ISIS: Spreading the Islamic dream

h/t www.thereligionofpeace.com

ISIS: Spreading the Islamic dream

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9899 
 

"And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah (alms), let them go on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful" (Quran 9:5). This passage was established as the core of al-Qaida's ideology by Sheikh Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who was widely considered the father of global jihad.

The Islamic State group (ISIS) -- which is an offshoot of al-Qaida -- was originally created in 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi following the American invasion of Iraq, and was initially known as "al-Qaida in Iraq." Only on October 15, 2006, did the group change its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The group's ideology is not fundamentally different from that of al-Qaida and is predicated on the writings of Azzam, the spiritual guide and one of al-Qaida's founders.

In one of his many writings, Azzam clearly lays out the ideology at the heart of ISIS and al-Qaida: The jihadist warriors fighting the infidels "are those who write the history of nations, because the history of nations is written only in sweat and blood. They are the ones who build the palace of glory, because palaces of glory are built only by skulls and limbs severed from the body."

Two primary processes led to the rise of ISIS. The first was the oppression of the large Sunni minority in Iraq. The fall of Saddam Hussein, who was Sunni, and the installation of a democratic regime in Iraq essentially transferred power to the country's Shiites (60 percent of the population). The remnants of Saddam Hussein's defeated Iraqi army, who saw how the United States-led West was stealing their lands and giving the power of rule to the heretic Shiite faction, waited for the right time to strike. Their barbaric actions against the Shiites are also a type of revenge against those who stole their rule with the help of American protection. 

The second process is the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and ushered al-Qaida into that arena. Until February 2014, ISIS was part of an al-Qaida alliance of organizations fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. The collapse of this alliance was the result of the horrific acts attributed to ISIS. The falling out with al-Qaida was not of an ideological nature, it was merely over tactics. Following its disengagement from al-Qaida, ISIS began to thrive. As of today, ISIS has an army of around 50,000 fighters in Syria and another 30,000 in Iraq.

In accordance with the teachings of Azzam and Osama bin-Laden (who was Azzam's student), ISIS' first objective is re-establishing the Islamic caliphate dismantled in 1924. Ninety years after the last Turkish caliph was forced out of power in the wake of Turkish reforms, the organization's current leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared himself caliph (the Prophet Muhammad‎'s successor on earth), the person to whom the entire Islamic world -- in theory at least -- must swear allegiance, or face death.

The creation of an Islamic caliphate to unite all the Islamic nations is not something new; rather it is the desire of all groups that eschew political Islam. In the eyes of the Muslim masses across the globe, ISIS represents a powerful Islamic awakening: an Islam fighting its enemies and cleansing itself of foreign influences, Shiites, Yazidis, Kurds and others. The thousands of believers flocking to ISIS recruitment centers want to see this dream become a reality.

The author is a scholar of Middle Eastern studies at Bar-Ilan University.