Knowing the Enemy, Part III

Perpetual Warfare and the End Times

Bernard Haykel is a Princeton scholar and a leading exponent upon ISIS theology.  He is contemptuous of the Western tendency to deny the authentically Islamic features of ISIS.

A good comparison at this point is to consider the Irish Troubles.  The violence of the Provisionals or the Ulstermen may have been identified as genuine and consistent, not deviant, expressions of Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, but such a view would run into the brick wall of the Scriptures themselves.  Many in the West want to make the same case with respect to ISIS--it is deemed a deviant, novel version of Islam.  But the argument falters when one reckons with the fact that ISIS theology and doctrine closely adheres to Islamic history: to the Koran, to Muhammad, to the hadith and to sharia law.

Graeme Wood, writing in The Atlantic, cites Haykel as follows:

Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent.

In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

All Muslims acknowledge that Muhammad’s earliest conquests were not tidy affairs, and that the laws of war passed down in the Koran and in the narrations of the Prophet’s rule were calibrated to fit a turbulent and violent time. In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

But ISIS is not just going back to the seventh century.  It is also going back to the future.  ISIS theology is apocalyptic in that it proclaims the last days to be upon the world.  A core component of its version of the last days is a battle to end all battles in Syria, when the armies of Islam (ISIS) will meet the armies of Rome (possibly referring to the West).

The Islamic State has attached great importance to the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo. It named its propaganda magazine after the town, and celebrated madly when (at great cost) it conquered Dabiq’s strategically unimportant plains. It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo or its Antietam.

“Dabiq is basically all farmland,” one Islamic State supporter recently tweeted. “You could imagine large battles taking place there.” The Islamic State’s propagandists drool with anticipation of this event, and constantly imply that it will come soon. The state’s magazine quotes Zarqawi as saying, “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify … until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.” A recent propaganda video shows clips from Hollywood war movies set in medieval times—perhaps because many of the prophecies specify that the armies will be on horseback or carrying ancient weapons.

Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse. Western media frequently miss references to Dabiq in the Islamic State’s videos, and focus instead on lurid scenes of beheading. “Here we are, burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive,” said a masked executioner in a November video, showing the severed head of Peter (Abdul Rahman) Kassig, the aid worker who’d been held captive for more than a year. During fighting in Iraq in December, after mujahideen (perhaps inaccurately) reported having seen American soldiers in battle, Islamic State Twitter accounts erupted in spasms of pleasure, like overenthusiastic hosts or hostesses upon the arrival of the first guests at a party. . . .

The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. The provocative videos, in which a black-hooded executioner addresses President Obama by name, are clearly made to draw America into the fight. An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide: irrespective of whether they have given baya’a to the caliph, they all believe that the United States wants to embark on a modern-day Crusade and kill Muslims. Yet another invasion and occupation would confirm that suspicion, and bolster recruitment.

This is a battle ISIS eagerly anticipates.  Victory is certain because supernatural help is expected.  ISIS wants to provoke this battle, not avoid it.  In the meantime, there is an obligation to fight for Islam everywhere.  The caliphate must be expanded by conquering the immediate enemies of Islam.  Local Muslims in countries far removed must engage in their own versions of jihad, killing as many kaffirs as possible.

ISIS has an ideology of perpetual war:

In London, Choudary and his students provided detailed descriptions of how the Islamic State must conduct its foreign policy, now that it is a caliphate. It has already taken up what Islamic law refers to as “offensive jihad,” the forcible expansion into countries that are ruled by non-Muslims. “Hitherto, we were just defending ourselves,” Choudary said; without a caliphate, offensive jihad is an inapplicable concept. But the waging of war to expand the caliphate is an essential duty of the caliph.

It must not recognise the borders of other nations; it may not enter into permanent peace treaties, only temporary ones, which are more like temporary cease-fire truces than a peace treaty.

These factors alone mean that it will likely become odious in the eyes of its near and wider neighbours.  If given enough rope, ISIS will hang itself neatly.  Smart Western strategies would consider giving neighbours the tools so that they can finish the job. 

In conclusion:

Properly contained, the Islamic State is likely to be its own undoing. No country is its ally, and its ideology ensures that this will remain the case. The land it controls, while expansive, is mostly uninhabited and poor. As it stagnates or slowly shrinks, its claim that it is the engine of God’s will and the agent of apocalypse will weaken, and fewer believers will arrive. And as more reports of misery within it leak out, radical Islamist movements elsewhere will be discredited: No one has tried harder to implement strict Sharia by violence. This is what it looks like.

Despite all this evidence--as plain as the nose on the face--our leaders prefer to regard ISIS as a manifestation of Marxist ideology, not Islam.  ISIS represents a struggle of disenfranchised have nots against the Western capitalists oppressors.  In the secularist mindset, religion is part of the system of oppression.  The West, in its vastly superior wisdom, alone sees the real causes of ISIS grievance. 

The patronising condescension displayed daily does not represent its finest hour.