Islamic StateUnderstanding Islamic State: where does it come from and what does it want?
Islamic State (IS) is an instance of a phenomenon that recurs in most religions, and certainly in all monotheistic religions. 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. Whatever the future may hold, IS, like some apocalyptic Christian groups, 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). Further, much of the IS leadership consists of hard-headed former Iraqi Ba‘th military officers 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. 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.
Flag of ISIS // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
How far back in history does one have to go to find the roots of the so-called Islamic State (IS)?
To the oil shock of 1973-74, 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? To the end of the First World War, when the victorious entente powers sparked resentment throughout the Arab world by drawing artificial national borders we hear so much about today? How about 632 AD, the date of the death of the prophet Muhammad, when the early Islamic community split on who should succeed him as its leader — a breach that led to the Sunni-Shi’i divide that IS exploits for its own ends?
The possibilities seem endless and would make for an entertaining variation on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon parlor game (which suggests any two people on earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart) were the subject not so macabre.
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.
It also opens the door to one of the most pernicious logical fallacies historians might commit: post hoc, ergo propter hoc (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.
A long line
IS is an instance of a phenomenon that recurs in most religions, and certainly in all monotheistic religions. 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.
In the seventh century, there were the Kharijites (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.
