Perspective: Islamic StateCaliph Abu Unknown: Succession and Legitimacy in the Islamic State
Three days after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State released a short message, announcing the new “emir of the Muslims” as Caliph Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. Haroro J. Ingram and Craig Whiteside write that “The Islamic State’s leaders are confident the gambit will succeed because the replacement caliph was selected using a process first executed in 2006, and subsequently repeated in 2010 and again this year.”
Three days after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State released a short message featuring its newly appointed spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, announcing the new “emir of the Muslims” as Caliph Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
Haroro J. Ingram and Craig Whiteside write in War on the Rocks that few outside of the Islamic State’s Delegated Committee know the real identities behind these kunyas (noms de guerre). “The movement that captivated, shocked, raped, and murdered its way to the leadership of the global jihadist movement just nominated an anonymous ‘caliph’ to lead the enterprise, expecting members and supporters around the globe to renew their allegiance,” Ingram and Whiteside write.
The add:
The Islamic State’s leaders are confident the gambit will succeed because the replacement caliph was selected using a process first executed in 2006, and subsequently repeated in 2010 and again this year. These leadership transitions were successful in allowing the movement to survive external leader targeting, and the resulting precedence imbues a sense of legitimacy for the new caliph. The nuance of this is missed by outsiders, but not by dissenters and rivals in the jihadist community. As Cole Bunzel’s excellent analysis highlights, dissenters from the movement have mocked Abu Ibrahim as “an unknown nobody” and dismissed the jurisprudence of his succession as fraudulent. Yet, in less than a month, Abu Ibrahim has received over two dozen leader-specific pledges from around the world. This suggests that the Islamic State’s supporters will, once again, recognize an unknown as the divinely appointed guide not just to their movement, but — in their eyes — the world’s Muslims.
Ingram and Whiteside write that to understand what is happening today, we need to review the Islamic State’s past transitions, identify the logic that informs how the group selects new leaders, and discover what practices it replicates from succession to succession. “The Islamic State facilitates a transfer of legitimacy from the old leader to the new, protects the identity of the leader for as long as it can, and begins the posthumous elevation of deceased leaders into the movement’s folklore. There are risks and opportunities created by these parallel processes — and not just for the new leader,” they write.
