Historical Context To The Rise Of ISIS

Imagine being Catholic and Vatican City is conquered and the Pope deposed. Imagine the despair, anguish, and disbelief of such a horrific event.  A similar scenario happened to the Jews several thousand years ago when Jerusalem was destroyed, the holy temple razed, and all Jews expelled from Israel.  The destruction of the holy temple was particularly unnerving because it was the site where God resided.  Jews wondered whether their God was not all powerful or worse not real?  This was unthinkable.  To resolve the cognitive dissonance and make sense of what happened, they concluded that God was punishing them for not following His ways and a period of self examination followed.  Jews experienced pain and loathing and complete impotence for the suffering they wrought upon themselves.  Homeless, the Jewish people wandered through through many European countries experiencing outer rejection and hostility from European natives and inner shame.  This journey lasted several thousand years until Israel was reestablished.  Once home their psyche changed and they vowed never again would others control their fate.

Muslims, particularly Sunnis, are undergoing a similar journey today which began with the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, and the subsequent end of the caliphate in 1924.  The Ottoman empire was conquered by Britain and France and divided between them without regard to the religious and ethnic makeup of the lands.  Sunni Muslims were a minority in Iraq and Iran and a majority without power in Syria and Egypt.

In WWI the Ottoman army was almost entirely Turkish. Turkish nationalism precluded Arabs from serving in the military.  Hoping to fracture the Ottoman Empire, the British offered Arabs their own Arab Kingdom in exchange for revolting against the Turks.  Unbeknownst to the Arabs, Britain and France had a secret post war agreement that they would divide the Arab lands between them.  British representative, T.E. Lawrence encouraged a group of Arabs who were Sunni Muslims from the Western Arabian Peninsula to side with the British and revolt against their brothers in Islam. The Arab revolt allowed the British to easily conquer Iraq, Palestine, and Syria from the Ottoman Empire. For the first time since 1187 the holy city of Jerusalem was under the control of Christian Europe.  At the end of WWI the Western European powers per their wartime agreement kept the conquered lands for themselves rather than create an Arab Kingdom.  This betrayal, the loss of Jerusalem, and the end of the caliphate reverberated throughout the Muslim community, particularly elements of Sunni Muslims,and ignited the path towards Islamic terrorism that is the scourge of the 21^st century.

Sayid Qutb, an Egyptian religious scholar and devout Sunni Muslim martyr is considered the ideological father of Al Qaeda as his writings and lectures greatly influenced Ayman-Al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden. Qutb encouraged takfir, the religiously sanctioned killing of apostates.  According to Qutb's takfir, Muslims not adhering to the true Islamic faith, Sunni Muslim, were to be killed.  This idea and others were incorporated into the Muslim Brotherhood and followed by its leader Ayman-Al-Zawahiri.  The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood was provincial, the overthrow of the secular President of Egypt and the installation of the Qur'an as the state religion.  The Muslim Brotherhood's mottoes were:  the Qur'an is the constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, death for the sake of Allah is our wish.

Ayman-Al-Zawahiri later merged the Muslim Brotherhood with Al Qaeda founded by Osama Bin Laden.  Bin Laden was a wealthy Saudi appalled that the Western apostate, the United States had military bases on the soil of Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca the holiest city in Islam. Bin Laden agreed with the Muslim Brotherhood mottoes but also believed in the implementing the goals internationally, particularly against the United States, the great defiler of the holy lands and of Islamic teachings and practices.

In 2014 ISIS broke from Al Qaeda and adopted a version of the the Wahhabi doctrines that are practiced in Saudi Arabia.  ISIS primary goal was the re-establishment of the caliphate which they did by conquering large parts of Iraq and Syria.  ISIS now overshadows Al Qeada as the dominant terrorist group, doubling its size since its inception in 2014 and receiving pledges of allegiance from Al Qaeda affiliates in other parts of the world.  

Isis is now more dangerous, brutal, and robust than Al Qaeda. ISIS practices a medieval form of Islam embodied by Wahhabi doctrines which aim to return to the practices of the first two Caliphs of Islam and rejects all subsequent innovations to the religion as a corruption of Islam.  .  In accordance with Wahhabi practices ISIS terrorizes infidels into submission using beheadings, crucifixions, rape, and enslavement.  This is akin to the medieval form of Christianity in which Christian crusaders, Christian inquisitions, and Christian pogroms led to multiple massacres and tortures of Jews based on a New Testament reference to Jews acknowledging blood on their hands for the crucifixion of Christ.

ISIS is more dangerous, brutal and robust than Al Qaeda.  ISIS practices a medieval form of Islam embodied by Wahhabi doctrines which aim to return to the practices of the first two Caliphs of Islam.  Like these first Caliphs ISIS terrorizes infidels into submission using beheadings, crucifixions, rape, and enslavement.  This is akin to the medieval form of 

Christianity in which Christian crusades and Christian Inquisitions led to multiple massacres of Jews based on a New Testament reference to Jews acknowledging blood on their hands for the crucifixion of Christ.

The great attraction to ISIS flows from its perceived religious legitimacy through its establishment of the caliphate.  Unlike other terrorists groups where recruits pledge loyalty to a cause, recruits to ISIS undergo a religious conversion and pledge their lives to the Caliph, the representative of Allah on earth.

Religious conversion is powerful, powerful stuff.  It provides deep meaning and purpose and is rapturous to the disaffected, alienated, or marginalized.  On top of that, ISIS re-establishment of the caliphate, the Suni Muslim homeland, lifts the deep shame that Suni Muslims feel, in the same way it did for Jews when Israel was re-established.  This explains why ISIS recruits cross socioeconomic boundaries.  It is not economic justice that drives these recruits to ISIS but the search for meaning, purpose, and positive identity.  Similarly, religious conversion explains why recruits who show no history of violence are able to commit the most heinous acts.  They are acting for the glory of Allah to purify the world of subhumans in accordance with the Prophet Mohamed.

Religious conversion can happen very, very quickly.  Muslims versed in the teachings and practices of the Qur'an do not need a full religious conversion but merely an acceptance of the ISIS Caliph as their true religious leader.  So there is urgency in having plans to adequately protect the homeland and to eliminate ISIS from the face of the earth. Examining current plans in the light of the historical context of the rise of ISIS is the subject of the next blog.