconciliation between Maqdisi and Al Binali have begun to bring the two main jihadist organizations in the world.
West now faces the Islamic State by Kurds and Iraqis in the battlefield and by airstrikes. These strategies have not displaced the EI of all its possessions, although they have prevented the attack on Baghdad and Erbil and massacres of Shiites and Kurds in the two cities. Some observers have called for direct intervention, with the deployment of tens of thousands of American soldiers. There should dismiss these appeals too fast: it is an openly genocidal organization committing daily atrocities in the territory under their control
One way to undo the spell that the Islamic State exercises over his followers would dominate militarily. and occupy the territories of Syria and Iraq today under its power. Al Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive as cockroaches, underground. The Islamic State, no. If you lose the territory, it will cease to be a caliphate. The Caliphate can not exist as underground movements, because the territorial authority is a prerequisite: if you are being robbed, loyalty oaths cease to be binding. The old faithful could continue to attack the West and decapitating enemies on their own, of course. But the propaganda value of the caliphate would disappear, and with it the religious duty of course travel there to be of service. However, the dangers of an escalation of the conflict are immense. The biggest supporter of a US invasion is the Islamic State. Obviously the video in which a hooded executioner goes to Obama for his name seek to drag the United States into the fight. An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists around the world and help recruit more people. Moreover, Washington is reluctant because he is aware of the bad results that has reaped in previous campaigns. In the final analysis, the rise of the Islamic State came about because the US occupation created a space for Zarqawi and his followers. Who knows what the consequences would be another failure?
Because all that is known of the Islamic State, follow desangrándolo slowly, with air strikes and wars with others, seems the least bad of military options. Neither the Kurds nor the Shiites will be able to control all the Sunni territory in Syria and Iraq; there hate them, and in any case not feel like such an adventure. But what we can do is prevent the Islamic State fulfill its duty to expand. Without achieving this objective, the Caliphate State will not be the conqueror of the Prophet Muhammad, but unable another government over the Middle East to bring prosperity to his people.
The human cost of the existence of the Islamic State is terrible . But the threat to the United States is less than Al Qaeda. The core of this latter group is obsessed with the “far enemy” (West). But generally what interests jihadists is their environment. The Islamic State sees enemies everywhere and, although its leaders hate the United States, the application of the Sharia in the caliphate and expansion into neighboring regions are their priorities.
The foreign fighters (with their wives and children) traveling caliphate way tickets: they want to live under Sharia authentic, and many want to be martyrs. Some lone wolves who support the Islamic State have attacked Western targets, and there will be more attacks. But the terrorists, most are frustrated fans, who could not travel to the caliphate because their passports have been confiscated. Although the Islamic State concludes these attacks, still he has not planned or financed any. (The attack on Charlie Hebdo in January in Paris, was essentially an operation of Al Qaeda).
Content properly, chances are that the Islamic State is sought his own ruin. No country is an ally of his. The territory it controls, though vast, is largely uninhabited and is very poor. As stop expanding or even reduce, its assertion that it is the instrument of the divine will and the agent of Revelation lose strength and reach fewer believers. And when ever to leak more information about the miserable domestic situation, other radical Islamist movements suffer the disgrace: nobody has worked so hard to strictly implement the Sharia by violent means. And this is the result. However, it is unlikely that the death of the Islamic State is fast.
V. Deterrence
It would be easy even exculpatory, that the problem of the Islamic State is “a problem with Islam”. However, simply acknowledge the caliphate of anti-Islamic can backfire, especially if those receiving the message they read the sacred texts and seen that many of the practices of the caliphate are endorsed them.
The Muslims They can argue that neither slavery nor the crucifixion are now legitimate.
Many say. But they can not condemn slavery and crucifixion without contradicting the Koran and the Prophet’s example.
The ideology of the Islamic State exerts a powerful influence on a certain sector of the population. Musa Cerantonio London and the Salafists are unavailable to discouragement: any questions makes them hesitate. So you can have fun with them, and that’s the scariest. Reviewing Mein Kampf in March 1940, George Orwell confessed that he had been “Hitler never to dislike”; something about him that aroused sympathy for the loser, even though its objectives were cowards or hateful. “If he were killing a mouse, know do believe it was a dragon.”
On the supporters of the Islamic State something similar it happens. They believe they are involved in a struggle that go far beyond their own lives, and that the mere act of participating in this drama, and on the side of the righteous, is a privilege and a pleasure.
That Islamic State regarded as fulfilling prophecies dogma defines the spirit of our rival. Do not underestimate their intellectual and religious appeal. You can use ideological tools to see the potential converts that the group’s message is false. And military tools may limit its horrors. Little more can be done at so immune to persuasion as this organization. And war may be long, but not last until the end of time.
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