tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/understanding-islamic-state-24785/articlesUnderstanding Islamic State – The Conversation2023-02-16T13:25:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982692023-02-16T13:25:10Z2023-02-16T13:25:10ZCOVID-19 restrictions unexpectedly reduced Islamic State violence – political science experts explain why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510108/original/file-20230214-24-ab590n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman walks in Raqa, the former Syrian capital of the Islamic State, in December 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1230242180/photo/topshot-syria-conflict-daily-life-raqa.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=i-FdQOqRBmciGD8TCY0hyKF8kvbZ5ixLz7y_77mY_7E=">Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>World leaders and <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/contending-isis-time-coronavirus">policy experts </a>at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic <a href="https://time.com/5828630/isis-coronavirus/">feared that</a> the health crisis might make the world more dangerous. They worried specifically that terrorist organizations like the <a href="https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/isil.html">Islamic State group</a> would <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/69508/how-terrorist-groups-will-try-to-capitalize-on-the-coronavirus-crisis/">capitalize on the pandemic</a> to increase attacks on civilians and recruit new sympathizers. </p>
<p>In some ways, the pandemic presented an opportunity to groups like the Islamic State group, known by the initials IS, because the sudden increase in health spending <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/35298/From-Double-Shock-to-Double-Recovery-Implications-and-Options-for-Health-Financing-in-The-Time-of-COVID-19.pdf?sequence=8&isAllowed=y">strained many countries’ budgets</a> and diverted attention <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/28/preventing-violent-extremism-during-and-after-the-covid-19-pandemic/">away from extremism</a>. Governments’ COVID-19 responses also called on police and armies to deliver health care services <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7870912/">in some cases</a>. </p>
<p>But the feared increase in IS violence <a href="https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2021/06/28/has-isis-made-gains-as-a-result-of-the-pandemic/">largely did not materialize</a>.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=C2IitzkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars who study</a> the causes of violence within countries, often between armed groups and governments, and what works to prevent it. Along with our colleague <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/qutaiba-idlbi/">Qutaiba Idlbi</a>, a senior fellow at the <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/">Atlantic Council</a> think tank, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1dHeQGgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">we wanted to understand</a> how COVID-19 lockdowns affected the ability of groups like IS to operate. </p>
<p>As our new <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/locking-down-violence-the-covid19-pandemics-impact-on-nonstate-actor-violence/19073EF1BC0873E1D614A34F6BD1365C">research</a> shows, 2020 COVID-19 lockdown measures such as curfews and travel bans – which governments have mostly <a href="https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-lockdowns/">since lifted</a> – made it difficult for IS to operate and, as an indirect result, helped reduce violence in Egypt, Iraq and Syria. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A soldier in camouflage steps into a destroyed vehicle that appears charred from the inside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510111/original/file-20230214-2150-zdys90.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An Iraqi fighter inspects the site of an Islamic State group attack north of Baghdad in May 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1211657465/photo/topshot-iraq-conflict-is.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=s34V40b5F3hAhyP1ZlD-BjZRPY6MdKZxgDoUmPzBCL0=">Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Understanding the Islamic State group</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/12/middleeast/here-is-how-isis-began/index.html">Islamic State group</a> – also known as IS, ISIS and ISIL – emerged as an offshoot of the Islamic <a href="https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/">militant terrorist group</a> al-Qaida in Iraq around 2004. </p>
<p>In its rise, Islamic State group used unusually brutal and sadistic <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61016908">tactics</a> against government officials, as well as civilians, including intense <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/04/syria-isis-tortured-kobani-child-hostages">torture</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-steven-sotloff">beheadings</a>. </p>
<p>But IS still cultivated genuine support from some locals in Iraq and Syria by exploiting <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/02/17/not-by-counterterrorism-alone-root-causes-and-the-defeat-of-the-islamic-state-group/">their grievances</a> over weak, corrupt governance – while sometimes providing better <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/04/world/middleeast/isis-documents-mosul-iraq.html">public services</a>, like routine street cleanings and power line repairs, than the government did in the areas it controlled. </p>
<p>Omar, a local journalist and civil society activist from Deir Ezzor, Syria, recalled in 2022 to our co-author Qutaiba how for many in his province, “When ISIS took over Deir Ezzor province, the poor and those unable to flee were glad that the province did not fall back to the Assad regime. For them, ISIS was the better devil.” </p>
<p>Throughout 2013 and 2014, the <a href="https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/islamic-state">Islamic State group began</a> to take over territory in Syria and Iraq. At the time, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35806229">engaged in a civil war</a>, which began in 2011 when Assad attempted to quash a popular uprising against his family’s 40-year-long rule. </p>
<p>The Assad regime shot at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/22/syria-protests-forces-shoot">peaceful demonstrators</a>, detained and tortured activists, and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coisyria/2022-06-28/Policy-paper-CoH-27-June.pdf">retaliated against communities</a> that challenged his authority. In 2013, the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/09/18/united-nations-releases-report-use-chemical-weapons-syria">Assad regime attacked its own</a> people with sarin gas, killing more than 1,400 people – many of them children – in Eastern Ghouta. </p>
<p>Political instability was not limited to Syria at the time. </p>
<p>In Iraq, for example, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-protests/thousands-rally-in-iraqs-day-of-rage-protests-idUSTRE71O1RN20110225">2011 protests</a> against corruption with violence, kidnapping, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/02/02/133440159/group-claims-iraq-secret-prison-in-operation">torture and</a> <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/who-are-the-people-killed-by-nouri-al-maliki-and-why-482227">assassinations of activists</a> and protesters. </p>
<p>The Islamic State group grew during the civil conflicts and public uprisings, and <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/whos-who-syrias-civil-war">tried to establish</a> control over territory in parts of Iraq and Syria. </p>
<p>At its height in 2014, IS <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47678157">controlled</a> 34,000 square miles – or 88,000 square kilometers – across Syria and Iraq, home to about <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838034">10 million people</a>. The group also changed <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27994277">its name from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham to the Islamic State</a>, reflecting its plans to expand control over more territory. </p>
<p>The U.S. launched an <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/timeline-us-policy-isis">international military intervention</a> to defeat the Islamic State group in 2014. </p>
<p>This military coalition <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/politics/trump-syria-turkey-troop-withdrawal.html">brought IS to its knees</a> by the beginning of 2018 and ended its control over the large territory it once controlled in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/politics/trump-syria-turkey-troop-withdrawal.html">announced it would pull out its troops</a> from Syria in 2018 and declared victory over IS. The Islamic State group lost control over its last <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47678157">bit of</a> territory in Syria in 2019. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of men, one with crutches and an amputated leg, walk, followed by some men with cameras photographing them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510133/original/file-20230214-16-mmzz9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Men suspected of having collaborated with the Islamic State group are released from a Syrian prison in October 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1229085930/photo/topshot-syria-conflict-kurds-prisoners.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=mGP42EEK4ZWsKARtSrKaK5OxLHxJxpKX8gWJAF_MWQw=">Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Islamic State group under lockdown</h2>
<p>But despite the group’s setbacks – including <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-raymond-thomas-socom-60000-to-70000-isis-fighters-killed-2017-7">tens of thousands</a> of fighters killed since its rise – IS <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/kurdish-leader-isis-conflict-iraq-iran/606502/">remained active in early 2020</a>.</p>
<p>In March 2020, the <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/syrian-arab-republic-covid-19-response-2020-fact-sheet">Syrian government enforced</a> a two-month lockdown that closed most businesses and imposed a partial curfew. <a href="https://crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2020/03/iraq-nationwide-lockdown-implemented-march-22-update-15">Iraq</a> <a href="https://english.alarabiya.net/coronavirus/2020/06/23/Coronavirus-Egypt-to-reopen-restaurants-cafes-sports-clubs-from-July-27">and Egypt</a> also implemented widespread closures and curfews to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. </p>
<p>We analyzed data on more than 1,500 attacks initiated by IS over an 18-month period in these places during 2019 and 2020. Our <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422001423">research, published in January 2023</a>, shows that travel bans and curfews helped reduce IS attacks substantially. </p>
<p>These findings highlight that COVID-19 lockdown measures affected the Islamic State’s ability to operate. The curfews made it difficult for IS to generate revenue and hide its movements by closing public and private institutions and restricting travel between provinces.</p>
<p>Our analysis showed that while in effect, curfews and travel bans helped to significantly reduce IS violence, especially in highly populated areas. </p>
<p>In Iraq, violence declined around 30% because of lockdowns. In Syria, there was an approximate 15% overall reduction in violence during this period.</p>
<p>But in Egypt, the government had already instituted curfews <a href="https://egyptindependent.com/curfew-announced-in-some-north-sinai-areas/">in some areas because of the Islamic State group’s presence</a> and violence there. This made it difficult to analyze COVID-specific lockdowns.</p>
<p>Unlike many other militant groups, IS had large <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/03/isis-caliphate-money-territory/584911/">financial reserves</a> to sustain itself during the lockdown. It also operates in largely <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/207-averting-isis-resurgence-iraq-and-syria">rural areas</a> and, therefore, was not especially vulnerable to the effects of lockdown measures in urban areas. </p>
<h2>Broader implications</h2>
<p>Our research comes at a critical time as policymakers and <a href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA958-1/RAND_RBA958-1.pdf">counterterrorism experts debate</a> a long-term strategy to eliminate the Islamic State group. </p>
<p>In 2022, the U.S. and <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/01/19/who-are-the-syrian-democratic-forces">local military forces in</a> Syria <a href="https://www.understandingwar.org/iraqi-security-forces">and Iraq</a> conducted 313 operations in Iraq and Syria, killing 700 IS fighters. </p>
<p>The U.S. and its partners in the region have also killed several prominent <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3266973/us-partners-find-success-in-mission-to-defeat-isis/">IS leaders</a> over the past few years, including Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2922796/leader-of-isis-dead-following-us-raid-in-syria/">who died</a> in February 2022. </p>
<p>But we think the United States’ <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/10/09/the-us-played-down-turkeys-concerns-about-syrian-kurdish-forces-that-couldnt-last/">current strategy</a>, which focuses heavily on military alliances with local partners, is not sustainable – in part because it does not pay heed to the reasons some people in Syria and Iraq still support IS.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While some world leaders and foreign policy experts expected IS to increase its attacks during COVID-19’s early days, travel bans and curfews helped slow violence.Jóhanna Kristín Birnir, Professor Comparative Politics, University of MarylandDawn Brancati, Senior Lecturer, Political Science Department, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1289712020-01-28T13:11:27Z2020-01-28T13:11:27ZDespite defeats, the Islamic State remains unbroken and defiant around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311462/original/file-20200122-117938-xpelab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4912%2C3270&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of Islamic State fighters surrender in Afghanistan. Many of their comrades are still in the fight.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photograoh-taken-on-november-17-2019-members-of-the-news-photo/1183203542">Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a series of bloody campaigns from 2014 to 2019, a multinational military coalition drove the Islamic State group, often known as ISIS, out of much of <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/167695">the Iraqi and Syrian territory that the strict militant theocracy had brutally governed</a>. </p>
<p>But the Pentagon and the United Nations both estimate that the group still has <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/454654-isis-fighters-have-reverted-to-shadow-warriors-fighting-an-endless-war">as many as 30,000 active insurgents</a> in the region. Thousands more IS-aligned fighters are spread across Africa and Asia, from the scrublands of Mali and Niger to the deserts of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan, to the island jungles of the Philippines. </p>
<p>I keep track of the loose alliance of various global affiliates and insurgent groups collectively known as the Islamic State. It’s <a href="http://www.thelastwarlord.com/">part of my research</a> <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15605.html">chronicling America’s wars</a> in remote lands <a href="https://www.brianglynwilliams.com/">where I have worked</a> for the CIA and the U.S. Army. I also monitor Islamic State activities around the world for a <a href="http://mappingisis.com/">University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth project I lead called MappingISIS.com</a></p>
<p>In recent months, the Islamic State group has reconstituted itself in the Syria-Iraq region and continues to inspire mayhem across the globe.</p>
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<h2>Iraq, the homeland of jihadocracy</h2>
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<p>The “Dawla Islamia,” or Islamic State, began as a Sunni Muslim insurgent group in Iraq amid the maelstrom of sectarian violence that followed the U.S.-led 2003 invasion. Up until then, Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baathist party had suppressed Islamist jihadi groups of all stripes, limiting influence in Iraq from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/30/opinion/saddam-hussein-and-al-qaeda-are-not-allies.html">Shiite-dominated Iran</a> and Sunni-fundamentalist Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>In 2014 IS blitzed across the region and took over a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-many-ways-to-map-the-islamic-state/379196/">wide swath of Iraq and Syria</a>, where it <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kwgqj/the-islamic-state-full-length">functioned as a de facto government</a>. It also maintained a ferocious fighting force, always seeking to expand the reach of its so-called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-caliph-the-islamic-state-tries-to-boost-its-legitimacy-by-hijacking-a-historic-institution-126175">caliphate</a>” fundamentalist Islamic regime.</p>
<p>Since <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/fall-jihadist-bastion-history-battle-mosul-october-2016-july-2017/">major defeats</a> <a href="https://www.brianglynwilliams.com/pdfs/Williams_and_Souza.pdf">in 2017</a>, the Islamic State group has retreated to a largely inaccessible sanctuary in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-finds-a-niche-in-northern-iraq-1544053966">remote Qara Chok, Hamrin and Makhmoul mountains</a> of northeastern Iraq. From there, they regularly attack U.S. and Iraqi troops, Kurdish forces and local Shiite militias. They also attract new Sunni recruits, resentful of discrimination and repression from the currently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqs-shiites-helped-boost-the-political-elite-in-baghdad-now-they-want-to-bring-it-down/2019/12/28/7768d0e0-20da-11ea-b034-de7dc2b5199b_story.html">Shiite-dominated Iraqi government</a>.</p>
<p>The group’s terror campaigns include <a href="https://ekurd.net/islamic-ambush-iraqi-military-2017-04-24">dressing up as government troops</a> at fake checkpoints and executing “traitors,” <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/28/how-isis-still-threatens-iraq/">killing pro-government tribal and village elders</a> and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/28/how-isis-still-threatens-iraq/">executing government employees in night raids</a> on their homes. </p>
<p>In the summer of 2019, IS fighters in northern Iraq also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mystery-crop-fires-scorch-thousands-of-acres-in-syria-and-iraq--and-isis-claims-responsibility/2019/06/07/8507eb00-87a1-11e9-9d73-e2ba6bbf1b9b_story.html">burned hundreds of acres of crops</a> belonging to suspected pro-government villagers whom they labeled “infidels.”</p>
<p>Most recently, IS fighters have been heartened by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-iran-showdown-conflict-could-explode-quickly-and-disastrously-129306">U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani</a>, who had led Iraqi Shiite militias against them. Soleimani’s death, which Islamic State leaders hailed as “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7874033/ISIS-welcome-death-Irans-Qaseem-Soleimani.html">divine intervention</a>,” led to a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793895401/iraqi-parliament-votes-to-expel-u-s-troops-trump-threatens-sanctions">halt in joint U.S.-Iraqi operations</a> against the Islamic State. Iraq’s parliament and prime minister have <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793895401/iraqi-parliament-votes-to-expel-u-s-troops-trump-threatens-sanctions">called for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq</a>, which would provide opportunity for IS forces to expand their operations.</p>
<h2>Syria, the former terror capital</h2>
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<p>From 2015 to 2019, the Islamic State ran a government in the Syrian territory it occupied, based in the Raqqa province of northeastern Syria. That organization slowly collapsed under assaults by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and the Syrian Arab Army, backed by Russia and Iran. As they retreated, IS leaders hid weapons caches and millions of dollars in the vast Syrian desert, and <a href="http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISW%20Report%20-%20ISIS%27s%20Second%20Comeback%20-%20June%202019.pdf">reconstituted their movement as a guerrilla fighting force</a>.</p>
<p>Since the defeat of their physical state, resilient IS insurgents in Syria have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/world/middleeast/russia-syria-isis.html">killed pro-government Russian soldiers</a>, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/14-Druze-women-kidnapped-in-latest-ISIS-atrocity-in-Syria-563711">massacred pro-government Druze tribesmen</a>, and attacked <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-invasion-isis.html">anti-ISIS Kurdish fighters and intelligence officers</a> with car bombs and roadside bombs.</p>
<p>Since President Donald Trump’s October 2019 announcement that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trumps-green-light-moment-in-syria-shook-the-world/601963/">U.S. troops would retreat from their bases</a> in northern Syria, many Islamic State fighters taken prisoner by the Kurds have also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/world/middleeast/turkey-syria-kurds.html">broken out of their prisons</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, roughly 70,000 Islamic State members and supporters – men, women and children – still remain in their Kurdish-guarded internment camps, which have, however, become <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/31/inside-al-hawl-camp-the-incubator-for-islamic-states-resurgence">training centers for a new generation</a> of jihadist “Cubs of the Calihphate.”</p>
<p>A November 2019 U.S. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/world/middleeast/al-baghdadi-delta-force.html">Delta Force operation</a> led to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s messianic leader – but the group has already <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-state-group-names-new-leaderto-replace-baghdadi/2019/10/31/d1430b6a-fbf2-11e9-9e02-1d45cb3dfa8f_story.html">chosen a successor</a> and has vowed to avenge al-Baghdadi’s death.</p>
<h2>Nigeria, the jungle bastion</h2>
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<p>In 2015, the members of the <a href="https://ctc.usma.edu/islamic-state-africa-estimating-fighter-numbers-cells-across-continent/">Boko Haram Islamist terrorist group</a>, notorious for kidnapping local schoolgirls, swore allegiance to the Islamic State.</p>
<p>As many as 4,000 of its fighters operate in the northeastern jungles of Nigeria, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/where-exactly-islamic-state-west-africa">attacking army outposts, remote villages and even towns</a>. They kidnap civilians and kill soldiers not just in Nigeria, but in the <a href="https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-the-islamic-state-in-west-africa-province-is-growing-in-strength-and-sophistication/">neighboring countries of Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso</a>, defying <a href="https://www.counterextremism.com/countries/nigeria">multi-national military efforts</a> to suppress their activity.</p>
<h2>Afghanistan, the fortress in the mountains</h2>
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<p>In 2015, disgruntled, hardcore ex-Taliban from Pakistan and Afghanistan’s dominant tribe, the Aryan Pashtuns, formed an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State in the remote, forested mountains of the country’s eastern Nangarhar Province. </p>
<p>From this rugged base, they carried out a <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/173847">deadly wave of massive suicide bombings</a> in Kabul and elsewhere. They also <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3192048/Sickening-atrocities-ISIS-fighters-Afghanistan-kill-ten-prisoners-accused-apostasy-using-bombs-buried-ground.html">publicly executed</a> tribesmen and even Taliban whom they accused of having insufficiently extreme Islamist beliefs.</p>
<p>At its peak, this group had about 3,000 fighters, but U.S. and Afghan National Army attacks, including one that used <a href="https://6abc.com/1873151/">the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb</a>, have whittled their numbers down <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/world/asia/ISIS-afghanistan-baghdadi.html">to about 300</a>. A top Afghan leader, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Abdullah">Abdullah Abdullah</a>, described them to me as “fanatics who are beyond the pale and are incapable of being negotiated with.”</p>
<h2>Egypt, the Bedouin desert stronghold</h2>
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<span class="caption">A woman photographs the scene after an Islamic State bombing of a Coptic Christian church in Egypt in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/graphic-content-an-egyptian-woman-uses-her-cell-phone-to-news-photo/666561350">STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Since 2014, a group of Bedouin in the northern Sinai Peninsula, angry with the secular policies of the Egyptian government and perceived economic discrimination, have conducted several attacks in the name of the Islamic State. The group <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34687990">blew up a Russian airliner</a> carrying more than 200 people, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/world/middleeast/egypt-coptic-christians-ambush.html">massacred dozens of Coptic Christians</a> in their churches, and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-muslims-killing-muslims-egypt-worst-terror-attack-history-721381">slaughtered more than 200 worshipers at a Sufi Muslim mosque</a> in the Sinai.</p>
<p>The group remains active despite <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-long-bloody-fight-against-the-islamic-state-in-sinai-is-going-nowhere/2017/09/15/768082a0-97fb-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_story.html">counter-terrorism operations by the Egyptian military</a>, sometimes with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/world/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-sinai-egypt.html">assistance from the Israeli Air Force</a>.</p>
<h2>The Philippines, the Pacific outpost</h2>
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<p>In 2016, several groups of local jihadist terrorists and kidnappers in the lawless jungles of the predominantly Muslim islands of Basilan and Mindanao swore an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State. </p>
<p>These groups’ most notable attack was their <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/731218264/the-philippines-marawi-city-remains-wrecked-nearly-2-years-after-isis-war">bloody conquest of the town of Marawi</a> in 2017. They burned Catholic churches and took over 1,700 people hostage before being driven back by a U.S.-backed army of 10,000 Filipino troops. The battle saw the most intense fighting in the nation since World War II and led to the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/11/philippines-battle-of-marawi-leaves-trail-of-death-and-destruction/">deaths of over 900 insurgents</a>. The Philippine IS franchise nonetheless remains active and most recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/asia/isis-philippines-church-bombing.html">blew up a Catholic church</a> in January 2019.</p>
<h2>Libya, the fallback capital</h2>
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<p>North Libyan jihadists swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015 and received assistance, training and financial support from IS commanders dispatched from Syria. The terrorists captured the north Libyan coastal town of Sirte, which they nicknamed “Raqqa by the Sea,” as a fallback capital should IS lose its core lands in Syria and Iraq. </p>
<p>In early 2015 Libyan IS militants <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/122903/Egypt/Politics-/Islamic-State-publishes-report-on-Coptic-Egyptian-.aspx">beheaded dozens of captured Coptic Christians</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-islamicstate-killings/islamic-state-shoots-and-beheads-30-ethiopian-christians-in-libya-video-idUSKBN0NA0IE20150420">Ethiopian Christians</a>. </p>
<p>After months of intense urban combat, U.S.-backed militias from the nearby town of Misurata retook Sirte and surrounding regions in late 2016. Islamic State fighters retreated into the remote southern desert, now their base for bold insurgent attacks, such as the April 2019 seizure of a town and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-islamic-state/instructions-from-headquarters-islamic-states-new-guerrilla-manual-idUSKCN1SU19J">public beheading of a local leader</a>. The Pentagon continues to conduct <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/world/africa/strikes-isis-libya.html">airstrikes on the group’s bases</a>.</p>
<p>There are other Islamic State affiliates in lands as far afield as Niger, Mali, Yemen and Somalia. Terror cells claiming affiliation with IS have carried out attacks in the name of the Islamic State in places like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Dagestan and Kashmir. </p>
<p>Among IS’s resilient supporters are diehards who see military setbacks not as permanent defeats, but as tests of their faith in a <a href="https://thedefensepost.com/2019/02/06/patience-islamic-state-new-focus-sabr/">trans-generational forever war</a> designed to bring about the apocalypse.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Glyn Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Islamic State group, often called ISIS, is not just based in Iraq and Syria. A scholar tracks where the group and its affiliates have spread around the globe.Brian Glyn Williams, Professor of Islamic History, UMass DartmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/753192017-07-12T10:06:45Z2017-07-12T10:06:45ZIslamic State and the appropriation of the Crusades – a medieval historian’s take<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177085/original/file-20170706-14235-1yy6d9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Crusader Castle decoration stone at the Arabic Fortress Citadel in Kerak, Jordan, built in 1142. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ancient-crusader-castle-decoration-stone-view-551570230?src=KXDuqQS-6sULD5_9sdEdCw-1-11">Bill Perry/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>So-called Islamic State (IS) continues to use its online propaganda magazine to appropriate the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades">Crusades</a> of the central middle ages. By blurring time periods and disparate historical phenomena, IS presents its readers with a narrative of continuous Western “crusader” aggression as a rallying cry for support and a justification for its actions. This “crusader” narrative has little basis in historical fact – but it does make for powerful propaganda.</p>
<p>It is hardly the first group to adopt and develop ideas on the many Latin Christian expeditions to the Middle East between the end of the 11th and 13th centuries. But the relentless frequency and nature of the group’s appropriation of the crusades, found among the pages of its Rumiyah and before that Dabiq magazines, are unprecedented, surprising and require a great deal of unpacking to understand its significance.</p>
<p>The obvious place to see this phenomenon is in the English language issue of Dabiq (4), entitled “The Failed Crusade”. The issue used a dramatic photoshopped image of IS’s black flag flying in front of St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican City on its front cover.</p>
<h2>Agents of ‘divine will’</h2>
<p>The issue contains a lengthy feature on the 7th-century prophecy on the Islamic conquest of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and Rome (Rumiyah) following the destruction of the “Roman Crusaders” at Dabiq in northern Syria.</p>
<p>The prophecy is alluded to on the front or first page of every edition of the magazines and – along with many other of the group’s <a href="https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5087/what-is-salafi-jihadism">Salafi-jihadist</a> readings of Qur’anic verses – is referenced many times thereafter. This element of the IS message is consistent and unmistakable: the group is the prophesised agent of divine will. IS will destroy the “crusaders” at Dabiq before moving on to conquer Constantinople and Rome and bring forth <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-islamic-state-actually-want-50865">the end of time</a>.</p>
<p>The group confers the most recent authority on its readings of Islamic scripture through the proclamations of its senior leaders. The discussion on the prophecy in this particular feature concludes with the supposed words of Taha Subhi Falaha – also known as Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami – an IS spokesman and its second-most senior leader who was killed by a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/abu-muhammad-al-adnani-the-voice-of-isis-is-dead">US airstrike</a> in August 2016. He is quoted as saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And so we promise you (crusaders) by Allah’s permission that this campaign will be your final campaign. It will be broken and defeated, just as all your previous campaigns were broken and defeated.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Romans and other ‘crusaders’</h2>
<p>The 7th-century “Romans” are obviously not the only “crusaders” to be found in the pages of these magazines. There are in fact many others. The Latin Christian military leaders of expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Europeans involved with the dismemberment of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml">Ottoman Empire</a> at the end of the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/">World War I</a>, and those who helped to create the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7381315.stm">state of Israel in 1948</a>, for example, are all termed crusaders.</p>
<p>The recent growth of violent Islamism in the region and elsewhere in the world is widely understood as a response to Western forms of modern imperialism. But IS has also proclaimed that, “the enmity of the kafir (unbeliever) is never based in an economic or political motive. It is only a matter of religion”. One issue even maintains that “the old colonialism was but a front for the crusaders, just as it is today a front for the Jews and Christians. Indeed, the ‘Caesar of Rome’ Bush has declared multiple times that, ‘It is a Crusade!’ So why do people lie and deny this?” </p>
<h2>A ‘crusader’ narrative</h2>
<p>Given the range of people termed crusaders in the magazines, who are these particular “crusaders”? Are they 7th-century Romans/Byzantines, Latin Christians of the central middle ages, Europeans of the colonial era and those somehow involved in the creation of the state of Israel, or any person of any nation involved directly or indirectly in fighting IS? What is the nature of this supposed crusade?</p>
<p>The blurring of such unrelated phenomena is, of course, intentional. It presents its readers with an abridged, vague and yet apparently familiar narrative of “crusader” (read Western imperialist and anti-Islamic) aggression in the region since the 7th-century. Indeed, IS maintain that the struggle against the modern “crusaders” has not stopped since “Allah’s messenger and his noble companions commenced it”. The group proclaims merely to represent Islam “today in these current rounds of … war” against its various enemies – “at the head of which are the crusader nations of the West”. The notion that a defensive jihad against the “crusader” aggressor has been fought since the 7th-century is said to oblige IS supporters to make “preparations for the current battle against the crusader” enemies while being assured that the group will go on to conquer Istanbul and Rome.</p>
<p>This narrative of continuous “crusader” aggression in the region has little basis in historical fact but remains central to the group’s message and deserves to be better understood. In the UK alone, IS and its supporters recently called for and celebrated the killing of <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/17-05-23-Approximately-100-Crusaders-Killed-and-Wounded-by-Explosive-Devices-Detonated-in-Manchester.jpg">“crusaders”</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4570880/ISIS-terrorists-praise-London-Bridge-attackers.html">“Crusading Brits”</a> twice in as many weeks. The group recognises that people respond to the notion of Western powers engaging again in the “crusades”. And with its caliphate <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/26/isis-exodus-foreign-fighters-caliphate-crumbles">now crumbling</a> at the hands of its enemies, the group will mutate and its appropriation of the crusades will only increase as it seeks support for its actions in the UK and elsewhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason T Roche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Islamic State propaganda uses a narrative of centuries-old ‘crusader’ aggression.Jason T Roche, Lecturer in Medieval History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782172017-05-24T02:27:14Z2017-05-24T02:27:14ZThe Islamic State group has weaponized children<p>In claiming responsibility for the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/23/manchester-arena-attack-22-killed-suicide-bomber-ariana-grande/">attack in Manchester</a> at an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, the Islamic State group has sunk to a new low.</p>
<p>We have seen terrorists target venues where young people congregate before – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/westgate-mall-attacks">shopping malls</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/02/israel1">discos</a> and schools. If IS was indeed involved, they have now deliberately targeted young children, tweens and teens and their parents in a horrific attack that has killed 22 as of this writing and wounded 59. The attacker used a nail bomb to maximize the carnage.</p>
<p>Through my research I have gained access to the Islamic State’s encrypted online propaganda platform, a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-34478695/islamic-state-prioritise-telegram-app-to-spread-propaganda">channel on the Telegram app</a>, where last night in the aftermath of the attack, IS supporters disseminated images of dead children from Mosul, saying, “The West’s children would not be safe if their (children) were not.”</p>
<p>This echoed a sentiment I heard many years ago when writing my book “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dying-to-kill/9780231133203">Dying to Kill</a>” about suicide attackers. In August 2001, a Jordanian woman named Ahlam al Tamimi researched a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem to select a time in which the maximum number of families were present. In her attack on the restaurant, 15 people were killed, including seven children and a pregnant woman. Palestinians justified the attack, saying: “If our children are not sacrosanct, neither are theirs.”</p>
<p>As shocking as this attack was, it follows a tradition in which terrorists target children or venues specifically to maximize killing the greatest number of young people.</p>
<h2>Children in IS propaganda</h2>
<p>The IS propaganda machine uses graphic images of dead children to whip up their base and motivate people from around the world to join their so-called caliphate. These images of children are intended to persuade people that moving to the IS strongholds of Raqqa, Syria or Mosul, Iraq is the only way to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of children.</p>
<p>During the course of research for my forthcoming book, “Small Arms: Children and Terror,” I have found that the group has also increasingly been using children as terrorist operatives, on the battlefield in mixed commando units they call Inghimasi, as propaganda disseminators, building munitions and, since December 2014, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-islamic-state-recruits-and-coerces-children-64285">suicide bombers</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170677/original/file-20170523-5743-1w4qfrq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Akram Rasho Khalaf, 10, was captured at the age of 7, trained and sold into servitude by Islamic State militants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to a report on children and armed conflict, “In rural Aleppo, Dayr al-Zawr and rural Raqqa, the U.N. found <a href="https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/countries-caac/syria/">military training</a> of at least 124 boys between 10 and 15 years of age. The use of children as child executioners was reported and appeared in video footage in Palmyra and specific executions.”</p>
<p>IS has used <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-Threat/WATCH-New-ISIS-video-shows-child-solider-blowing-up-four-alleged-spies-444570">children as young as four</a> to execute prisoners using a remote control, and recently disseminated a video of a four-year-old <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4099842/Sickening-new-ISIS-video-shows-toddler-shooting-prisoner-dead-ball-pool-abandoned-children-s-PLAYGROUND.html">shooting a prisoner</a> in the head.</p>
<p>One cannot emphasize enough that there is no childhood in IS. The terrorists do not recognize the innocence of the victims at the Ariana Grande concert. The terrorists likewise do not subscribe to the notion that children have, need or deserve an idyllic period of their life in which they are to be protected and cherished.</p>
<p>In fact, Ali Akhbar Mahdi, a professor of religion at California State University at Northridge, argues that the word “teen” has no equivalent <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Teen_Life_in_the_Middle_East.html?id=pxeoAAAAIAAJ">in Middle Eastern languages</a>. Instead, they refer to pre-puberty, pre-youth or pre-adult. In most contexts, childhood is simply understood to be a period of time characterized by the absence of reason (‘aql). </p>
<h2>Killing children: New norm</h2>
<p>Terrorist targeting of children has been more common than most people realize. </p>
<p>For example, from Sept. 1-3, 2004, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dying-to-kill/9780231133203">Chechen terrorists</a> held School Number One in Beslan, Russia hostage for three days. There were 1,100 hostages in the school, including 777 children. By the end of the crisis, 384 people were dead, among them the terrorists and more than 350 civilians.</p>
<p>This is not exclusively a Jihadi tactic. The Oklahoma City bombing of the FBI Murrah building <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/03/us/terror-oklahoma-children-tender-memories-day-care-center-are-all-that-remain.html">included a day care center</a>. “Of the 21 children who were inside the day-care center on the morning of April 19, the morning of the bombing, 15 died, including all four of the infants by the window.” </p>
<p>While IS has opportunistically taken credit for the attack, we do not yet have evidence to determine whether it was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/london-attack-terrorism-expert-explains-three-threats-of-jihadism-in-the-west-75092">directed or inspired</a> attack. We do know, however, that the terrorist group has manipulated, brainwashed and exploited children for their own purposes and will continue to do so.</p>
<p>The average age for IS suicide bombers and executioners is skewing younger and younger, and they appear to be normalizing the use of children across its affiliates. For example, the terrorist group <a href="http://cco.ndu.edu/Publications/PRISM/PRISM-volume-6-no1/Article/685093/women-as-symbols-and-swords-in-boko-harams-terror">Boko Haram has used children</a> against soft targets, civilians and marketplaces. </p>
<p>IS has gone from using children to inspire adults, to manipulating children and their parents to fight alongside adults, to targeting children instead of adults. They do not consider what they have done to be truly evil, although we know it to be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Bloom receives funding from the Minerva Research initiative N0000 14-16-12693 and the office of naval research. All opinions are exclusively those of the author and do not represent the Department of Defense or the Navy.</span></em></p>To the terrorist, children have become but a means to an end. Weapon and target.Mia M. Bloom, Professor of Communication, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642852016-08-23T20:28:02Z2016-08-23T20:28:02ZHow the Islamic State recruits and coerces children<p>This week the world once again witnessed an Islamic State’s use of at least one child bomber, perhaps two.</p>
<p>A child between the ages of 12 and 14 was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/22/asia/turkey-gaziantep-blast/index.html">reportedly</a> the culprit behind a suicide attack – blowing up the wedding of Besna and Nurettin Akdogan in Gaziantep, Turkey and killing 54 people on Aug. 20. </p>
<p>Although now the Turkish government is not certain whether it was a child or an adult, it’s certainly not the only time children have been used by terrorist networks to perpetrate attacks. The following day, a child was <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/iraqi-police-apprehend-boy-suicide-bomber-city-kirkuk-41565503">caught</a> before he could detonate a suicide bomb at a Shi’a school in Kirkuk, Iraq.</p>
<p>During the course of research for our book, “Small Arms: Children and Terror,” <a href="http://www.terroristbehavior.com/bio/">John Horgan</a> and I have learned how IS socializes children into their terrorist network. We have also had the opportunity to meet with children who have been rescued from terrorist groups in Pakistan.</p>
<p>There are important differences in how groups engage children in militant activities. Differences between children in terrorist groups and child soldiers include how children are recruited and what role the parents and community play in recruitment. Understanding these differences helps us know how best to approach treating the children’s trauma, and figure out which children can be rehabilitated and which ones might be vulnerable for recidivism as adults.</p>
<h2>Access to youth</h2>
<p>We have been <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/this-is-how-the-islamic-state-manufactures-child-militants">researching</a> IS Cubs of the Caliphate, so called “Ashbal al Khilafah,” for two years, tracking how IS is grooming the next generation of fighters.
Since Syria fell apart, IS has assumed de-facto <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2014/08/30/ISIS-begins-implementing-its-Islamic-curriculum-in-schools-.html">control over</a> schools and mosques. Though many of the original Syrian schoolteachers remain, they must now teach an IS-controlled curriculum to gender-segregated pupils. Parents continue to send their children to school, although coercion is always present. Failure to do so might place the entire family at risk. IS will punish such families by taking their homes and refusing to provide food and protection.</p>
<p>This is where children systematically learn IS ideology. The school curriculum is little more than indoctrination, but it brings children closer to each other to create a band-of-brothers effect, and brings the children to the attention of IS personnel who talent-scout for children exhibiting early potential for “Cub” status in IS’ dedicated training camps. Through a socialization and selection process, IS implies that entry into the Cubs of the Caliphate is a rare commodity and something desirable for each child. By limiting access, IS creates a competition.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that the children share the radical views of the adults. Rather, they have been manipulated, brainwashed or coerced. It is a trend that IS started in January 2014 and has only increased exponentially. Our experiences in Swat Valley, Pakistan demonstrate that children barely understand the IS ideology. At most, children parrot what they have heard from the adults, but are not radicalized in any real sense.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135196/original/image-20160823-30212-iawp7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A boy plays with a wheel at a camp for internally displaced people in Syria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ease of access to children appears to be a key reason why there were so many child soldiers in the 1990s. Whether militias exploited orphans, street children or refugees living in camps for internally displaced persons, a common theme was that children who lacked adult protection and supervision were especially at risk. Some militias <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4006694?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">transition</a> street children, who were previously organized into gangs, into military units. The ease with which militia groups access camps in search of child recruits exacerbates <a href="https://www.fordinstitute.pitt.edu/Portals/0/Pub_PDF/NoPlacetoHide.pdf">the problem</a>. </p>
<p>Evidence from Sri Lanka <a href="https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=35979">suggests</a> recruiters target schools. During the course of my field research in 2002, mothers in the areas under control of armed rebels, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, confided in me that they had <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698240308402526">started to homeschool</a> their children for fear that they would be recruited during the day. </p>
<p>The 15-year-old bomber who was caught with explosives in Iraq <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/22/watch-moment-isil-suicide-bomber-in-football-shirt-aged-12-or-13/">this week</a> had been in an IDP camp for a week when he was sent to blow up a Shi’a school. When stopped for questioning by the police, the child froze in fear and quickly surrendered. Experience <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/world/asia/pakistan-anti-taliban/">shows</a> that children who are coerced will often allow themselves to get caught, since they were coerced in the first place. </p>
<p>Children are the ultimate weapon of <a href="http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/scott-resistance/">the weak</a>. They cannot back out, but they also don’t want to carry out the mission. </p>
<h2>Child soldiers vs. children in terrorist movements</h2>
<p>It is not just terrorist groups and militias that exploit children. </p>
<p>Paramilitaries and rebel groups, and 10 national governments, recruit or conscript youth under 18 to their national armies, including Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the United Kingdom and Yemen.</p>
<p>The army in Myanmar <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/45674/2007_Child_Recruitment.pdf">recruits children</a> en masse. The reason is that the military is required to fill recruitment quotas and recruiters are rewarded accordingly. Recruiters have an <a href="http://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/ongoing-underage-recruitment-and-use-myanmar-military-and-non-state-armed-groups">incentive</a> to recruit the maximum number of children and youth possible. If adults are unwilling to join the army, children can and will be picked up, threatened and coerced to “volunteer.” The children are instructed to lie and claim that they are 18 years old.</p>
<p>The Maoists in Nepal and groups in Palestine <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/nepal0207/4.htm">recruit children</a> into cultural organizations well before the age of 15. The Maoists go so far as to abduct children for a few weeks to expose the children to the group’s propaganda and then let them go.</p>
<p>As with any controversial issue, data collection is complicated. The United Nations does not systematically break down the number of militarized children, which is purported to be in the hundreds of thousands, nor do they explicitly explain their methodology for arriving at that number, <a href="https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/">saying instead</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>hundreds of thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. Many children are abducted and beaten into submission, others join military groups to escape poverty, to defend their communities, out of a feeling of revenge or for other reasons.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Volunteering or coerced?</h2>
<p>The willingness of parents to provide extremist organizations access to their children is different from children who are forcibly conscripted as “child soldiers.” Parental “consent” is further complicated by the exigencies of war and the coercive environment in which the family lives. At times, parents will allow violent extremists access to their children not because they subscribe to the ideology, but because they might have no choice if they are to survive. </p>
<p>At other times, parents have been enthusiastic supporters of the movement and encourage and laud their children’s involvement. Such coercion was evident among the parents in the Swat Valley in Pakistan where the Pakistani Taliban went door to door and demanded exorbitant financial payments from residents. Those unable to pay – which comprised most people – then were <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/46c190b40.pdf">required</a> to provide one of their children.</p>
<p>Some programs to treat children in militant organizations exist, such as Sabaoon in Pakistan. In Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation programs in Africa and in Pakistan, a child’s family is able to play a positive role in his or her <a href="http://www.usip.org/publications/2015/09/14/deradicalization-programming-in-pakistan">reintegration</a> into society. </p>
<p>With IS, it is often the family that encourages and exposes the children to the violence in the first place, especially among the children of foreign fighters. The children conceivably may need to be separated from their family – making normalization all the more challenging. The number of children who have been exposed to violence in the so-called Islamic State requires efforts be taken to address the trauma, and determine whether these children are victims or perpetrators.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was supported by a Minerva Research Initiative Grant # N000014-16-1-2693 “Preventing the Next Generation: Mapping the Pathways of Children’s Mobilization Into Violent Extremist Organizations” under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research or the U.S. Government.</span></em></p>A young boy is strapped with explosives and sent to detonate himself and those around him at a school. An expert on terrorism explains how and why children become embroiled in militant conflicts.Mia M. Bloom, Professor of Communication, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/541582016-03-11T04:40:48Z2016-03-11T04:40:48ZHow can we understand the origins of Islamic State?<p>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</p>
<p>Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins. How do we account for forces and events that <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">paved the way for Islamic State’s emergence</a>? </p>
<p>Do the answers lie in the 20th century, which saw the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of new nations in its wake and their struggle for independence as well as articulation of national identities? Is it hidden in the debris of the Gulf and the Iraq Wars? Or do we have to look deeper in history – to the fundamental tenets of Islam, the Crusades, or the so-called Assassins of the 11th to 13th centuries?</p>
<p>Which of these – if any – can be said to have created the conditions necessary for the rise of Islamic State? In the article <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">kicking off our series on the genesis of the group</a>, professor of modern Middle Eastern history James Gelvin <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-islamic-state-where-does-it-come-from-and-what-does-it-want-52155">cautions against easy answers</a>. Just because one event followed another, he says, doesn’t mean it was also caused by it. </p>
<p>It is far better to look at the interplay of historical and social forces, as well as recognising that outfits such as Islamic State often cherry-pick ideas to justify their beliefs and behaviours. </p>
<p>Heeding his advice, <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">our series on understanding Islamic State</a> attempts, in a dispassionate way, to catalogue many of the forces and events that can arguably have played a part in creating the conditions necessary for these jihadists to emerge. We have tried to spread the net wide, but make no claim to being comprehensive or having the final word on Islamic State’s origins.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-islamic-state-where-does-it-come-from-and-what-does-it-want-52155">Gelvin’s broad introduction to the group</a> and warnings about the misuse of history, we turn to Islam and its theology.</p>
<p>Historian of Islamic thought Harith Bin Ramli explains how Islamic State <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-lays-claim-to-muslim-theological-tradition-and-turns-it-on-its-head-53225">fits – or doesn’t – in Muslim theological tradition</a>, before religious studies scholar Aaron Hughes asks <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-islamic-state-is-based-on-religion-why-is-it-so-violent-52070">why, given the jihadist group is based on religion, is it so violent?</a> </p>
<p>In a further contribution, Hughes <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-islam-so-different-in-different-countries-51804">discusses the plurality at the core of Islam</a>, accounting for why the religion is so different in different countries.</p>
<p>Next, we turn to medieval history, as both the Crusades and the so-called cult of Assassins have been linked to Islamic State. </p>
<p>Farhad Daftary <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-and-the-assassins-reviving-fanciful-tales-of-the-medieval-orient-53873">discusses the Nizari Ismailis</a> – romanticised as Assassins by the Crusaders and in The Travels of Marco Polo – who killed, among others, two early caliphs. Could they really be thought of as an earlier incarnation of the most vicious terrorists in recent history?</p>
<p>Professor of religious studies Carole Cusack <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-crusades-lead-to-islamic-state-54478">considers the Crusades themselves</a>, and what contribution they could have had in Islamic State’s origins.</p>
<p>Leaping to the 20th century, we start looking at the more proximate causes of the group’s rise.</p>
<p>First, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-post-colonial-caliphate-islamic-state-and-the-memory-of-sykes-picot-52655">a look at the fateful Sykes-Picot agreement</a>, which craved up the Middle East into English and French spheres of influence, and was denounced by Islamic State in the first video it released. James Renton argues the group’s self-declared political aim in establishing its caliphate speaks directly to the deal, and is an attempt at post-colonial emancipation.</p>
<p>Addressing an issue raised in the comments to the articles in the series, Harith Bin Ramli <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-political-crises-of-the-modern-muslim-world-created-the-climate-for-islamic-state-54644">considers the long 20th century</a> endured by the Middle East. He explains how the crisis of political authority in the Muslim world between the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the 1991 Gulf War contributed to Islamic State’s rise.</p>
<p>The series concludes with a look at more proximate events – <a href="https://theconversation.com/out-of-the-ashes-of-afghanistan-and-iraq-the-rise-and-rise-of-islamic-state-55437">the role of the recent wars in the region and their aftermath</a>. Greg Barton points out that to understand Islamic State, we need to look not just at the Middle East itself but also at the complicated role the West has historically played in it. </p>
<p><strong><em><a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a>: Understanding Islamic State</em></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54158/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Our series on understanding Islamic State attempts to catalogue many of the forces and events that can arguably have played a part in creating the conditions necessary for these jihadists to emerge.Reema Rattan, Global Commissioning EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554372016-03-02T19:05:50Z2016-03-02T19:05:50ZOut of the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq: the rise and rise of Islamic State<p><em>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</em></p>
<p><em>Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? In the final article of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series examining this question</a>, Greg Barton shows the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Despite precious little certainty in the “what ifs” of history, it’s clear the rise of Islamic State (IS) wouldn’t have been possible without the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Without these Western interventions, al-Qaeda would never have gained the foothold it did, and IS would not have emerged to take charge of northern Iraq.</p>
<p>Whether or not the Arab Spring, and the consequent civil war in Syria, would still have occurred is much less clear. </p>
<p>But even if war hadn’t broken out in Syria, it’s unlikely an al-Qaeda spin-off such as IS would have become such a decisive actor without launching an insurgency in Iraq. For an opportunistic infection to take hold so comprehensively, as IS clearly has, requires a severely weakened body politic and a profoundly compromised immune system. </p>
<p>Such were the conditions in Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria from 2010 to 2015 and in conflict-riven Somalia after the fall of the Barre regime in 1991. And it was so in Afghanistan for the four decades after conflict broke out in 1978 and in Pakistan after General Zia-ul-Haq declared martial law in 1977. </p>
<p>Sadly, but even more clearly, such are the circumstances in Iraq and Syria today. And that’s the reason <a href="http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf">around 80% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks</a> in recent years have occurred in five of the six countries discussed here, where such conditions still prevail.</p>
<h2>An unique opportunity</h2>
<p>The myth of modern international terrorist movements, and particularly of al-Qaeda and its outgrowths such as IS (which really is a third-generation al-Qaeda movement), is that they’re inherently potent and have a natural power of attraction. </p>
<p>The reality is that while modern terrorist groups can and do operate all around the globe to the point where no country can consider itself completely safe, they can only build a base when local issues attract on-the-ground support. </p>
<p>Consider al-Qaeda, which is in the business of global struggle. It wants to unite a transnational <em>ummah</em> to take on far-off enemies. But it has only ever really enjoyed substantial success when it has happened across conducive local circumstances. </p>
<p>The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s provided an opportunity uniquely suited to the rise of al-Qaeda and associated movements. It provided plausible justification for a defensive jihad – a just war – that garnered broad international support and allowed the group to coalesce in 1989 out of the Arab fighters who had rallied to support the Afghans in their fight against the Soviets. </p>
<p>Further opportunities emerged in the Northern Caucasus, where local ethno-national grievances were eventually transformed into the basis for a more global struggle. </p>
<p>The declaration of independence by Chechnya in 1991 led to all-out war with the Soviet military between 1994 and 1996, when tens of thousands were killed. After a short, uneasy peace, a decade-long second civil war started in 1999 following the invasion of neighbouring Dagestan by the International Islamic Brigade. </p>
<p>The second civil war began with an intense campaign to seize control of the Chechen capital, Grozny. But it became dominated by years of fighting jihadi and other insurgents in the Caucasus mountains and dealing with related terrorist attacks in Russia. </p>
<p>In Nigeria and Somalia, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab now share many of the key attributes of al-Qaeda, with whom they have forged nascent links. But they too emerged primarily because of the failure of governance and the persistence of deep-seated local grievances.</p>
<p>Even in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda struggled to transform itself into a convincing champion of local interests in the 1990s. After becoming increasingly isolated following the September 11 attacks on the US, it failed to gain support from the Afghan Taliban for its global struggle.</p>
<p>But something new happened in Iraq beginning in 2003. The Jordanian street thug <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-short-violent-life-of-abu-musab-al-zarqawi/304983/">Musab al-Zarqawi</a> correctly intuited that the impending Western invasion and occupation of Iraq would provide the perfect conditions for the emergence of insurgencies. </p>
<p>Al-Zarqawi positioned himself in Iraq ahead of the invasion and deftly rode a wave of anger and despair to initiate and grow an insurgency that in time came to dominate the broken nation. </p>
<p>Initially, al-Zarqawi was only one of many insurgent leaders intent on destabilising Iraq. But, in October 2004, after years of uneasy relations with the al-Qaeda leader during two tours in Afghanistan, he finally yielded to Osama bin Laden’s request that he swear on oath of loyalty (<em>bayat</em>) to him. And so al-Zarqawi’s notorious network of insurgents became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). </p>
<h2>From the ashes</h2>
<p>Iraq’s de-Ba'athification process of May 2003 to June 2004, during which senior technocrats and military officers linked to the Ba'ath party (the vehicle of the Saddam Hussein regime) were removed from office, set the stage for many to join counter-occupation insurgent groups – including AQI.</p>
<p>Without the sacking of a large portion of Iraq’s military and security leaders, its technocrats and productive middle-class professionals, it’s not clear whether this group would have come to dominate so comprehensively. These alienated Sunni professionals gave AQI, as well as IS, much of its core military and strategic competency.</p>
<p>But even with the windfall opportunity presented to al-Zarqawi by the wilful frustration of Sunni interests by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki">Nouri al-Maliki’s</a> Shia-dominated government from 2006 to 2014, which deprived them of any immediate hope for the future and confidence in protecting their families and communities, AQI was almost totally destroyed after the Sunni awakening began in 2006. </p>
<p>The Sunni awakening forces, or “Sons of Iraq”, began with tribal leaders in Anbar province forming an alliance with the US military. For almost three years, tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen were paid directly to fight AQI, but the Maliki government refused to incorporate them into the regular Iraqi Security Force. And, after October 2008 – when the US military handed over management of these forces – he refused to support them.</p>
<p>The death of al-Zarqawi in June 2006 contributed to the profound weakening of the strongest of all post-invasion insurgent groups. AQI’s force strength was reduced to several hundred fighters and it lost the capacity to dominate the insurgency.</p>
<p>Then, in 2010 and 2011, circumstances combined to blow oxygen onto the smouldering coals. </p>
<p>In 2010, the greatly underestimated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a local Iraqi cleric with serious religious scholarly credentials, took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</p>
<p>Elements of the strategy went by the name “breaking the walls”. In the 12 months to July 2013, this entailed the movement literally breaking down the prison walls in compounds around Baghdad that held hundreds of hardcore al-Qaeda fighters. </p>
<p>Islamic State, as the group now called itself, also benefited from the inflow of former Iraqi intelligence officers and senior military leaders. This had begun with de-Ba'athification in 2003 and continued after the collapse of the Sunni awakening and the increasingly overt sectarianism of the Maliki government. </p>
<p>Together, they developed tactics based on vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and the strategic use of suicide bombers. These were deployed not in the passionate but often undirected fashion of al-Qaeda but much more like smart bombs in the hands of a modern army. </p>
<p>And the US military withdrawal from Iraq in late 2011, well telegraphed ahead of time, provided an excellent opportunity for the struggling insurgency to rebuild. As did the outbreak of civil war in Syria.</p>
<h2>A helping hand</h2>
<p>Al-Baghdadi initially dispatched his trusted Syrian lieutenant, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, to form a separate organisation in Syria: the al-Nusra front. </p>
<p>Jabhat al-Nusra quickly established itself in northern Syria. But when al-Julani refused to fold his organisation in under his command, al-Baghdadi rebranded AQI (or Islamic State in Iraq) Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL).</p>
<p>Then, a series of events turned IS from an insurgency employing terrorist methods to becoming a nascent rogue state. These included: the occupation of Raqqa on the Syrian Euphrates in December 2013; the taking of Ramadi a month later; consolidation of IS control throughout Iraq’s western Anbar province; and, finally, a sudden surge down the river Tigris in June 2014 that took Mosul and most of the towns and cities along the river north of Baghdad within less than a week.</p>
<p>IS’s declaration of the caliphate on June 29, 2014, was a watershed moment, which is only now being properly understood. </p>
<p>In its ground operations, including the governing of aggrieved Sunni communities, IS moved well beyond being simply a terrorist movement. It came to function as a rogue state ruling over around 5 million people in the northern cities of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and defending its territory through conventional military means.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Furqan Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, it skilfully exploited the internet and social media in ways the old al-Qaeda could not do – and that its second-generation offshoot, al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had only partially achieved. </p>
<p>This allowed IS to draw in tens of thousands of foreign fighters. Most came from the Middle East and Northern Africa, but as many as 5,000 came from Europe, with thousands more from the Caucasus and Asia. </p>
<p>Unlike the case in Afghanistan in the 1980s, these foreign fighters have played a key role in providing sufficient strength to take and hold territory while also building a global network of support.</p>
<p>But without the perfect-storm conditions of post-invasion insurgency, this most potent expression of al-Qaedaism yet would never have risen to dominate both the region and the world in the way that it does. </p>
<p>Even in its wildest dreams, al-Qaeda could never have imagined that Western miscalculations post-9/11 could have led to such foolhardy engagements – not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq. </p>
<p>Were it not for these miscalculations, 9/11 might well have precipitated the decline of al-Qaeda. Instead, with our help, it spawned a global jihadi movement with a territorial base far more powerful than al-Qaeda ever had.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the final article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Barton is co-director of the Australian Intervention Support Hub, a CVE capacity-building initiative supported by the Australian government and based at the ANU and Deakin University. He previously led an ARC Linkage grant project researching radicalisation and disengagement from violent extremism. He is currently a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute.</span></em></p>The final article of our series on the historical roots of Islamic State examines the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; Co-Director, Australian Intervention Support Hub, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/546442016-03-01T19:05:58Z2016-03-01T19:05:58ZHow the political crises of the modern Muslim world created the climate for Islamic State<p><em>How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">Our series on the jihadist group’s origins</a> tries to address this question by looking at the interplay of historical and social forces that led to its advent.</em></p>
<p><em>In the penultimate article of the series, Harith Bin Ramli traces the Muslim world’s growing disaffection with its rulers through the 20th century and how it created the climate for both the genesis of Islamic State and its continuing success in recruiting followers.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Islamic State (IS) declared its re-establishment of the caliphate on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/29/isis-iraq-caliphate-delcaration-war">June 29, 2014</a>, almost exactly 100 years after the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-franz-ferdinand-assassinated">was assassinated</a>. Ferdinand’s death set off a series of events that would lead to the first world war and the fall of three great multinational world empires: the Austro-Hungarian (1867-1918), the Russian (1721-1917) and the Ottoman (1299-1922). </p>
<p>That IS’s leadership chose to declare its caliphate so close to the anniversary of Ferdinand’s assassination may not entirely <a href="http://www.jonathanhtodd.com/2014/06/27/6-degrees-geopolitcal-separation-franz-ferdinand-isis/">be a coincidence</a>. In a sense, the two events are connected. </p>
<p>Ferdinand’s assassination and the events it brought about (culminating in the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles">1919 Treaty of Versailles</a>) symbolised the <a href="http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/2/463.full">final triumph of a new idea</a> of <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/">sovereignty</a>. This modern conception was based on the popular will of a nation, rather than on noble lineage. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113015/original/image-20160226-26719-1crjex5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated on June 28, 1914.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria_-_b%26w.jpg">Carl Pietzner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In declaring the resurrection of a medieval political institution almost exactly 100 years later, IS was announcing its explicit rejection of the modern international system based on that very idea of sovereignty. </p>
<h2>Early secularisation</h2>
<p>Other than the Ottoman Sultanate’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2014-11-19/myth-caliphate">very late and disputed claim</a> to the title, no attempt has been made to re-establish a caliphate since the fall of the Abbasid dynasty at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. In other words, Sunni Islam has carried on for hundreds of years since the 13th century without the need for a central political figurehead. </p>
<p>If we go further back in history, it seems that <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100141493">Sunni political theory</a> had already anticipated this problem. </p>
<p>The Abbasid caliphs began to lose power from the mid-ninth century, effectively becoming puppets of various warlords by the tenth. And the caliphate underwent a serious process of decentralisation at the same time. </p>
<p><a href="http://ilsp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hurvitz.pdf">Key contemporary texts on statecraft</a>, such as Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi’s (952-1058) Ordinances of Government (<em>al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya</em>), described the caliph as the necessary symbolic figurehead providing constitutional legitimacy for the real rulers – emirs or sultans – whose power was based on military might. </p>
<p>As in the case of the <a href="http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/buyids">Shi'i Buyid dynasty (934-1048)</a>, these rulers didn’t even have to be Sunni. And they were often expected to provide legislation based on practical and functional, rather than religious, considerations. </p>
<p>The Muslim world, then, had arguably already experienced secularisation of sorts before the modern age. Or, at the very least, it had for quite some time existed within a political system that balanced power between religious and worldly interests. </p>
<p>And when the caliphate came to an end in the 13th century, both the institutions of kingship and the religious courts (run by the scholar-jurists) were able to carry on functioning without difficulty.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113020/original/image-20160226-26673-dwg0r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWilayah_Abbasiyyah_semasa_khalifah_Harun_al-Rashid.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was the 19th-century Muslim revivalist and anti-colonial movement known as <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e1819?_hi=3&_pos=1">Pan-Islamism</a> that was responsible for reviving the Ottoman claim to the caliphate. The idea was revived again briefly in early 20th-century British India as the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Khilafat-movement">anti-colonial Khilafat movement</a>. </p>
<p>But anti-colonial efforts after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, even those primarily based on religious beliefs, have rarely called for a return of the caliphate. </p>
<p>If anything, successors of Pan-Islamism, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have generally worked within the framework of nation states. Putting aside doubts about their actual ability to commit to democracy and secularism, such movements have generally envisioned an Islamic state along more modern lines, with room for political participation and elections.</p>
<h2>Modern utopias and old dynasties</h2>
<p>So why evoke the caliphate in the first place? The simple answer is that it has never been completely dismissed as an option. </p>
<p>In Sunni law and political theology, once <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e989?_hi=0&_pos=3182">consensus</a> over an issue has been reached, it is hard for later generations to go against it. This was why Egyptian scholar <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/apr/09/religion-islam-secularism-egypt">Ali Abd al-Raziq</a> was removed from his post at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_University">Al-Azhar University</a> and attacked for introducing a deviant interpretation after he wrote an argument for a secular interpretation of the caliphate in 1925.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113021/original/image-20160226-26697-17h3h4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thinkers such as Abul Ala Mawdudi tried to place a revived caliphate within some type of democratic framework.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAbul_ala_maududi.jpg">DiLeeF via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-inevitable-caliphate/">many</a> <a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13267/new-texts-out-now_madawi-al-rasheed-carool-kersten">recent</a> <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/recalling-the-caliphate/">studies</a> show, the idea of the caliphate and its revival has had a certain utopian appeal for a wide spectrum of modern Muslim thinkers. And not just those with authoritarian or militant inclinations. </p>
<p>Some leading Muslim revivalists such as <a href="http://muhammad-asad.com/Principles-State-Government-Islam.pdf">Muhammad Asad (1900-1992)</a> and <a href="http://www.meforum.org/151/islams-democratic-essence">Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979)</a>, for example, have tried to place a revived caliphate within some type of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/421254/Democracy_in_Islam_The_Views_of_Several_Modern_Muslim_Scholars">democratic framework</a>.</p>
<p>But, in practice, the dominant tendency here too has really been to seek the liberation or revival of Muslim societies within the nation-state framework. </p>
<p>If anything, national aspirations and the desire to modernise society existed before the formation of the new political order after the first world war. The majority of the populations of Muslim lands welcomed the fall of the three empires, or at least didn’t feel very strongly about the survival of traditional ruling dynasties. </p>
<p>And, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, most dynasties that stayed in power did so by reinventing their states along modern, mainly secular, models. </p>
<p>But this did not always succeed. The waves of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/7/newsid_3074000/3074069.stm">revolutions</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/1/newsid_3911000/3911587.stm">military coups</a> that swept the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world throughout the 1950s and 1960s amply illustrate that popular sentiment identified traditional dynasties with the continuing influence of colonial powers. </p>
<p>In Egypt, under the Muhammad Ali dynasty (1805-1952), for example, the control of the then-French Canal epitomised the interdependent relationship between the dynasty and Western power. This was why <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/200852517252821627.html">Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970)</a> made great efforts to regain it in the name of Egyptian sovereignty when he became the country’s second president in 1956.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113027/original/image-20160226-26679-ul3rf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inauguration of the Suez Canal at Port Said, Egypt, in 1869.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASuezkanal1869.jpg">Public domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dissolving political legitimacy</h2>
<p>Either way, the success of the new Muslim nation states could be said to be predicated on two major expectations. The first was improvement of citizens’ lives – not only in terms of material progress, but also the benefits of freedom and the ability to represent the popular will through participatory politics. </p>
<p>The second was the ability of Muslim nations to unite against outside interference and commit to the liberation of Palestine. On both counts, the latter half of the 20th century witnessed abysmal failures and an increasing sense of frustration with Muslim leaders. </p>
<p>In many places, populism eventually gave way to authoritarianism. And the loss of further lands to Israel in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War">1967 Six-Day War</a> revealed the inherent weakness and lack of unity among the new Muslim nations.</p>
<p>Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/6/newsid_2514000/2514317.stm">1973 Yom Kippur War</a> was widely seen as an act of betrayal, for breaking ranks in what should have been a united front. His decision to do so despite lacking popular support in Egypt only revealed the extent to which the country had evolved into a dictatorship. </p>
<p>Sadat’s consequent <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/6/newsid_2515000/2515841.stm">assassination</a> at the hands of a small radical splinter group of religious militants acted as a warning to other Muslim leaders. Now they couldn’t simply ignore or lock away religious critics, even if the majority of the population still subscribed to the secular nation-state model. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113031/original/image-20160226-26697-q9jcf8.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel was widely seen as an act of betrayal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APresident_Anwar_Sadat_of_Egypt_arrives_in_the_United_States.JPEG">US Department of Defence Visual information via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This idea was reinforced by Iran’s <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution-of-1978-1979">1979 Islamic Revolution</a>, as well as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure">failed religious revolution</a> in the holy city of Mecca the same year. </p>
<p>Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Muslim leaders around the world increasingly made compromises with religious reactionary forces, allowing them to expand influence in the public sphere. In many cases, these leaders increasingly adopted religious rhetoric themselves.</p>
<p>Showing support for fellow Muslims in the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1987) or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada">First Palestinian Intifada</a> provided an opportunity to manage the threat of religious radicalism. National leaders probably also saw this as an effective way to deflect attention from the authoritarian nature of many Muslim states. </p>
<p>And, as demonstrated by <a href="https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/did-saddam-hussein-become-a-religious-believer/">Saddam Hussain’s turn to religious propaganda</a> after the 1990-91 Gulf War, it could be used as a last resort when other ways of demonstrating legitimacy had failed.</p>
<h2>The longer view</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Persian-Gulf-War">The Gulf War</a> also brought non-Muslim troops to Arabian soil, inspiring <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military-july-dec96-fatwa_1996/">Osama bin Laden’s call for jihad</a> against the Western nations that participated in it. And it eventually led to the US invasion of Iraq. That set off a chain of events that created in the country the chaotic conditions that enabled the rise of Islamic State. </p>
<p>If the IS leadership is really an <a href="http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-islamicstate/">alliance between ex-Ba'athist generals and an offshoot of al-Qaeda</a>, as has often been depicted, then we don’t have to go far beyond the events of this war to explain how the group formed. But the rise of Islamic State and its declaration of the caliphate can also be read as part of a wider story that has unfolded since the formation of modern nation states in the Muslim world. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86c958c2-ff78-11e3-8a35-00144feab7de.html#axzz367SAUfPl">some commentators</a> have pointed out, it’s not so much the Sykes-Picot agreement and the drawing of artificial national borders by colonial powers that brought about IS. </p>
<p>The modern nation-state model – as much as it’s based on <a href="https://nationalismstudies.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/benedict-anderson/">a kind of fiction</a> – is still strong in most parts of the Muslim world. And, I believe, it’s still the preferred option for most Muslims today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113024/original/image-20160226-26669-1pzyzn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People of Arak toppled the Shah’s statue in Bāgh Mwlli (central square of Arak) during 1979 revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIranian_Revolution_in_Arak.jpg">Dooste Amin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the long century that has passed since the first world war has been increasingly marked by frustration. It’s littered with the broken promises of Muslim rulers to bring about a transition to more representative forms of government. And it has been marked by a sense that Western powers continue to control and manipulate events in the region, in a way that doesn’t always represent the best interests of Muslim societies.</p>
<p>An extreme <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-arab-spring-five-years-on-a-season-that-began-in-hope-but-ended-in-desolation-a6803161.html">high point of frustration</a> was reached in the events of the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a>. The wave of popular demonstrations against the autocratic regimes of the Arab world were seen as the first winds of change that would bring democracy to the region. </p>
<p>But, with the possible exception of Tunisia, all of these countries underwent either destabilisation (Libya, Syria), the return of military rule (Egypt), or the further clamping down on civil rights (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf monarchies). </p>
<p>I would hesitate to describe IS’s declaration of a caliphate as a serious challenge to the modern nation-state model. But the small, albeit substantial, stream of followers it manages to recruit daily shows it would be wrong to take for granted that the terms of the international order can simply be dictated from above forever. </p>
<p>When brute force increasingly has the final say over how people live their lives, it becomes harder for them to differentiate between the lesser of two evils.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the eighth article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harith Bin Ramli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The rise of Islamic State and its declaration of the caliphate can be read as part of a wider story that has unfolded since the formation of modern nation states in the Muslim world.Harith Bin Ramli, Research Fellow, Cambridge Muslim College & Teaching Fellow, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/526552016-02-23T19:05:05Z2016-02-23T19:05:05ZThe post-colonial caliphate: Islamic State and the memory of Sykes-Picot<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109605/original/image-20160129-27340-62w6x2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Map of the Sykes–Picot Agreement showing Eastern Turkey in Asia, Syria and Western Persia, and areas of control and influence agreed between the British and the French in May 1916.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMPK1-426_Sykes_Picot_Agreement_Map_signed_8_May_1916.jpg">Royal Geographical Society via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</em></p>
<p><em>Our series has been examining the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historic and cultural forces behind the rise of these jihadists</a>. Today, historian James Renton looks at the fateful 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which was pointedly denounced by Islamic State in the first video it released.</em></p>
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<p>Ever since Islamic State (IS) spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-iraq-idUSKBN0F40SL20140630">announced the establishment of a caliphate</a> on June 29, 2014, analysts have been busy trying to explain its aims and origins. </p>
<p>Much of the discussion has concentrated on the IS leadership’s theology – an apocalyptic philosophy that <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-islamic-state-is-based-on-religion-why-is-it-so-violent-52070">seeks a return to an imagined pristine Islam</a> of the religion’s founders. But this focus has led to a neglect of the group’s self-declared political aims. </p>
<p>For all the importance of religion in the way IS functions <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-lays-claim-to-muslim-theological-tradition-and-turns-it-on-its-head-53225">and justifies itself</a>, we can fully understand the caliphate only if we pay close attention to the public explanations – the modernist manifestos – of those at the helm of its overall political purpose. </p>
<p>Viewed from this perspective, the caliphate appears primarily as an attempt to free the ummah – the global Muslim community – from the legacies of European colonialism.</p>
<p>The leaders of IS do not see their caliphate as an exercise in theocracy for its own sake, but as an attempt at post-colonial emancipation.</p>
<h2>Looking right back</h2>
<p>Certainly, the very name adopted by the declared leader of the caliphate suggests an acute preoccupation with a specifically religious mission that harks back to the early years of Islam. </p>
<p>Originally known as Ibrahim bin Awwad bin Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarra’i (or variations thereof), he took on, long before the summer of 2014, the pseudonym Abu Bakr, the name of the first caliph (the successor to Muhammad as the religious and political leader of the ummah).</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110935/original/image-20160210-12178-1vrnf2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=991&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Briton Sir Mark Sykes agreed on terms with his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, for dividing up the region after WWI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Mark_Sykes00.jpg">Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Ruling in the years 632-4, Abu Bakr put an end to dissent against the new Islamic system in its Arabian heartlands. He established the caliphate as an expansionist Muslim empire with military campaigns in, the sources suggest, present-day Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel-Palestine. </p>
<p>As a declaration of intent, this choice of name by IS’s leader – whose full moniker became, alongside the title Caliph Ibrahim, <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/documents/baghdadi-caliph.pdf">Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi</a> – seems to encapsulate much of what we need to know about the new caliphate’s ambitions. </p>
<p>Al-Adnani’s <a href="https://ia902505.us.archive.org/28/items/poa_25984/EN.pdf">founding proclamation</a> made a point of celebrating the military victories of the first decades of Islam and how the ummah then “filled the earth with justice … and ruled the world for centuries”. This success, he argued, was the result of nothing more than faith in Allah and the ummah’s adherence to the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad.</p>
<p>But the conquest of land and the establishment of a Muslim empire – or state, as those behind the new caliphate prefer to call it – is a means to a very specific end. It is not an end in itself. </p>
<h2>Anglo-French infamy</h2>
<p>According to al-Adnani, the caliphate is needed to take the ummah out of a condition of disgrace, humiliation and rule under the “vilest of all people”. Al-Baghdadi, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28116846">speaking two days after</a> he was pronounced caliph, was much more <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/documents/baghdadi-caliph.pdf">specific</a>. </p>
<p>The fall of the last caliphate – and, with it, the loss of a state – led to the humiliation and disempowerment of Muslims around the globe, he said. And this condition of statelessness allowed “the disbelievers” to occupy Muslim lands, install their agents as authoritarian rulers and spread false Western doctrines.</p>
<p>Al-Baghdadi’s vague narrative refers to the story of the dissolution after the first world war of the Ottoman Empire, which had governed much of Western Asia for four centuries. </p>
<p>In its stead, the British and French empires took over significant parts of the region and remained for decades. When their rule came to an end, these colonial states did their best to leave behind successor regimes that would serve British and French interests and those of the wider West.</p>
<p>For IS leaders, these colonial machinations have left the ummah floundering ever since because they took away the essence of power in the contemporary world: sovereignty – territorially based political independence. </p>
<p>The caliphate is urgently needed, al-Baghdadi argues, to rectify this harmful absence. A similar argument for a caliphate, though made with a very different type of state in mind, was articulated by the UK-based scholar <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/recalling-the-caliphate/">S. Sayyid</a> in 2014.</p>
<p>The most explicit evidence of this political objective’s primacy is to be found in the new caliphate’s propaganda, which has been such an important part of the IS project. </p>
<p>To coincide with the announcement of the caliphate, IS released a video entitled “<a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d43_1404046312">The End of Sykes-Picot</a>”. Signed in May 1916, the Sykes-Picot agreement was a secret <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MPK1-426_Sykes_Picot_Agreement_Map_signed_8_May_1916.jpg?uselang=en-gb">Anglo-French plan</a> for dividing the Asian Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence and zones of direct rule for the two European empires. </p>
<p>The Bolsheviks discovered the agreement in the Russian state archives soon after they took power in November 1917 and revealed its contents to the world.</p>
<h2>The Sykes-Picot agreement</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110936/original/image-20160210-12137-1v1egj7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The French negotiator of the Sykes-Picot agreement, François Georges-Picot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFran%C3%A7ois_Georges-Picot.JPG">Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Sykes-Picot agreement did not set out the borders of the states that replaced the Ottoman Empire, as the video suggests. But this error is beside the point if we want to understand the significance of the agreement for IS, and what it tells us about its caliphate. </p>
<p>In the Middle East, Sykes-Picot became shorthand for a whole narrative of Western betrayal and conspiracy in the region. But it also came to stand for the specific European colonial process of robbing the peoples of the region of their sovereignty. </p>
<p>And it is IS’s declared goal to undo this process. This is why “The End of Sykes-Picot”, above any other possible subject matter for an inaugural film, had to accompany the declaration of the caliphate.</p>
<p>For al-Baghdadi, sovereignty and Islam cannot be separated; thus the need for an Islamic state. He cannot use the term empire, even though it more accurately describes the global expansionist aims of his caliphate. </p>
<p>This is not just a question of semantics; it goes to the heart of the purpose of IS. The caliphate is needed, its leadership contends, to end the consequences of European empire, of colonialism. It is an effort to finally break away from the colonial condition; an attempt at a new post-colonial ummah.</p>
<p>Liberty from colonialism and sovereignty go hand in hand. The post-1918 world order embodied in the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, places the idea of sovereignty at the centre of how we understand power today. Within this system, the absence of a state is the absence of power. </p>
<p>The military defeat of IS and its loss of territory would, of course, make sovereignty, and thus the caliphate, impossible. But this defeat will not solve the problem of the sense of powerlessness that fuelled the 2014 caliphate in the first place; it will only compound it. </p>
<p>The real long-term challenge that faces opponents of IS, therefore, is not the overthrow of the caliphate – as difficult as that might be – or even to defeat “extremism”. It is, rather, to overcome the narrative at the centre of IS’s call to arms: Muslim alienation from the world system. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the seventh article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Renton has received funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council for a monograph that he is writing on the idea of the Middle East and its consequences.</span></em></p>The leaders of Islamic State do not see their caliphate as an exercise in theocracy for its own sake, but as an attempt at post-colonial emancipation.James Renton, Reader in History, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/544782016-02-22T19:05:34Z2016-02-22T19:05:34ZDid the Crusades lead to Islamic State?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112120/original/image-20160219-12817-1dr8ep1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Crusades evoke a romantic image of medieval knights, chivalry, romance and religious high-mindedness.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/syldavia/39125832/">David Wise/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">Our series on the jihadist group’s origins</a> tries to address this question by looking at the interplay of historical and social forces that led to its advent.</em></p>
<p><em>Today, professor of religious studies Carole Cusack considers the Crusades: can we really understand anything about Islamic State by looking at its rise as the latest incarnation of a centuries-old struggle between Islam and Christianity?</em></p>
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<p>In 1996, late US political scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington">Samuel P. Huntington</a> published the book <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Clash-of-Civilizations-and-the-Remaking-of-World-Order/Samuel-P-Huntington/9781451628975">The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order</a>. Following the collapse of communism in 1989, he argued, conflicts would increasingly involve religion. </p>
<p>Islam, which Huntington claimed had been the opponent of Christianity since the seventh century, would increasingly feature in geopolitical conflict. </p>
<p>So, it wasn’t particularly shocking when, after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks">the September 11 attacks</a> on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the then-US president, George W. Bush, used the term “crusade” to describe the American military response. </p>
<p>Framing the subsequent “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror">war on terror</a>” as a crusade acted as a red flag to journalists and political commentators, who could treat the events as simply the most recent stoush in a centuries-old conflict. </p>
<p>The actual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades">Crusades (1096-1487)</a> themselves evoke a romantic image of medieval knights, chivalry, romance and religious high-mindedness. But representing them as wars between Christians and Muslims is a gross oversimplification and a misreading of history.</p>
<h2>Early Islamic conquests</h2>
<p>That there were wars between Muslims and Christians is certainly true. After the death of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr">Abu Bakr (573-634)</a>, the Prophet Muhammad’s father-in-law and first caliph, the second <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar">Caliph Umar (583-644)</a> sent the Islamic armies in three divisions to conquer and spread the religion of Islam. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Whole regions that were Christian fell to Islam. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land">The Holy Land</a>, which comprised modern-day Palestinian territories, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, for instance, was defeated. And Egypt was conquered without even a battle in 640. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Empire">ancient and vast Persian Empire</a>, officially <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism">Zoroastrian in religion</a>, had been conquered by 642. Weakened by war with the Christian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire">Byzantine Empire</a>, Persia was no match for the Muslim forces. </p>
<p>Muslim armies marched across north Africa and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into modern Spain, eventually securing a large territory in the Iberian Peninsula, which was known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus">Al-Andalus</a> (also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia).</p>
<p>They also marched across the Pyrenees and into France in 732, the centenary of Muhammad’s death. But they were decisively defeated at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours">Battle of Poitiers</a> (also known as Battle of Tours and, by Arab sources, as Battle of the Palace of the Martyrs) by the Frankish general, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel">Charles Martel (686-741)</a>, grandfather of the great Emperor Charlemagne. </p>
<p>This was seen as a Christian victory and, after Poitiers, there were no further attacks on Western Europe. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades">The Crusades</a> came much later.</p>
<h2>The causes of the Crusades</h2>
<p>The proximate causes of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade">First Crusade (1096-1099)</a> include the defeat of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexios_I_Komnenos">Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1056-1118)</a>, who was crowned in 1081 and ruled until his death. His armies met the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuq_dynasty">Muslim Seljuk Turks</a> at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manzikert">Battle of Manzikert in 1071</a> and were defeated. </p>
<p>This placed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople">the city of Constantinople</a> at risk of conquest. So, the emperor requested that the West send knights to assist him – and he was prepared to pay. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_II">Pope Urban II (1044-1099)</a> preached the Crusade at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Clermont">Council of Clermont</a> in 1095. <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pope-urban-ii-orders-first-crusade">He argued that</a> the Turks and Arabs attacked Christian territories and had “<a href="https://www.eduplace.com/ss/hmss/7/unit/act5.1blm.html">killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire</a>”. </p>
<p>He <a href="http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/fulcher-cde.asp">also promised his audience</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was recorded by a monk called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulcher_of_Chartres">Fulcher of Chartres</a>, who wrote a chronicle of the First Crusade. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112117/original/image-20160219-1274-xgonb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The four leaders of the First Crusade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/CrusadeLeaders.jpg">Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thousands answered the pope’s call and the First Crusade conquered Jerusalem in 1099. But the Crusaders’ presence in the Middle East was short-lived and the port city of Ruad, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Ruad">last Christian possession</a>, was lost in 1302/3. </p>
<p>Many later conflicts that were called Crusades were not actions against Muslim armies at all. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade">The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204)</a>, for instance, was a Venetian Catholic army, which besieged Constantinople. Catholic Christians attacked Orthodox Christians, then looted the city, taking its treasures back to Venice. </p>
<p>Islam was not a factor in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade">Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229</a>, either. In that instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Innocent_III">Pope Innocent III (1160/1-1216)</a> used the language of war against the infidel (literally “unfaithful”, meaning those without true religion) against heretics in the south of France. So, “right-thinking” Christians killed “deviant” Christians.</p>
<h2>The end of the Middle Ages</h2>
<p>It wasn’t all intermittent fighting. There were also periods of peace and productive relationships between Christian and Muslim rulers in the Middle Ages. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne">Charlemagne (742-814)</a> (also know as Charles the Great or Charles I), who united most of Western Europe during the early part of the Middle Ages, sent gifts to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harun_al-Rashid">Harun al-Rashid (763-809)</a>, the Caliph of Baghdad. In return, he received diplomatic presents such as a chess set, an elaborate clepsydra (water clock) and an elephant. </p>
<p>In Spain, the culture from the early eighth century to the late 15th was known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Convivencia">la Convicencia</a>” (the co-existence), as Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in relative peace (though the level of harmony has been exaggerated). And there was an exchange of ideas in fields including mathematics, medicine and philosophy. </p>
<p>The Christian kingdoms of the north gradually reconquered Al-Andalus. And, in 1492, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_II_of_Aragon">King Ferdinand (1452-1516)</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile">Queen Isabella (1451-1504)</a> reclaimed Granada and expelled the Jews and Muslims from Spain, or forced them to convert to Christianity. </p>
<h2>A clumsy view</h2>
<p>Clearly, to speak of an “us versus them” mentality, or to frame current geopolitical conflicts as “crusades” of Christians against Muslims, or vice versa, is to misunderstand – and misuse – history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112108/original/image-20160219-1261-qsw0mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not all blood and guts: the Caliph of Baghdad Harun al-Rashid receives a delegation from Charlemagne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHarun-Charlemagne.jpg">Julius Köckert via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Modern Westerners would find medieval Crusader knights as unappealing as they do Islamic State.</p>
<p>And it’s impossible to miss the fact that the immediate entry into heaven Pope Urban promised to Christian soldiers who died in battle against the infidel Muslims is conceptually identical to the martyrdom ideology of contemporary jihadists. </p>
<p>Reality is more complex – and more interesting – than the simple continuation of a historical struggle against the same enemy. Muslims conquered Christian territories, yes, but Christians engaged in reconquest. </p>
<p>There were forced conversions to both Islam and Christianity, and – very importantly – actual governments and monarchs were involved. It’s a simplistic thing to say that “Islamic State is neither Islamic nor a state”, but there’s an element of truth in it.</p>
<p>The most important reason we should resist the lure of the crusade tag to any fight against jihadists is that groups like Islamic State <em>want</em> the West to think like that. </p>
<p>It justified the Paris bomb attacks of November 2015 as attacks against “the Crusader nation of France”. Osama bin Laden used the same reasoning after the September 11 attacks. </p>
<p>By adopting the role of Crusaders, Western nations play into Islamic State’s hands. It’s how these jihadists want the West to understand itself – as implacably opposed to Islam. But it’s not, and it never has been.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the sixth article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carole Cusack does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Representing even the Crusades as wars between Christians and Muslims is a gross oversimplification and a misreading of history.Carole Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/538732016-02-21T19:03:36Z2016-02-21T19:03:36ZIslamic State and the Assassins: reviving fanciful tales of the medieval Orient<p><em>How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">Our series on the jihadist group’s origins</a> tries to address this question by looking at the interplay of historical and social forces that led to its advent.</em></p>
<p><em>Today, historian Farhad Daftary debunks the idea that Islamic State is based on the so-called Assassins or hashishin, the fighting corps of the fledgling medieval Nizari Ismaili state.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Many Western commentators have tried to trace the ideological roots of Islamic State (IS) to earlier Islamic movements. Occasionally, they’ve <a href="http://atheistpapers.com/2015/08/06/sicarii-assassins-and-the-islamic-state-a-pattern-emerges/">associated them with the medieval Ismailis</a>, a Shiʿite Muslim community made famous in Europe by returning Crusaders as the Assassins. </p>
<p>But any serious inquiry shows the teachings and practices of medieval Ismailis, who had a state of their own in parts of Iran from 1090 to 1256, had nothing in common with the senseless terrorist ideology and ruthless destruction of IS and its supporters. </p>
<p>Attacks on civilians, including women and children, and engaging in the mass destruction of property are forbidden both by Prophet Muhammad and in the tenets of Islamic law. Needless to say, the Ismailis never descended to such terrorist activities, even under highly adversarial circumstances. </p>
<p>Significant discordance exists between the medieval Ismailis and contemporary terrorists, who – quite inappropriately – identify themselves as members of an Islamic polity. </p>
<h2>Fanciful Oriental tales</h2>
<p>The Ismailis, or more specifically the Nizari Ismailis, founded a precarious state in 1090 under the leadership of Hasan-i Sabbah. As a minority Shi'ite Muslim community, they faced hostility from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate">Sunni-Abbasid establishment</a> (the third caliphate after the death of the Prophet Muhammed) and their political overlords, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuq_dynasty">Seljuq Turks</a>, from very early on. </p>
<p>Struggling to survive in their network of defensive mountain fortresses remained the primary objective of the Ismaili leadership, centred on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamut_Castle">castle of Alamut</a> (in the north of modern-day Iran). Their state survived against all odds until it was destroyed by the all-conquering Mongols in 1256.</p>
<p>During the course of the 12th century, the Ismailis were incessantly attacked by the armies of the Sunni Seljuq sultans, who were intensely anti-Shiʿite. As they couldn’t match their enemies’ superior military power, the Ismailis resorted to the warfare tactic of selectively removing Seljuq military commanders and other prominent adversaries who posed serious existential threats to them in particular localities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110922/original/image-20160210-3283-jkrcvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An agent (fida’i) of the Ismailis (left, in white turban) fatally stabs Nizam al-Mulk, a Seljuk vizier, in 1092.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAssassination_of_Nizam_al-Mulk.jpg">Public domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These daring missions were carried out by the Ismaili fidaʾis, who were deeply devoted to their community. The fidaʾis comprised the fighting corps of the Ismaili state. </p>
<p>But the Ismailis didn’t invent the policy of assassinating enemies. It was a practice employed by many Muslim groups at the time, as well as by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades">the Crusaders</a> and many others throughout history. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, almost all assassinations of any significance occurring in the central lands of Islam became automatically attributed to the Ismaili fidaʾis. And a series of fanciful tales were fabricated around their recruitment and training. </p>
<p>These tales, rooted in the “imaginative ignorance” of the Crusaders, were concocted and put into circulation by them and their occidental observers; they’re not found in contemporary Muslim sources. </p>
<p>The so-called Assassin legends, which culminated in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo">Marco Polo’s synthesis</a>, were meant to provide satisfactory explanations for the fearless behaviour of the fidaʾis, which seemed otherwise irrational to medieval Europeans. </p>
<p>The very term Assassin, which appears in medieval European literature in a variety of forms, such as Assassini, was based on variants of the Arabic word hashish (plural, hashishin) and applied to the Nizari Ismailis of Syria and Iran by other Muslims. </p>
<p>In all the Muslim sources where the Ismailis are referred to as hashishis, the term is used in its pejorative sense of “people of lax morality”. There’s no suggestion that they were actually using hashish. There’s no evidence that hashish, or any other drug, was administered to the fida’is, as alleged by Marco Polo. </p>
<p>The literal interpretation of the term for the Ismailis as an “order of crazed hashish-using Assassins” is rooted entirely in the fantasies of medieval Europeans. </p>
<p>Modern scholarship in Ismaili studies, based on the recovery and study of numerous Ismaili textual sources, has now begun to dispel many misconceptions regarding the Ismailis, including the myths surrounding their cadre of fidaʾis. </p>
<p>And the medieval Assassin legends, arising from the hostility of the Sunni Muslims to the Shiʿite Ismailis as well as the medieval Europeans’ fanciful impressions of the Orient, have been <a href="http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/Regional%20%20national%20history/Asian%20history/Middle%20Eastern%20history/The%20Assassin%20Legends%20Myths%20of%20the%20Ismailis.aspx?menuitem=%7BC90B73C8-B253-4CB4-A19B-025245A9366A%7D">recounted and deconstructed</a>.</p>
<h2>A culture of learning and tolerance</h2>
<p>Living in adverse circumstances, the Ismailis of Iran and Syria were heirs to the Fatimid dynasty that founded the city of Cairo and established al-Azhar, perhaps the earliest university of the world. Although preoccupied with survival, the Ismailis of the Alamut period maintained a sophisticated outlook and a literary tradition, elaborating their teachings within a Shiʿite theological framework. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110928/original/image-20160210-12161-md8bzw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An entirely fictional illustration from The Travels of Marco Polo showing the Nizari imam Alâ al Dîn Muhammad (1221-1255) drugging his disciples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAl%C3%A2_al_D%C3%AEn_Muhammad_droguant_ses_disciples.jpeg">Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their leader, Hasan-i Sabbah, was a learned theologian. And the <a href="http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/Regional%20%20national%20history/Asian%20history/Middle%20Eastern%20history/The%20Eagles%20Nest%20Ismaili%20Castles%20in%20Iran%20and%20Syria.aspx?menuitem=%7B84F7D96C-8E66-483F-AD63-DB241E9659C6%7D">Ismaili fortresses of the period</a>, displaying magnificent military architecture and irrigation skills, were equipped with libraries holding significant collections of manuscripts, documents and scientific instruments. </p>
<p>The Ismailis also extended their patronage of learning to outside scholars, including Sunnis, and even non-Muslims. They were very tolerant towards other religious communities. </p>
<p>In the last decades of their state, in the 13th century, even waves of Sunni Muslims found refuge in the Ismaili fortress communities of eastern Iran. These refugees were running from the Mongol hordes who were then establishing their hegemony over Central Asia. </p>
<p>All this stands in sharp contrast to the destructive policies of IS, which persecutes religious and ethnic minorities and enslaves women.</p>
<p>The medieval Ismailis embodied qualities of piety, learning and community life in line with established Islamic teachings. These traditions continue in the modern-day Ismaili ethos. And the present-day global Ismaili community represents one of the most progressive and enlightened communities of the Muslim world. </p>
<p>The Ismailis have never had anything in common with the terrorists of IS, who murder innocent civilians at random and en masse, and destroy monuments of humankind’s shared cultural heritage. </p>
<p>Global terrorism in any form under the banner of Islam is a new phenomenon without historical antecedents in either classical Islamic or any other tradition. IS’s ideology reflects a crude version of the intolerant Wahhabi theology expounded by the Sunni religious establishment of Saudi Arabia, which is itself a narrow perspective that fails to recognise any pluralism or diversity of interpretations in Islam.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the fifth article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53873/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Farhad Daftary does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In seeking to link IS to earlier Islamic movements, Western commentators have associated the jihadist group with the medieval Ismailis, made famous in Europe by returning Crusaders as the Assassins.Farhad Daftary, Co-Director & Head of the Department of Academic Research and Publications, The Institute of Ismaili StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/518042016-02-18T19:19:57Z2016-02-18T19:19:57ZWhy is Islam so different in different countries?<p><em>The rise of Islamic State has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of the jihadist group?</em></p>
<p><em>In the fourth article of our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>, Aaron Hughes explains the amazing regional variation in Islamic practice to illustrate why Islamic State appeared where it did.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>No religion is unified. How Catholicism, for example, is practised in rural Italy differs from the way this is done, say, in New York city. Language, culture, tradition, the political and social contexts, and even food is different in these two places. </p>
<p>Such geographic differences are certainly important in Islam. But also important are the numerous legal schools and their interpretations. Since Islam is a religion predicated on law (sharia), variations in the interpretation of that law have contributed to regional differences. </p>
<p>Also significant in the modern world is the existence of other religions. Malaysia, for example, has a relatively <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Malaysia">large percentage of religious minorities</a> (up to 40% of the population). Saudi Arabia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Saudi_Arabia">has virtually none</a>. </p>
<p>This means Malaysia has had to develop a constitution that protects the rights of religious minorities, whereas Saudi Arabia has not. And it’s why Islam is so different in these two countries.</p>
<h2>Schools of thought</h2>
<p>There are historical reasons for this variation. Despite popular opinion, Islam didn’t appear fully formed at the time of Muhammad (570-632). There were huge debates over the nature of religious and political authority, for instance, and who was or was not a Muslim. </p>
<p>It’s similarly misguided to assume that a unified teaching simply spread throughout the Mediterranean region and beyond. </p>
<p>How Muhammad’s message developed into the religion of Islam — complete with legal and doctrinal content — took centuries to develop and cannot concern us here. </p>
<p>What <em>is</em> important to note, however, is that his message spread into various (unbordered) regions. Modern nation states would only arise much later. And each of these areas was already in possession of its own set of religious, legal and cultural traditions.</p>
<p>The result was that Islam had to be articulated in the light of local customs and understandings. This was done, in part, through the creation of legal courts, a class of jurists (ulema; mullas in Shi`ism), a legal code (sharia) and a system of interpretation of that code based on rulings (fatwas).</p>
<p>Many local customs arose based on trying to understand Muhammad’s message. And these customs and understandings gave rise to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches">distinct legal schools</a>. </p>
<p>Although there were originally many such schools, they gradually reduced to four in Sunni Islam – Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i and Hanbali. While these four schools all regard one another as orthodox, they nevertheless have distinct interpretations of Islamic law. Some of their interpretations are more conservative than others. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>There are also a number of such schools in Shi`i Islam, as you can see from the image above. </p>
<p>The four Sunni schools are associated with distinct regions (as are the Shi`i schools). The Maliki school, for example, is prominent today in Egypt and North Africa. The Hanafi is in western Asia, the Shafi`i in Southeast Asia and the Hanbali (the most conservative) is found primarily in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. </p>
<h2>Fundamental differences</h2>
<p>All this legal and local variation has produced different interpretations of the religion. But despite such regional and legal diversity, many Muslims and non-Muslims insist on referring to Islam and sharia as if they were stable entities.</p>
<p>An example might be illustrative of the extent of the differences within Islam. Many non-Muslims are often surprised to learn of the cult of saints, namely the role Sufi saints (Sufism is Islamic mysticism) have played and continue to play in the daily life of Muslims. </p>
<p>A Sufi saint is someone who is considered holy and who has achieved nearness to God. Praying to these saints and making pilgrimages to their shrines is a way to, among other things, ask for intercession. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110759/original/image-20160209-12831-18iukny.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Although these practices are not unlike the role and place of saints in Catholicism, in Islam they are much more localised. And this locally varied cult of saints played and continues to play an important role in Islamic religious life from Morocco in the West to Pakistan in the East. </p>
<p>Devotion to the saints is believed to cure the sick, make fertile the barren, bring rain, and so on. Needless to say, such devotion is often frowned upon by more fundamentalist interpretations. </p>
<p>While most legal schools are content – albeit somewhat bothered – by such practices, the conservative Hanbali school forbids cults like this. Its adherents have, among other things, destroyed tombs of saints in both the premodern and modern eras. They have also been responsible for the destruction of shrines associated with Muhammad’s family, such as the shrines and tombs of Muhammad’s wife. </p>
<p>The Hanbali school, backed by the wealth of the Saudi ruling family, has also tried to make inroads into other areas. Those associated with this legal school, for example, have built madrasas (religious seminaries) in regions traditionally influenced by other legal schools of thought. </p>
<p>Most fundamentalist movements in Islam, including Islamic State, have emanated from such ultra-conservative elements. The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance, are influenced by the more conservative elements of Hanbali ideology, even though they exist in a predominantly Hanafi legal environment. </p>
<p>The goal of many of these groups, sometimes referred to as Wahhabis or Salafis, is to return to what they imagine to be the pure or pristine version of Islam as practised by Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often have strict interpretations of Islam, strict dress codes and separation of the sexes. </p>
<p>Today, there are more than one and a half billion Muslims worldwide, making Islam the second-largest religion on the planet after Christianity. But it is a rich and variegated religion. And this variation must be taken into account when dealing with it. </p>
<p>Most importantly, the variation cannot be papered over with simplistic slogans or stereotypes. That women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia but are in places like Malaysia tells you something about this variation.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is the fourth in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron W. Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since Islam is predicated on law, variations in the interpretation of that law – along with geography and distinct legal schools – have all contributed to differences in the religion.Aaron W. Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Jewish Studies, University of RochesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/520702016-02-17T19:18:44Z2016-02-17T19:18:44ZIf Islamic State is based on religion, why is it so violent?<p><em>Islamic State’s seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for its emergence?</em></p>
<p><em>In today’s instalment of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series on the origins of Islamic State</a>, religious studies scholar Aaron Hughes considers whether this jihadist group’s violence is inherent to Islam.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Despite what we’re told, religion isn’t inherently peaceful. The assumption is largely based on the Protestant idea that religion is something spiritual and internal to the individual and that it’s corrupted by politics and other mundane matters. </p>
<p>But people kill in the name of religion, just as they love in its name. To claim that one of these alternatives is more authentic than the other is not only problematic, it’s historically incorrect. </p>
<p>The Crusades, attacks at abortion clinics, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin">some political assassinations</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_price_tag_attacks">price-tag attacks</a> – to name only a few examples – were and are all motivated by religion. </p>
<p>This is because religion is based on the metaphysical notion that there are believers (in one’s own religion) and non-believers. This distinction is predicated on “good” versus “evil”, and can be neatly packaged into a narrative to be used and abused by various groups.</p>
<h2>An imagined past</h2>
<p>One such group is Islamic State (IS), which is inherently violent and claims it mirrors the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad. In this, it’s like other reformist movements in Islam that seek to recreate in the modern period what they imagine to have been the political framework and society that Muhammad (570-632 CE) and his immediate followers lived in and created in seventh-century Arabia. </p>
<p>The problem is that we know very little about this society, except what, often, much later sources – such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetic_biography">Biography (Sira) of Muhammad</a> and the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Tabari">historians such as al-Tabari</a> (839-923 CE) – tell us it was like. </p>
<p>A central ideal for IS is that of restoring the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate">caliphate</a>. A geopolitical entity, the caliphate was the Islamic empire that stretched from Morocco and Spain in the West, to India in the East. It symbolises Islam at its most powerful. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111744/original/image-20160217-19239-1w8syvt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>When it was spreading across the Middle East and the Mediterranean region in the seventh century, Islam was highly apocalyptic. Many early sources, such as the second caliph <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1508294?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Umar’s letter to the Byzantine Emperor Leo III</a>, as well as contemporaneous non-Muslim sources, such as the mid-eighth-century Jewish apocalypse <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secrets_of_Rabbi_Simon_ben_Yohai">The Secrets of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai</a> and the seventh-century polemic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_of_Jacob_">Doctrina Jacobi</a>, speak about the coming destruction of the world as we know it.</p>
<p>The destruction is to begin with a battle between the forces of good (Muslim) versus those of evil. And IS has adopted this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world/middleeast/us-strategy-seeks-to-avoid-isis-prophecy.html">apocalyptic vision</a>.</p>
<p>Again, though, it’s worth noting two things. The first is that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/cultural-muslims-like-cultural-christians-are-a-silent-majority-32097">majority of Muslims today</a> don’t buy into this apocalyptic vision; it’s mainly something recycled by groups such as Islamic State. </p>
<p>Second, such an “end of days” vision is by no means unique to Islam; we also see it in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount_and_Eretz_Yisrael_Faithful_Movement">Judaism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right">Christianity</a>. In these other two traditions, as in Islam, such groups certainly do not represent orthodox belief.</p>
<h2>Medieval tolerance</h2>
<p>But apocalypse aside, was Islam particularly violent in the seventh century? One could certainly point to three of the first four of Muhammad’s successors (caliphs) having been assassinated. </p>
<p>One could also point to the tremendous theological debates over who was or was not a Muslim. And such debates included the status of the soul of grave sinners. Was such a sinner a Muslim or did his sin put him outside the community of believers? </p>
<p>What would become mainstream Muslim opinion is that it was up to God to decide and not humans. But groups such as Islamic State want to make this distinction for God. In this, they certainly stray from orthodox Muslim belief. </p>
<p>While this doesn’t make them “un-Islamic”, to say groups such as IS represent medieval interpretations of Islam is not fair to medieval Islam. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110739/original/image-20160209-12814-rxd6ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Manuscript with depiction by Yahya ibn Vaseti found in the Maqama of Hariri depicts the image of a library with pupils in it, Baghdad 1237.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Maqamat_hariri.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>The eighth century, for example, witnessed the establishment, in Baghdad, of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom">Bayt al-Hikma (The House of Wisdom)</a>, which symbolised the so-called golden age of Islamic civilisation. This period witnessed, among other things, Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars studying the philosophical and scientific texts of Greek antiquity. </p>
<p>These scholars also made many advances in disciplines, such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, alchemy and chemistry, to name only a few. Within a century of its founding, Islam <a href="https://theconversation.com/islam-the-open-civilisation-confounds-closed-minds-44416">represented a cosmopolitan empire</a> that was nothing like the rigid and dogmatic interpretation of the religion seen in the likes of IS.</p>
<h2>A powerful tool</h2>
<p>Observers in the West who want to claim that Islam is to blame for IS and use it as further proof that the religion is inherently violent, ignore other root causes of the moment. </p>
<p>These include the history of European colonialism in the area; US and European support for a number of ruthless Middle Eastern dictators; and the instability created by the American invasion of Iraq after the events of September 11, 2001. </p>
<p>It’s juxtaposed against these recent events that groups such as IS dream of reconstituting what they romantically imagine as the powerful Islamic caliphate.</p>
<p>The fact is that religion’s ability to neatly differentiate between “believer” and unbeliever", and between “right” and “wrong”, makes it a powerful ideology. In the hands of demagogues, religious discourses – used selectively and manipulated to achieve a set of desired ends – are very powerful. </p>
<p>While it would be incorrect to say that the discourses used by IS are un-Islamic, it’s important to note it represents one particular Islamic discourse and that it’s not the mainstream one.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is the third in <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series on understanding Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron W. Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite what we’re told, religion isn’t inherently peaceful. People kill in the name of their religion, just as they love in its name.Aaron W. Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Jewish Studies, University of RochesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/532252016-02-16T18:23:45Z2016-02-16T18:23:45ZIslamic State lays claim to Muslim theological tradition and turns it on its head<p><em>How do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">Our series on the jihadist group’s origins</a> tries to address this question by looking at the interplay of historical and social forces that led to its advent.</em></p>
<p><em>Today, historian of Islamic thought Harith Bin Ramli explains how Islamic State fits – or doesn’t – in Muslim theological tradition, and incidentally addresses a question often levelled at adherents of the religion living in the West.</em></p>
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<p>For Muslims around the world, it’s become an almost daily heartbreaking experience to see Islam associated with all the shades of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/isis-confirms-and-justifies-enslaving-yazidis-in-new-magazine-article/381394/">cruelty</a> and <a href="http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/">inhumanity</a> of so-called Islamic State (IS). It’s tempting <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/isis-call-it-the-un-islamic-state-say-muslim-groups-as-another-hostage-is-murdered-9731823.html">to dismiss</a> the group as lying beyond the boundaries of Islam. But this way of thinking leads down the same route IS has taken. </p>
<p>Let me explain.</p>
<p>Ever since the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, there hasn’t been a single central authority that all Muslims have unanimously agreed on. The first generation of Muslims didn’t just disagree, they battled over the succession to leadership of the community. </p>
<p>The result of this division was the formation of the main <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/subdivisions/sunnishia_1.shtml">Sunni and Shi’i</a> theological traditions we see to this day. But the blood spilt over the issue also resulted in a general sense of concern about the consequences of political and theological differences. </p>
<p>A consensus quickly emerged over the need to respect differences of opinion. And it was considered important to “disassociate” oneself from anyone who had differing views on these key issues. But as long as the person in question affirmed the basic tenets of Islam, such as the unity of God and the prophecy of Muhammad, he or she was still considered a Muslim.</p>
<h2>Similar detractors</h2>
<p>The one dissenting theological view on this matter was held by a group known as the Kharijites. It adopted the view that dissenting or corrupt Muslim leaders, by their actions, had become “apostates” from Islam altogether. </p>
<p>Sub-factions of this group increasingly extended their definition of apostasy to include any Muslim who didn’t agree with them. They declared these Muslims infidels who could be killed or enslaved.</p>
<p>The brutality of these extreme Kharijites never attracted more than a minority of Muslims, and other Kharijites adopted <a href="http://islam.uga.edu/ibadis.html">a more peaceful position</a> more in line with the emerging consensus. </p>
<p>Widespread horror at the early divisions of the Muslim community and the terrors unleashed by Khariji extremism ensured that Islam generally embraced a pluralistic approach to differences of opinion. This emerged hand in hand with a culture of scholarship, based on the idea that the endeavour to seek the “true” meaning of scripture is an ongoing and fallible human effort. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111278/original/image-20160212-29175-9bxy0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Beyond a number of issues over which there was unquestionable consensus, different interpretations could be tolerated. </p>
<p>What makes IS different to traditional Islam isn’t necessarily the religious texts the group uses. To justify their practice of slavery or war against non-Muslims, they appeal to parts of the Qur'an or prophetic traditions, or legal works that are fairly mainstream and representative of the medieval Islamic tradition. </p>
<p>But these texts – scripture or otherwise – have always been read through the mediation of past and continuous efforts of interpretation by communities of scholars. As theology scholar <a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/20944/beyond-authenticity_isis-and-the-islamic-legal-tra">Sohaira Siddiqui of Georgetown University points out</a>, groups like IS deviate from mainstream Islam by their rejection of this culture of scholarly interpretation and religious pluralism, that is, the means by which the texts were interpreted. </p>
<p>This approach has roots in the group’s main theological inspiration, the Wahhabi movement. Founded on a radical interpretation of the 14th-century theologian <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-read-the-medieval-scholar-the-islamic-state-used-to-justify-al-kasasbeh-murder-37293">Ibn Taymiyya</a>, it dismissed any Muslim who didn’t subscribe to its strict interpretation of monotheism as an “apostate”. </p>
<p>It can also be traced back to radical political theorists of the 20th century, such as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism3">Sayyid Qutb</a>, who rejected the modern state and attendant ideologies, including nationalism and democracy, as “idolatrous” and not based on the rule of God. </p>
<p>By declaring the revival of the Caliphate, IS claims to have created an alternative to the prevailing political order. </p>
<h2>Harms of hastiness</h2>
<p>Adopting a simple “with us or against us” approach lets IS justify denouncing Muslim rulers as “tyrants” and the religious figures who support them as “palace scholars”. In general, Muslims who don’t “repent” and support their beliefs are at risk of being denounced as “apostates” who can be killed. </p>
<p>Effectively, the group has revived the age-old Kharijite tendency in the form of a deadly modern political ideology. </p>
<p>IS is right about one thing: the solution to the widespread problems of the Muslim world cannot lie in the reaffirmation of status quo politics and the hypocritical employment of religion to prop up corrupt and oppressive regimes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110885/original/image-20160210-3265-e0esfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By declaring the revival of the Caliphate, IS claims to have created an alternative to the prevailing political order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Umit Bektas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But its dismissal of the culture of scholarly pluralism and religious tolerance seems like an easy way to select interpretations of the scripture and religious tradition to suit its political aims, not the other way round. </p>
<p>Leading Muslim religious authorities, such as the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2015/02/azhar-egypt-radicals-islamic-state-apostates.html">Grand Shaykh of al-Azhar</a>, have refrained from denouncing IS as “apostates”, even though they have called for the use of <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/02/04/Al-Azhar-calls-for-killing-crucifixion-of-ISIS-terrorists-.html">full military force</a> against them. Their hesitance may be due to an awareness that such a move would simply drag the Muslim community down to the level IS wants them to be on. </p>
<p>Instead of labelling IS un-Islamic, the global Muslim community would do better to reaffirm its commitment to its culture of pluralism. This approach may also open up a crucial conversation that must take place about <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-politics/">the relationship between state and religion</a> in contemporary Muslim societies. </p>
<p>Many Muslims might share the IS view that there are already many signs that the end of times is approaching. But the group departs from mainstream Muslim apocalyptic theology in two respects. </p>
<p>First, its literature seems to omit any mention of the awaited Mahdi (the Guided One) and the return of Jesus the son of Mary, who is prophesied to defeat the Great Pretender (Dajjal, or anti-Christ). And second, in contrast to the average Muslim believer who acknowledges only a limited ability to fully grasp the meaning of these prophecies, IS arrogates for itself a central role in the unfolding of such events. </p>
<p>In other words, instead of waiting for God to bring about the end of times, IS hopes to prompt it through its own actions. In this respect, it has something in common with extreme forms of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-heilbroner/evangelicals-israel-and-t_b_391351.html">Christian</a> and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/extremist-group-offers-jews-500-to-pray-on-temple-mount/">Jewish religious Zionism</a>.</p>
<p>If one were to give IS’s followers the benefit of the doubt, excluding those with mainly criminal motives, it seems that theirs is an ideology fuelled by a hasty desire for the implementation of the will of God. And an even hastier dismissal of the more careful and humble approach of other Muslims. </p>
<p>As the Qur’an states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<a href="http://quran.com/21/37">man was created hasty by nature</a>” (21:37), and “<a href="http://quran.com/103">all mankind is at loss, except for those who believe and advise one another concerning the Truth, and concerning patience</a>”. (103:2-3) </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is the second in our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">series on understanding Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harith Bin Ramli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What makes Islamic State different to traditional Islam isn’t necessarily the religious texts the group uses.Harith Bin Ramli, Research Fellow, Cambridge Muslim College & Teaching Fellow, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/521552016-02-15T19:21:12Z2016-02-15T19:21:12ZUnderstanding Islamic State: where does it come from and what does it want?<p><em>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</em> </p>
<p><em>Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State?</em></p>
<p><em>In the article kicking off <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series on the genesis of the group</a> below, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History James Gelvin cautions against easy answers. It’s a logical fallacy, he adds, to think that just because one event followed another, it was also caused by it.</em> </p>
<p><em>Far better to look at the interplay of historical and social forces, as well as recognising that outfits such as Islamic State often cherry-pick ideas to justify their ideas and behaviours.</em></p>
<p><em>Our series attempts, in a dispassionate way, to catalogue many of the forces and events that can arguably have played a part in creating the conditions necessary for these jihadists to emerge. We have tried to spread the net wide, but we make no claim to being comprehensive or having the final word on the origins of Islamic State.</em></p>
<p><em>Over the next two weeks, a selection of religious studies scholars and historians – modern and medieval – from around the world will bring their expertise to our discussion of what led to the most notorious jihadist group in recent history.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>How far back in history does one have to go to find the roots of the so-called Islamic State (IS)?</p>
<p>To the <a href="http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/ROHO/projects/debt/oilcrisis.html">oil shock of 1973-74</a>, when Persian Gulf oil producers used the huge surplus of dollars flowing into their coffers to finance the spread of their severe interpretation of Islam?</p>
<p>To the end of the first world war, when the victorious Entente powers sparked resentment throughout the Arab world by <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25299553">drawing artificial national borders</a> we hear so much about today? </p>
<p>How about 632 AD, the date of the <a href="http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/death.html">death of the Prophet Muhammad</a>, when the early Islamic community split on who should succeed him as its leader — a breach that led to <a href="http://origins.osu.edu/article/tradition-vs-charisma-sunni-shii-divide-muslim-world/page/0/0">the Sunni-Shi'i divide</a> that IS exploits for its own ends?</p>
<p>The possibilities seem endless and would make for an entertaining variation on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon">Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon</a> parlour game (which suggests any two people on earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart) were the subject not so macabre. </p>
<p>But to look at any and all historical phenomena through a simple string of causes and effects is to ignore the almost infinite number of possible effects that might follow from any one purported cause. </p>
<p>It also opens the door to one of the most pernicious logical fallacies historians might commit: <em>post hoc, ergo propter hoc</em> (after this, therefore because of this). So rather than tracing the rise of IS to one or more events in the past, I suggest we take a different tack.</p>
<h2>A long line</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109578/original/image-20160129-27177-1e6zxr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muhammad Ahmad, one of a long line of self-professed redeemers of the Islamic faith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad#/media/File:Muhammad_Ahmad_al-Mahdi.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>IS is an instance of a phenomenon that recurs in most religions, and certainly in all <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/monotheism">monotheistic religions</a>. Every so often militant strains emerge, flourish temporarily, then vanish. They are then replaced by another militant strain whose own beginning is linked to a predecessor by nothing more profound than drawing from the same cultural pool as its predecessor.</p>
<p>In the seventh century, there were <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0047.xml">the Kharijites</a> (the first sect of Islam), a starkly puritanical group that assassinated two of the early caliphs. Like IS, the Kharajites thought they knew best what and who were truly Islamic, and what and who were not.</p>
<p>In the 18th century, there were the followers of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-ibn-Abd-al-Wahhab">Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab</a>, a central Arabian preacher whose followers included <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_bin_Saud">Muhammad ibn Saud</a>, the founder of the Saudi dynasty. Believing that the worship of saints and the construction of mausoleums were impious acts, ibn Saud’s army destroyed sites holy to both Sunnis and Shi‘is in Arabia and present-day Iraq, much as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/isis-destruction-of-palmyra-syria-heart-been-ripped-out-of-the-city">IS targets sites from antiquity</a> today. </p>
<p>During the 19th century, <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Muhammad_Ahmad">Muhammad Ahmad</a>, a member of a religious order in what is now Sudan, proclaimed himself mahdi (redeemer of the Islamic faith), just as <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27801676">Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi</a>, inventor and leader of IS, recently proclaimed himself caliph (leader of the Islamic faith) — a more prosaic position. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Khartoum">Ahmad’s army overran Khartoum</a>, where it massacred a British-led garrison and beheaded its commander.</p>
<p>Between Muhammad Ahmad and al-Baghdadi there were many, many others.</p>
<p>While tempting, it would be a mistake to believe that each militant group “gave rise to” the next (although later militants have sometimes drawn from or been inspired by their predecessors). That would be the equivalent of saying that <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Zealot">the ancient Zealots</a> (a Jewish sect that fought the Romans) gave rise to militant Israeli settlers on the West Bank, or that <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/crusades">medieval Crusaders</a> gave rise to abortion-clinic bombers. </p>
<h2>The right stuff</h2>
<p>From time to time (it’s impossible to predict when), some figure emerges in each tradition who puts his own spin on that tradition. To be successful, that spin must capture the imagination of some of that tradition’s adherents, who then try to put it into practice. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109589/original/image-20160129-27159-1ewvj2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A newspaper featuring former al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ali Jasim/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some spins, such as that of contemporary <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-wahhabism-in-saudi-arabia-36693">Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis</a>, have sticking power. This is not because they are somehow “truer” than others, but because those who advocate for them are better able to mobilise resources – a core group of committed followers, for instance, military capabilities, or outside support – than others. Most do not.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27801676">Al-Baghdadi</a> is one such figure (as was al-Qaeda founder <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10741005">Osama bin Laden</a>). His spin melds together three ideas that come from the Islamic tradition. </p>
<p>The first is <em>khilafa</em> (caliphate). Al-Baghdadi believes that Islam requires a caliphate — governance in accordance with Islamic law over territory that’s under the authority of a caliph (a righteous and knowledgeable descendant of the prophet). </p>
<p>When <a href="http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/100620153">his forces took over Mosul</a> in the summer of 2014, al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself caliph and burnished his credentials for the job by changing his name to Caliph Ibrahim al-Quraishi al-Hashimi. The last two names signify he’s a member of the tribe of Muhammad and a descendant of the prophet.</p>
<p>The second idea al-Baghdadi brought into the mix is <em>takfir</em> – the act of pronouncing Muslims who disagree with IS’s strict interpretation of Islamic law to be apostates, which makes them punishable by death. This is the reason for IS’s murderous rampages against Shi‘is; rampages that even al-Qaeda central finds counter-productive, if not repugnant.</p>
<p>Resurrecting the concept of <em>takfir</em> was the idea of <a href="http://www.cfr.org/iraq/profile-abu-musab-al-zarqawi/p9866">Abu Musab al-Zarqawi</a>, founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq. His strategy was to use the concept to tighten communal ties among Iraq’s Sunnis by mobilising them against its Shi‘is, thus making post-American-invasion Iraq ungovernable. </p>
<p>Al-Baghdadi has gone one step further, finding the concept useful in his effort to purify the territory of the caliphate which, he believes, will soon stretch across the Islamic world.</p>
<p>Finally, there is <em>hijra</em>, the migration of Muslims from <em>dar al-harb</em> (the abode of war, that is, non-Muslim majority countries) to <em>dar al-Islam</em> (the abode of Islam) – just as Muhammad and his early companions migrated from Mecca to Medina, where they established the first permanent Islamic community. </p>
<p>IS wants a great incoming of Muslims into the caliphate. This is both because it needs skilled administrators and fighters and because it considers emigration from “non-Muslim territory” to “Muslim territory” a religious obligation. </p>
<h2>A dangerous distraction</h2>
<p>According to some commentators, al-Baghdadi brought a fourth idea to the table: <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250080905">an apocalyptic vision</a>. They base this on the name of IS’s glossy magazine, Dabiq (the site in northern Syria where, Islamic tradition has it, the Battle of Armageddon will take place), articles in the magazine and propaganda videos.</p>
<p>It’s not too much of a stretch to attribute an apocalyptic vision to IS — after all, just as every monotheism is prone to militant strains, all are prone to apocalyptic visions as well. Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that the concept represents a significant part of IS’s worldview. </p>
<p>Whatever the future may hold, IS, like some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/end-of-world-7-october-ebible-fellowship">apocalyptic Christian groups</a>, has proved itself so tactically and strategically adept that it has obviously kicked any “end of days” can well down the road (roughly the same distance al-Qaeda kicked the re-establishment of the caliphate can).</p>
<p>Further, much of the IS leadership consists of hard-headed <a href="http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-islamicstate/">former Iraqi Ba‘th military officers</a> who, if they think about an apocalypse at all, probably treat it much as Hitler’s generals treated the purported musings of Nazi true believers – with a roll of their eyes. </p>
<p>Foregrounding IS’s apocalyptic worldview enables us to disparage the group as irrational and even medieval – a dangerous thing to do. If the recent past has demonstrated one thing, it’s that IS thrives when its adversaries underestimate it.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is the first article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James L. Gelvin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How far back in history does one have to go to find the roots of the so-called Islamic State? The first article in our series on the genesis of the terrorist outfit considers some fundamentals.James L. Gelvin, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.