SHADE OF SWORDS: THE ISIS WAR TO DESTROY ISLAM
UNDERSTANDING ISIS’S “EXTREMIST IDEOLOGY”
Everyone can understand the Who, What, When, Where, and How—experts abound in giving clarity to the horrific details, but the motivation of the terrorists is often lost in the debate as each spectacular attack is reported. Thousands of news reports and articles have been written asking “Who is ISIS and what do they really want?” However, a more important question finally being posed is “What was the Ideology that motivates the global Jihad?”
ISIS did manage to finally introduce into the media lexicon a word rarely heard in the debates on terrorism: ideology—the belief system of the jihadist terrorists. So when ISIS carried out its medieval rampage, pundits, opinion makers, scholars, and talking heads of all stripes started to pontificate on their interpretations of what beliefs and values were really driving the way the terrorists were waging war.
For over two decades the most important questions raised in the counterterrorism military and intelligence communities were on precisely what fueled the belief system of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. How could this ideology be disrupted? In Wood’s article, he noted early on that American battle commanders including the US Special Operations Commander tasked to defeat ISIS, Major General Michael Nagata had commented, “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” If that is the case, General Nagata cannot be excused for not visiting the student library at the JFK School of Special Warfare in Fort Bragg or the US Army Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to pick up a copy of two books written almost a decade ago by the two most noted jihadi ideology experts in US intelligence, Will McCants and Jarrett Brachman: The Militant Ideology Atlas and Stealing Al-Qaeda’s Playbook. Between these two books there is virtually nothing that has been written that could not clarify the philosophy, origins, and strategy behind everything that has guided the jihad movement since the eighteenth century, except the meaning of why the glue was so strong in the terrorists. For that, one must understand what Islam is and discern if ISIS meets the definition.
Observed as a whole for nearly thirty years there were few discussions about what the jihadist movement desired apart from only the most superficial readings of their statements. Few believe that they are more than an extremely orthodox variant of Islam. Taken at face value that could be true. The discussions of the belief systems, the spark in the heart and soul of the clockwork mechanism that makes the jihadist movement tick, were few and far between. Although it may appear that discussions on the ideology of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the constellation of groups that make up the global jihad movement are relatively new, a very small subset of academics and intelligence officers have been studying the mechanism that motivated the raw foot soldiers to abandon their lives, join and desire nothing less than their own deaths in this movement. Yet, for all the years of dialog, analysis and debate about ‘What the jihadist movement is’ and ‘what they really want’ there really was no rigorous debate within the global community about their basic goals, intentions and what, in fact, they actually are.
Scholars, academics, policy advisors, media pundits, and even theologians could only describe the entire movement within the frame of the religion they purported to be fighting to defend—Islam. This narrative is wrapped so tightly into the mindset of virtually all observers that the global media will bend over backwards to the next great column or article that depicts the global jihadist movement as wholly Islamic, wholly un-Islamic, or wholly paper range targets.
Politically, opinions fall into one of three camps: The most prominent group believes that the terrorists are motivated by a radical or extremist form of Islam. To them the religion itself is the problem. They derisively refer to it as “Radical Islam” or “Islamic Extremism.” This group insists that this faction of Muslims are fighting a wholly religious war, which may be apocalyptic in nature but is most definitely a legitimate clash of civilizations, Islam vs the West.
Graeme Wood, a political science professor at Yale University, wrote a widely read article for Atlantic Monthly where he leads the charge that ISIS is an unashamedly apocalyptic Islamic group which in turn fuels their acts of terror.719 Other more conservative scholars and pundits say that because the terrorists themselves claim Islam, call themselves Muslims, and quote texts from Qur’an, that Islam is the source of the problem. At the right extreme, Islamophobes in the West such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer hold the view that because al-Qaeda and ISIS are Muslim, they are the vanguard of the Muslim world’s attack on the West. These ideologues believe that it is only a matter of time until all Muslims will join them and that Muslims, advancement must be checked. Any number of politicians and pundits attempt to legitimatize ISIS’s deviance and urge the Muslim world to hurry up and join the jihadists. They want a clash of civilizations and unending war. Aayan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, wrote that she believed that Islam is completely violent and must be reformed and transformed into a modest version of Christianity.720
Hysterical rhetoric such as this is precisely what ISIS wants and desires and, God willing, the western chattering class will assist them in achieving that goal.
A second camp believes that though the terrorists say they are Muslims, labeling them and attributing their acts to the religion of Islam is incorrect. They assert that the terrorists’ behaviors, ideology, and actions fall far outside of the norms of Islam and that technically makes them un-Islamic entities.
President Obama said, “Al Qaeda and ISIS and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam… We must never accept the premise that they put forth because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders. They are terrorists.”721
This opinion is echoed by many Muslim and world leaders who fear that labeling the terrorists as Islamic extremists or calling them Muslim radicals works in their interest. This group includes the highest ranking Muslims in Islam, the Muftis of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, monarchs including King Abdullah of Jordan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and King Hassan II of Morocco, and any number of Arab state prime ministers and Muslim theologians, intellectuals and communities.
A final group, embraced by military commanders at the US Department of Defense and NATO, takes an antiseptic view and labels the terrorists as criminals whose religious or political ideology is irrelevant. They simply want to put bombs and missiles on terrorist targets as effectively and accurately as possible.
Is it possible that all three camps could be considered correct? Yes, it is true that in the eyes of the global jihad movement the religion of Islam is the genetic basis of their being. Yes, Osama bin Laden conceptualized and disseminated an ideological perversion of Islam that is so un-Islamic that it could be called anti-Islamic. Yes again, they are terrorists who need a few thousand more accurate bombs placed on them. The arguments have merit but there is a fourth, unifying argument that is equally as accurate, incorporates all of the concerns of the above camps, and provides a satisfying explanation of the jihadist’s ideology: The global jihad movement is arguably the most wealthy, influential, and virulent terror cult in the history of mankind.
Defining Jihad723
Contrary to what some scholars claim, Peter Bergen, by naming his book Holy War, Inc.722 did not attempt to whitewash the religious nature of al-Qaeda but to correctly identify its corporate structure to hold itself to its original name, al-Qaeda al-Jihad, The Headquarters of the Holy War. The jihadist’s ideology has always stressed its religious nature. Al-Qaeda and its modern adherents never once indicated that there was any semblance of secularism in their methods, thought, or strategy.
In fact, since well before Peter Bergen ever met bin Laden, al-Qaeda written or spoken doctrine never implied that they or any of their affiliate groups were anything but a religious order of the most extremist of orthodoxies. In fact al-Qaeda was unlike any preceding Arab terrorist groups. The PLO and even Hamas at their peaks embodied less Islamic fever than al-Qaeda/ISIS. None of the nationalist groups were even considered part of the jihadists. If anything jihadists were jealous of the discipline and religious fervor of the Shiite Hizballah group’s capacity to fight and defeat the Israeli army in Lebanon, even if they considered them apostates worthy only of death.
Each of these labels has merit, and it is in fact critically important to adopt a proper label that accurately describes the origins, beliefs, and motivations of the men and women who are determined to change Islam, and afterwards, the world.
The ideology of many other smaller groups exist throughout the Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Southeast Asia. Many thousands of self-radicalized individuals and supporters are sprinkled throughout most Western nations or self-convert from other religions. They adopt the words and beliefs of the cultists as spread through the Internet via YouTube video, Twitter, or DVDs.
Performing acts of ultraviolence, at the behest of the cult leader and in the name of God, allows for complete vindication from any moral code.
1,436 years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the cult of perpetual jihad and mandatory martyrdom seeks to enjoin a great clash of civilizations and, through the power to kill anyone and destroy anything, bring the entire world under the control of the new Islam. Then would come the judgment day. Like many aspects of the ideology of al-Qaeda, ISIS’s strategic intentions, their ultimate goals, their esprit d’corps and other combatant force factors were dismissed as caricatures of the evil Islamic fanaticism.
Performing acts of ultraviolence, at the behest of the cult leader and in the name of God allows for complete vindication from any moral code.
Many observers believe that the ultimate aim of the group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—and that has anointed itself as an Islamic caliphate with the grandiose name of “Islamic State”—views itself as being part of an apocalyptic global war which pits the Muslim world in a clash of civilizations with Christianity, Democracy and virtually all other global religions and cultures.
ISIS: A CULT OF JIHAD
In September 2014, the Prime Minister of Australia started referring to ISIS and its followers as a “terrorist death cult,” and President Obama himself has used the phrase from time to time.724 In 2004, Peter Bergen, the CNN terrorism expert, gave the ideology the moniker bin Ladenism. The US intelligence community often called it al-Qaedaism. Bin Laden called it the “Victorious Denomination” ideology. For simplicity it can be better described as the Cult of Jihad.
In my 2010 book, An End to al-Qaeda, I took up the challenge of defining and reframing the seemingly inexplicable behaviors of terrorists. I proposed that the most efficient way to disrupt their recruiting and support was to attack their belief system through Counter-Ideological Operations and Warfare (CIDOW).725 That is, to directly attack the legitimacy of their beliefs on a global stage.
However, I quickly came to the conclusion that the global jihad movement is unquestionably a religious cult and discovered that there have been several like them before in Islam.
As an intelligence professional, I do not use this word in the run-of-the-mill way of insulting a group of seemingly brainwashed people. No, I assert that these groups meet the textbook psychological definition of cults.
Taken at their word, and given their actions, the global jihadi terror groups meet virtually every qualifying item on the mass–mind control checklist. Even the most cursory study the terrorist’s “religious” ideology is so absolutely corrupt and violates so many laws, scripture, and traditions that it can never be considered legitimately Islamic.
The ISIS Cult of Jihad may not be monolithic, but its core values and ideology do have a single point of origin: Osama bin Laden. The current ideology was synthesized during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan and launched from Peshawar, Pakistan in 1988. It has spread like wildfire since 9/11 brought it to the global stage. Like an unstoppable hydra, it was designed to multiply each time it was attacked.
The ideology infects communities like a hemorrhagic virus. Initially it was rare and not very contagious unless ingested by a susceptible host. However, once it infects a community, it becomes extremely hard to check. Survive infection and it still affects one’s life in a negative way. In al-Qaeda’s time, it took direct contact with a member of the group and cajoling to become infected, but now the virus of the cult of jihad is spread virtually, through a bewildering myriad of social platforms, communications devices, and media. Anyone who wants the disease only needs to accept that they believe in it and then act on those beliefs.
To those who understood Osama’s long term strategy, ISIS’s ascension was not abandonment of al-Qaeda’s mission but a sign that the plan worked much better than designed. Bin Laden not only foresaw the rise of ISIS but laid out the strategic framework in which multiple ISIS-like organizations would grow and spread across the Muslim world then unite into a Caliphate. Old men like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor, were never destined to lead such a movement. Each generation of jihadist has always passed the terror torch on to younger, increasingly violent men.
The uniformity of the Cult’s ideology is directly attributable to al-Qaeda’s writings and speeches throughout the 1990s. Bin Laden based his doctrine on writings by ancient theologians like Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab al-Tamimi, who established the form of worship popular in Saudi Arabia, called Wahabism. Other influences came from terrorists and radicals whose beliefs were read only in the most outer fringes, including Abu al-A’lal Mahdudi, Sayyed Qutb, Mohammed Abdu Salam al-Faraj, and others. He bound these ideas and concepts into a cult variant of Islam that would stress living like the companions of the Prophet (Salaf), exercising ability to determine who is and is not a Muslim (Takfir), perpetual Holy War (Jihad) and mandatory suicide martyrdom (Shaheed). From these he would create two new objectives for Muslims to aspire: establish a New Islamic Caliphate from Spain to the Philippines, and eliminate all tolerance and compromise of the last 1400 years from Islam. Then the path to a clash of civilizations against the West would bring about the blessed End of Times with the defeat of the Anti-Christ by the Prophet Isa or Jesus, son of Mary. These beliefs are scripture in Islam but form the raison d’etre of the Cult of Jihad. Technically one could say they Jihad for Jesus.
THE PROPHETIC METHOD
ISIS believes that it is carrying out a chain of events as prophesized by the Prophet Mohammed. All components of their belief system enjoins the words in the Qur’an, but instead of interpreting it the way that that it has been for the past fourteen centuries, they took another direction. From the very beginning of al-Qaeda, the mission of the organization was to accept with absolute belief that their actions are the physical manifestation of the will of God. They believe that everything they do, all acts, no matter how small, including all defeats and particularly all successes, are not in their hands but that of their maker.
This manifestation of faith by ISIS is the draw by which they recruit the most disinterested Muslims, and even non-Muslims. They speak and tell of an interpretation of Islam which is so convincing and extremely orthodox that it must be true. They can express their reinterpretation of Islam with almost unbelievable passion and ardor. They can spin the tale that the phrase “Insha’Allah” or God Willing is actually meant to be a divine prayer in which the answer to manifest the will of God is to harness the human capacity to perform actions with which He only could be pleased. Therein lies the rub. Once the listener is caught in the heat of the passion, the truth comes to the fore—God must have his wishes on earth brought to completion by the men who are willing to act in the will of God and do whatever is necessary. The only way to have the acts of God validated and wishes of God to come true is the purity of death. They believe that only the most extremely devout Muslim, a Muslim that eschews all comfort, rejects all changes, the century of interpretations and Bidah, the innovation that calls for tolerance and respect and accepts science and high art… these all must be cleansed to please God.
In the interpretation of ISIS, their ideology commits them to work solely in the belief that all God wishes is prayer and devotion to God and commitment to the literal words of the Qur’an and the events it predicts. Nothing less will satisfy. If Islam has been corrupt for 1,437 years, Allah wills that it be corrected. They believe the only way to convince 1.8 billion Muslims that God is pleased with the beheading of children and the rape of women is to characterize those acts as a form of worship. This is the interpretation of ISIS that defines their cultism. All mass murder, subjugation, slavery, death and more death is the highest form of worship to God. They are his instrument and absent direct orders they accept that they are fulfulling the events in the Qur’an’s book of Tribulation (the Christian Book of Revelations).
ISIS has taken it upon themselves to bring about, on their own, the literal interpretation of the Qur’an. Instead of letting God’s will happen, they are making their interpretation of His desires their own will.
Nowhere in the Qur’an does it state that men are to take into their own hands the will of God and make it happen. ISIS argues that since God does not intercede then it is his will. But who are they to tell Islam that God allowed them to pass judgement against the 1.8 billion that do not follow their corruption? Who are they to tell Islam that God told them to declare 210 million Shia’ as apostates who must be killed? That’s to be answered by the learned of Islam. When put to the average Muslim, they will tell you there is only one way, in their faith, that humans are incited to commit acts of evil and misadventure: These acts were inspired by Satan and his demons.
Islamic eschatology, or the study of the end of days, culminates with the Youm al-Qiyāmah or Judgement Day. This is the day where all life on earth ends and all stand before God in judgement. If it sounds familiar, it is nearly identical to the Christian and Judaic belief except in a few peculiar aspects. And like those faiths, many people have spent their lives trying to force Gods, hand and create the conditions of the judgement day.
In his mind, bin Laden was merely interpreting God’s orders about the End of Times. This interpretation is the genesis of the group’s pathology. But it was up to him and his fellow travelers to develop and implement the strategic plan that would lead to its success. Like the radical Christians who tried to breed a red cow, or destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque in order to bring about Judgement Day, so too do ISIS seek to force God’s hand through direct action.
Thanks to the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda’s ideology would not die in the mountains of Pakistan. In Iraq he got the most fanatical killers imaginable and had them managed by a chain of exceedingly ruthless commanders: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, and now Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The cultists would be spread in the geographic heart of the Middle East by the younger, faster, and more agile men who would man ISIS.
Why couldn’t al-Qaeda seem to harness the energy and excitement of the world’s youth like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, Ansar al-Dine, et al? In their day they did. The excitement of 2015 is just an illusion manifested through better social technology and the unleashing of the brand name. A major difference is al-Qaeda was selective and wanted terror professionals. In letters captured in Abbottabad by SEAL Team 6, bin Laden understood that the al-Qaeda brand was slipping from his ability to control who was and was not a follower. The ideology was becoming trendy and popular, almost too popular. Bin Laden wanted higher quality, professional fighters to run the al-Qaeda brand. Anyone can join ISIS or its affiliates. The era of professionals has given way to the terrorist mobster. No matter what one thinks of the ideology or the new wave of its embrace, with ISIS on the rise and al-Qaeda’s older pros observing from the corporate skybox, Osama bin Laden has successfully managed to fight us from the grave.
The beauty of the ISIS Cult of Jihad is that they do not need bin Laden or Caliph Ibrahim alive to lead them. It is now a sentient and self-sustaining series of standing orders that has stood the test of time among the believers. Real jihadists individually believe that no one on earth can revoke or invalidate the variant of Islam they have been told will take them to Paradise. Indeed, now that the Caliphate has been declared, the cult is on autopilot.
The Four Commands of Caliph Ibrahim.726
YOLO! SEE YOU IN PARADISE!
If this is a cult, why do so many individuals seek out, join, and believe in this ideology? To those who join, the madness is a promise that they will be at the heart of something special. They offer everyone who is filled with hatred, boredom, or who believes that Islam is presently out of proper orbit to come and join. The video montages show heroic action, blissful death and a human paradise on earth.
The Caliphate’s cult ideology has an appeal to the disenfranchised, the devout, the bored, the opportunist, and the criminally insane. Untold numbers of individuals and supporters are self-radicalizing through the Internet. Many abandon their birth religions to join. It offers a simple, appealing answer to the questions of how to advance in life or how to fill emptiness. ISIS says “Join us, kill for God, and take your rewards both here and in heaven!” And like all ideologies based on perversion and ignorance, the objectives they seek can only occur through human sacrifice.
The only real difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS is that the cultists have moved from hiding their intentions to bursting forth with a passion to let us know how they will kill us and why. There is almost no covert planning with them. The pride in their blood-soaked legacy is supported through a massive feedback loop of positive reinforcement spread across the globe by a legion of cheerleaders and fan boys. Everything done by ISIS and al-Qaeda followers—child rape, mass decapitation, sexual slavery, and burning humans alive—requires only the belief that such acts give God, the cult’s God, the greatest pleasure and that such atrocities will be rewarded beyond imagination. And God can reward them only if they die.
The very act of joining a jihadi group affords the member special privileges in Paradise that all others will be denied upon their death or execution. Additionally, the cultists believe that the highest form of worship to God is not just death in battle but suicide sacrifice through explosive bombing.
They crave the bloodlust of jihad. They wrap themselves in the thinnest veneer of a legitimate global religion—and they have never been more popular.
This is not the first time experts considered the global jihad movement as a cult movement. In 1996, the first report I ever saw on a group called al-Qaeda al-Jihad described it as “an apocalyptic Islamic cult.” Peter Bergen, one of the last journalists to interview bin Laden, wrote in his 2001 book, Holy War, Inc., that al-Qaeda ranged somewhere “between a cult and a genuine mass movement.” But many scholars view the word “cult” as a pejorative. Some tiptoe up to the line and say these groups are similar to Christian cults but won’t call it as they see it. For example, in interviews after his recent Atlantic article, “What ISIS Really Wants,” Graeme Wood equated ISIS’s claim to speak for Islam to be similar to Christian cultists David Koresh and Jim Jones. Others have suggested it is more like Joseph Kony’s child-stealing Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda or the Aum Shinrikyo’s hybrid Christian-Buddhist cult in Japan. In fact, it may be argued that what is occurring in Iraq and Syria is closer to the Khmer Rouge, an atheist agrarian cult of Maoist communism that mass murdered almost a million.
Many scholars call the Jihadists Islamic extremists, but Christian death sects are not referred to by their religion but instead by the description of their behavior—cults. Why not apply this to religions equally? Why specifically limit the description to groups outside of Islam?
Death cultists of all religions are groomed and expected to kill perceived enemies and kill themselves, preferably both at the same time.
Terrorist cults have existed in many forms and in virtually every religion, but Muslims don’t seem to embrace this word either. The Saudi religious authorities, the Ulema, dance around it. They often refer to the terrorists as “Deviants,” “Misguided,” or “Miscreants.” Muslim authorities must know that by labeling the global jihadi movement as a cult, that means they are practicing apostasy and the punishments they would have to visit upon them would require a terrible and bloody effort on a global scale. They would have to issue a religious ruling, or fatwa, and declare an official Jihad, whereupon the average Muslim would have a personal obligation to stop or destroy the terrorists wherever they are found.
In any case, these events show exactly why the global jihadists who follow ISIS are precisely like the misguided and brainwashed apocalyptic cult followers of Jones, Koresh, Kony, and Asihara. They promote beig Declaring these people apostates also conflicts with the Saudi evangelism of the less violent forms Wahabism and “quietest” Salafist philosophy, whose orthodoxy is respected and practiced in Saudi Arabia. Some Muslim theologians believe that the neo-Salafism of ISIS is just a hair’s breadth across the line and could be brought back into the fold. This is fantastical thinking. Yet, if the psychological characteristics of cults are analyzed and compared to their behaviors, it’s clear the ISIS jihadist movement falls well into the definition of a cult.