A CULT OF JIHAD: THE CONTEXT OF THE ISIS WAR TO DESTROY ISLAM
Many observers make a simple calculation that equates the terrorists to Islam because the terrorists identify themselves as Muslims, claim they are fighting for Muslims, or use phrases from Islamic texts in their statements. However, several cults have disrupted Islam in significant ways well before al-Qaeda or ISIS. Let us review the four most significant examples from the last fourteen centuries.
THE KHAWARIJ
In 658, during the first Islamic civil war, two great armies, one belonging to the governor of Syria, Mu’awiya, and the other under command of Caliph Ali, the third successor to the Prophet Mohammed, faced off near the village of Siffin in Iraq. Mu’awiya sent his soldiers into battle with pages of the Qur’an on their spear tips. This gesture forced Caliph Ali to parley rather than fight. After a negotiated truce, the battle was called off. Objecting to this decision, a group of twelve thousand soldiers decided to abandon both armies and start their own movement. In Arabic they were called the al-Khawarij—“those on the outside.” Orientalists called them the Kharajites.
The Khawarij took a literalist reading of the Qur’an and believed that no man, neither Mu’awiya nor Ali, should be allowed to lead Islam. They decamped for Baghdad with the intention to spread their anarchist’s interpretation of Islam. Both Caliph Ali and Mu’awiya knew this could not be allowed. Ali’s forces intercepted them and convinced eight thousand to return. Four thousand chose battle and were slaughtered. Nine survivors escaped, formed a terrorist group, and finally managed to assassinate Ali in 661. It resulted in a split between Islam’s followers. The Faction of Ali or “Shi’itul Ali” would branch off into Shi’ite Islam, which is now 13 percent of the Muslim world. The other 87 percent are called Sunnah.
The ideology of both al-Qaeda and ISIS are similar to the Khawarij. Even today some Muslims derisively call ISIS “Kharajites” on Twitter and in social media. It has so upset ISIS that they warned in a recent statement that they would behead opposition groups that referred to them as Khawarij.
The Khawarij pioneered the al-Qaeda/ISIS penchant for hijrah, or emigration to isolate members from other societies, and they exercised the right to practice takfir—to determine who is and is not a Muslim and execute them. They considered all people not in their cult to be kuffar—unbelievers. They mass-murdered all outside their group with impunity. They executed orders that women and children were not to be spared in any circumstance, so no bloodlines could avenge them. They operated in complete secrecy, preferring to use taqiyyah—the practice of lying to maintain their true beliefs, rather than proselytize. Small Khawarij family groups spread across the Arabian Peninsula and were eliminated by the next Islamic cult, the Qaramitah.
THE QARAMITAH
The Qaramitah was founded in 874. Referred to as Caramathians by Orientalist scholars, the sect formed after the Sunnah-Shi’ite split. Hamdan al-Qaramat of Kufa, a follower of the Shi’ite Ismaili sect, felt compelled to prepare Southern Iraq militarily for the return of the Mahdi. According to Islamic beliefs dictated by the Prophet Mohammed, the Mahdi, a redeeming savior, would return after three years of famine and turmoil, and rule for seven years. It’s the Imam Mahdi’s destiny to assist the Prophet Isa (Jesus) at the end of days to turn back the anti-Christ (Mashih ad-Dijjal) in a battle outside of the Saudi city of Medina. It is believed that Jesus will finally destroy the anti-Christ at Bab al-Lud near today’s Ben Gurion airport in Israel.
To prepare for this eventuality, Qaramat formed armed, military-oriented communities along the eastern coast of Arabia. By 906 his Bedouin followers would occupy modern-day Bahrain. The Qaramitah started raiding and looting Hajj pilgrimage trains and settlements along the Eastern Arabian Peninsula. They attacked trade lines from Bahrain to southern Iraq. They even raided Basra, destroying mosques and killing hundreds, including the governor.727 Ironically, their raids destroyed the last outposts of the Khawarij cult.728
The Abbasid caliphate paid tributes to stop the raiding, but when they were cut, the Qaramitah declared war on Islam. The new leader, Abu Tahrir, ruled that the entire practice of hajj had devolved into Shirk, or idolatry. As evidence he stated that the hajj pilgrims were going to Mecca to worship an idol at the very central point of Islam, the Kaaba. Within the Kaaba was a black stone, a meteorite. Abu Tahrir decided he would put a stop to Muslims worshiping in its presence. Using their knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula, they set off and attacked Mecca.729
In 923 the Qaramitah surrounded Mecca and laid siege to the city and residents for seventeen days. They desecrated the Kaaba, destroying the structure and seizing the black stone. They then massacred worshippers and dumped their bodies into the holy well of Zem Zem. The Fatimid caliphate negotiated with the Qaramitah but would not get the black stone back until twenty years later in 950. They were finally exterminated in 1077.730
THE MAHDISTS OF SUDAN
In 1881 a cult movement formed in Sudan under the leadership of Muhammed Ahmed, a forty-year-old Nubian from the Sufi sect who later proclaimed himself Mahdi. Sudan was under an oppressive Turkish Caliphate, ruled by Egyptians and British civil servants, including the former British General Charles “Chinese” Gordon. Muhammed Ahmed called on a local Sufi religious assemblage to name him Mahdi. He subscribed to the philosophy that Sudan needed to return back to Salafism, a state of Islam equal to that of the immediate companions of the Prophet Mohammed. He also sought to recapture the entirety of the Muslim world from the Ottoman Empire and bring it under his rule as its Caliph. Ahmed was scoffed at by Islamic scholars for having none of the physical characteristics of the Mahdi—high brow, fair skin, pointed nose, and a dark spot on both the right cheek and hand—nor had any signs of the tribulation occurred, as prophesied.
Despite the details that did not fit the Mahdi narrative, many Sudanese looked for salvation, and armed revolt was their choice. The Mahdists soon decimated the Egyptian forces in Sudan and took control of a swath of territory that dwarfed ISIS’s recent seizures. They controlled an area of almost 700,000 square miles—much larger than the entirety of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The British were forced to evacuate the remnants of the Egyptian army and foreigners from the capital, Khartoum. Despite great effort, “Chinese” Gordon was killed defending the city when it fell to Mahdist forces in 1885.
The Sudan uprising under Muhammed Ahmed may be considered cultist in nature because of the radical changes he forced onto Islamic law and religious practice. He dictated that salvation was not found through direct appeal to God but through himself as the “Savior.” He was ignored by the Egyptian and Ottoman religious leaders, the Ulema, as were his claims of direct lineage to the Prophet Mohammed. That did not stop him from adopting changes based on his whims. He even went so far as to give himself the title of “Khalifat Rasul Allah” or “Successor to the Prophet Mohammed.”
As “savior of Islam,” he ordered changes be made to replace two of the five pillars of Islam. The Shahada, or recognition of the monotheistic nature of God, is an obligatory statement of belief: “There Is No God but God and Mohammed Is His Messenger,” was corrupted to include “… and Muhammed Ahmed is the Successor to the Prophet Mohammed.” Additionally, he removed the obligation of Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and substituted an obligation to Jihad, or holy war.
All of these were astonishing to the traditional Ulema and the Ottoman Caliphate. Muhammed Ahmed was quickly ruled a heretic and his followers apostates. In turn, Muhammed Ahmed then ruled the Ottomans were the real apostates. Like the Qaramitah (and later ISIS), he too went on a cultural cleansing of traditional Islam through book and manuscript burnings. Muhammed Ahmed died of typhus in 1885. Winston Churchill remarked on the death of Muhammed Ahmed that God “whom he had served, not unfaithfully, and who had given him whatever he had asked, required of Mohammed Ahmed his soul; and so all that he had won by his brains and bravery became of no more account to him.”
Muhammed Ahmed’s followers would not be stamped out until 1898 by the campaign that included a young Winston Churchill, assigned to the 21st Lancers under General Kitchener. Speaking on ending the Mahdists’ influence, Churchill said many years later, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”731
Juhayman al-Uteybi leader of the Grand Mosque attack after capture.
In 1979, Juhayman bin Seif al-Uteybi was a former member of the Saudi National Guard and a devout practitioner of Salafism. He became convinced that an associate of his, Muhammed bin Abdullah al-Qahtani, bore the physical characteristics of the Mahdi. They formed a well-armed group named al-Jamaa al-Salafiya al-Muhtasiba, “the Salafist Group that Demand Right and Forbids Wrong.”732 An obsessively insane Salafist, he saw every aspect of Saudi modernism from televisions, to cars, to currency as anti-Islamic innovations. They decided to cleanse Islam and start anew, so they seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and engaged in open warfare with the government. From the pulpit of the Grand Mosque in Mecca they proclaimed al-Qahtani as the Mahdi on the 1,400-year anniversary of Islam. They were immediately engaged by the Saudi army and fought a pitched battle that lasted two weeks. Hundreds of pilgrims, soldiers, and terrorists were killed in the shrine. The Saudis were so desperate to clear the terrorists from the labyrinth of underground chambers in the complex that they asked for France’s assistance to drop nerve gas onto the Grand Mosque.733 Sixty-three captured Saudi and foreign fighters were later beheaded, including al-Uteybi, however the links to the modern-day al-Qaeda and ISIS are astonishing. There were rumors that trucks from the largest construction contractor in Saudi Arabia working on the shrine were used to smuggle in weapons. That company was the bin Laden Group. At the time it was run by Salem bin Laden, brother to a young Osama. One of the survivors was a Kuwaiti named Abdel Latif al-Dirbas or Abu Hazza; he was brother-in-law of Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi. Al-Maqdisi would become the most influential theologian in al-Qaeda. Maqdisi also shared a cell with Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the future leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and grandfather of ISIS.
CHARACTERISTICS OF ISIS CULTISM
To the Cult of Jihad (CoJ) there is practically no single more important guiding principle than one particular phrase from the Qur’an’s Surat al-Baqarah 4:74—
So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory—We will bestow upon him a great reward.
This sentence guides virtually the entirety of jihadist ideology. Yet the rest of the Qur’an delineates numerous restrictions on jihad, war, apostasy, hypocrisy, and murder. The Prophet Mohammed himself repeatedly cautions and tempers all rash acts with compromise and respect of others specifically and through scholarly interpretations. Conflict, internal strife, and civil war are inevitable in any society but the Prophet Mohammed appeared to understand that the love of war could bring about a love of something greater than God. In Surat al-Baqarah he said “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.” The CoJ has reinterpreted this statement by changing the limits for their own purposes. As William Shakespeare quipped, “the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”
Selecting one passage from the Qur’an to supersede all others to control their own pathological communities and justify mass murder belies any claims to religious legitimacy. Therefore one must seriously consider cultism.
Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism spelled out numerous clearly identifiable cult traits that may explain the jihadist’s seemingly irrational behaviors.734
The jihadist’s use of the Qur’an’s eschatological doctrine to hone their followers into weapons is known as Milieu Control. This is Lifton’s theory that control of communication, information, and the environment of followers can impact cognitive behavior. These controls set the cultists at odds with commonsense and normative human characteristics such as self-preservation or rational decision-making. In the Jihadist narrative this starts with creating entire communities isolated from all society and calling others to come join them.
The terrorist’s adoption of the story of the Prophet Mohammed’s hijrah, or “emigration” from Mecca to Medina to found Islam, has been coopted by the terrorists to mean leaving the modern world and one’s family behind. Using the word hijrah in this way gives the prospective recruit a religious justification to run completely away from their past and join the CoJ. “Emigrating” to an ISIS or al-Qaeda base allows them to be free from all communication, influence, and ties with their family, friends, and the world outside of the cult. It offers a new reality in a new world where the rules, actions, and requirements are specifically designed for the cultist believer to be thoroughly indoctrinated. Within that community is the strict control of dress, behavior, and adherence to piety. These are common milieu control techniques most of us recognize when we remember the camps of other death cults such as Jonestown in Guyana, the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, or the Aum Shinrikyo compound in Tokyo.735
According to a study by psychologist J. M. Curtis, there are as many as nine identifying factors found in potential members who could join cults:
[G]eneralized ego-weakness, emotional vulnerability, propensities toward dissociative states; tenuous, deteriorated, or nonexistent family relations and support systems; inadequate means of dealing with exigencies of survival; history of severe child abuse or neglect; exposure to idiosyncratic or eccentric family patterns; proclivities toward or abuse of controlled substances; unmanageable and debilitating situational stress and crises; intolerable socioeconomic conditions.736
Cult expert and survivor Steve Hassan associated ISIS recruiting as being similar to the People’s Church cult, where almost a thousand followers willfully committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Hassan worked as an investigator on arguably the most dangerous pre–9/11 religious cult in the world, Aum Shinrikyo. This group sought to topple the government of Japan through developing and deploying sophisticated weapons of mass destruction such as Sarin gas and the Ebola virus. Hassan was called to Japan after their terror nerve gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, to help the CBS news program 60 Minutes make sense of it all. He had full access to the Aum Shinrikyo compound and members where he learned their indoctrination techniques up close.
From his experience with Aum Shinrikyo and other groups, Hassan developed the B.I.T.E. model of cult identification,737 an acronym identifying the master controls cults place on their recruits in Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotions. His scale identifies four major areas of control and thirty-nine specific behavioral identifiers that characterize cults.
Behavior Control
This is exercised through regulating or dramatically altering their physical reality, associations and friends, clothing, food, and sexuality. Much like Lifton’s milieu control, grooming the environment and incessant indoctrination dominates their time in the group through prayer, memorization, and rigid adherence to dogma in a highly controlled environment. The entire jihadist movement is framed on behavior acceptable only to the group’s doctrine.
Information Control
This is practiced by withholding information detrimental to the group, limiting or forbidding communication with the outside world, and making all information a choice between belief of the dogma, or heresy and conspiracy with the enemies of the cult. They encourage spying and create dramatic, magnificent propaganda that glorifies the criminal excesses of the group. Jihadists also use an emotional control technique Lifton called “Mystical Manipulation,” defined as the “manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group… some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.” The jihadists often demonstrate this in the post-mortem manipulation of the facial muscles of dead comrades’ corpses to show them as smiling. This ghoulish trick allows jihadi cult leaders to convince others that the suicide bombers went to Paradise serene, and are happy even after death.
Thought Control
This technique requires members to internalize the ideology as the only pure truth and, Hassan says, “adopt the traffickers’ map of reality” as the only reality allowed. The member is given a new identity and name. Hypnotic techniques are used such as rote memorization and practices to alter the mental state of the subject.
Cults demand purity of their members as a core component of Thought Control: The world around them is always dirty and corrupt. This purity requirement drives the self-cleansing internal security mechanisms of jihadist groups whereby they not only kill all others who do not join them, but they also kill members who do not maintain the same rigorous mindset. Each member strives to be purer than the next. Guilt or fear is then used to control their ability to do whatever is asked of them.
Emotional Control
Cults manipulate feelings by encouraging constant questioning of the sincerity of one’s own identity, piety, and sincerity to evoke emotional responses that can be reoriented toward loyalty or to overcome decency. They foster in recruits a sense of deep guilt in not practicing the religion, ridicule them for being part of the enemy forces, and insist that salvation can only be found with the cult’s guidance.
Lifton also identified many other cult identification factors including the rule that doubt or dissent is never, ever tolerated, and that rational or critical thinking is treated as dangerous and heretical. In an interview with National Geographic, Morten Storm, a Danish convert to Islam and ex-member of al-Qaeda, made it clear that the moment a cultist stops believing is the moment they are generally expected to be killed:
I’d also begun to be deeply troubled by the killing or maiming of civilians in the name of Allah. The Bali bombings, Madrid, London—these were acts of violence targeting ordinary people. If this was part of Allah’s preordained plan, I wanted no part of it. But I also knew that if I told people how I felt, I could be killed for apostasy.738
The technique of “confession” of their past sins before joining the cult was a method of thought control as well. This practice is seen in virtually all Jihadist videos where people from a wide array of backgrounds and languages stand with their guns in hand to disparage their pre-Hijrah lives, their secular families, time spent among the unbelievers. They ultimately confess that their only salvation was to join the jihad and enter the Dar al-Harb—“House of War”—where salvation awaits them.
Punishment is also used as a powerful tool to affect behavior as well. Transgressors are punished severely and fear of being out of step. But the Cult of Jihad takes it a step further. They use the rare Islamic practice of takfir, declaring one is an infidel, as the ultimate threat of punishment and the ultimate exercise of human power. Lifton calls this “Dispensing of existence.” It is the “prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not.” He believed that empowering members with this characteristic is the single most dangerous part of cult indoctrination.
The practice of takfir empowers the street-level terrorist to kill anyone at any time on the slightest whim by simply declaring that the victim is an unbeliever, an apostate, or a traitor. In the CoJ every individual in the world is considered an unbeliever, except the jihadists. Unbelievers have only two options: Join the jihad (which is almost never accepted) or death. It creates a mindset where each jihadi is forged into a weapon system imbued with the power of God himself. In December 2014 the leader of the Nigerian terror cult Boko Haram, Abu Bakr Shekau, declared the entirety of Nigeria’s 85 million Muslims and the rest of the world as unbelievers destined for murder or slavery:
Salafist are disbelievers. Tariqah Tijani (Sufis) are disbelievers. Al-Qadiriyah are disbelievers. The Naqshabandiyah are disbelievers. Shaziliya are disbelievers. Muta’zila are disbelievers. Sahiziliyyah are disbelievers. Shi’ite (Muslims) are disbelievers. Democracies are disbelievers. The Saudi Arabians are not Islamic they are the people of Saloul, not followers of the Prophet!… They are Disbelievers! We will Kill! We will hold slaves! We will selllllllll… slaves!
He set about proving it by summarily executing as many as two thousand people in two major cities.
An innovation on “dispensing of existence” is the Boko Haram practice of mass murder of one’s family before a suicide operation, so that they precede them in paradise. On January 6, 2016 Leena al-Qasem a resident of Raqqa was turned in for “Apostasy.” She was brought out from her job at the Central Post Office and publically executed by her own son, Ali Saqr, in front of her co-workers. He shot her through the head. She was accused of trying to encourage her son to leave ISIS. Days later he wrote a letter to the media claiming he did not do it but implying that if it were in his power he would have. He then publically redoubled his oath of loyalty to ISIS. This violation is not just a capital crime against Sharia law—its indifference to common human decency is abhorrent.
THE ISIS RADICALIZATION METHODOLOGY
Before any individuals go to an ISIS jihad zone or are selected to represent the group in a home mission, they first need to go through a process that brings them officially into the organization. In the professional terrorist group al-Qaeda, they relied on talent scouts who would find already radicalized professionals and make face to face contact. Only then would they be brought to a training center and swear fealty to the group and dispatched to a mission.
The brilliance of the ISIS system is that its recruitment system is almost passive. The prospective jihadi must radicalize his/herself, then make contact with a talent scout, be passed onto a recruiter, and then finally they will travel under the guidance of a handler. After acceptance into the organization, they are trained and equipped for combat missions and deployed.
The ISIS radicalization pathway has some similarities to al-Qaeda in that they too inspire their members and bring them into the organization through recruiters, but the entire ISIS process is far less covert, has fewer counterintelligence checks on the background of the prospective recruit, and relies on placing the burden of proof of usefulness on the volunteer. Al-Qaeda’s selection process was much more like the grooming and qualifications program of a military special forces or intelligence agency. Isis is more like a regular military volunteer. ISIS accepts a far lower level of proof by allowing the recruit to prove themselves simply by engaging with them on social media or through contacts among the already radicalized. Virtually anyone can be recruited into ISIS. Osama bin Laden himself worried about the adventurers, murderers, and fanboys who wanted to join al-Qaeda, but al-Baghdadi welcomes them all.
This is actually the process of recruiting intelligence assets used by spy agencies worldwide. It provides for security in the recruitment process and allows for the prospective jihadi to be isolated or disposed of if they are found to be spies.
ISIS IDEOLOGICAL RADICALIZATION PATHWAY
1. Admiration—Tweets, videos, films, or face to face discussions are used to show the strength and heroism of the cultists. This draws a level of admiration from some personalities.
2. Inspiration—The violent images and religious rhetoric overwhelms the individual and makes them feel that they could be part of the ISIS cult machinery.
3. Radicalization—The individual affiliates with the terrorist philosophy or the person who makes contact with them and aspires to become one of their ilk. This is generally the “fanboy” stage.
4. Isolation—The process of Hijrah, or emotionally departing and “emigrating” from the family, friends, and community secretly and planning to physically depart from the land of the Unbelievers.
5. Identification—Adopting the trappings, name, or behaviors of ISIS or its members.
6. Dedication—Swearing Bayah or oath of loyalty to ISIS and to obey the orders of al-Baghdadi.
7. Operations—The individual is now part of ISIS and trained to participate in the terror operations.
HOME-TO-HIJRAH PATHWAY
Once a person has proceeded through to at least the Identification part of the radicalization process, they generally will attempt to physically travel to join the group in one of its Jihad zones. This could be in Syria, Libya, or Yemen—or if they choose, they can remain behind “enemy lines” in their home nation.
1. First Contact—The prospective recruit reaches out to ISIS scouts who watch social media, explore video links, or have face-to-face chance encounters.
2. Talent Scout—The recruit is put into communication with a talent scout who remains in contact until the sincerity of the individual is assessed.
3. Handler—Once the recruit is validated a handler is assigned. It may be the talent scout him/herself or another professional handler who finesses the Hijrah process. Once near a jihad zone, ISIS will bring the individual to a site where they can be physically assessed and placed in isolation until transfer to an ISIS counter-intelligence unit can be accomplished.
4. Logistician—The ISIS staff who handle the transfer of recruits across borders will supply transportation, lodging, and meals before hand-over.
5. Hand-Over—The handlers will pass the recruit over to a counter-intelligence team who will interrogate and determine the truthfulness of the person’s conviction.
6. Induction—A successful recruit will go through a rigorous religious and psychological training process before being transferred to a combat unit.
BI-POLAR WORLD OF ROMANTIC RELIGIOUS FANTASY
For an allegedly true Islamic movement, ISIS espouses jaw-dropping hypocrisy concerning mass murder. The jihadists ceaselessly complain in videos, writings, and tweets about the murder or deaths of children by Syria, the Kurds, Shi’ites, Israel, and America and in the same breath claim to carry out wholesale genocide, rape, and slavery in the name of the entire Muslim world.
To lure in those with a semblance of conscience they claim to be primarily a social movement that is forced to fight in defense of the defenseless. They claim to run a fully functioning nation that repairs power, runs nursing homes, and gives freely to charity, all the while mass-murdering Muslims with an intensity and hatred the Crusaders would respect. In fact, after taking Mosul, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may have bested King Richard the Lionhearted’s famous massacre at Acre in 1191 of three thousand bound hostages by capturing and killing virtually every Muslim soldier, government worker, Yazidi, Kurd, and Christian they could lay hands on in Northern Iraq.
Among one another, the cult is described as an amazing movement that transcends the modern world and allows the jihadi to go back to what they believe is a more perfect time: the earliest days of Islam. It exists without consideration as to the modernity of the world or changes within Islam. In fact, every word they speak is as if they were actual companions of the Prophet Mohammed, sitting in the sand, eating dates at the battle of Badr, or passing him water in the trenches at Yathrib. They live as if the end of times and their role in it are happening in their seventh-century lives. They do not live in the twenty-first century, until they want a jar of Nutella or a case of Red Bull energy drinks. It’s a dance between reality and imagination that does not exist among modern Muslims. The global jihad movement lives the fantasy, and each murder gives them paradise plus points (Ajur) toward a perfect future drawn from the past. It is a game of Call of Duty with real guns, real blood, and game over gets you directly into heaven filled with rewards.
Whether in print or in film, the constant drumbeat of a “holier than thou” message of piety is supreme in the strategic narrative of ISIS. Its members demand the listener adopt an unrealistic faith, often delivered through Nasheeds, or religious chants, in an intensely repetitious manner. These elements are present in virtually all the official videos and audio recordings produced by the organizations.
The jihadist cultists are not just mimicking the early days of the Qur’an; they are reliving the events and templating them over today’s terror acts as a homage. For example, every terror attack or offensive combat action they perform is called a Ghazwah, the raids carried out by the Prophet Mohammed against opposing forces. In the modern day, as Iraqi forces planned to take back the city of Mosul, there were reports that the sectors of the city held by ISIS fighters started digging fighting trenches. Another such 17-km long trench was dug outside of their capital Raqqah. Many believe that they were attempting to recreate the conditions of a victory the Prophet Mohammed won in 626 against a larger force using a defensive trench at the Battle of Khandaq (the Trench). Even though this may seem an illogical tactical move in the face of American aerial firepower, it is more likely that ISIS believes the proper way to win a twenty-first century battle is to inspire their men by re-creating a seventh-century event.
ISLAMIC KABUKI THEATER
ISIS also exhibits a convincing version of Islamic Kabuki theater. To the jihadists Islam is a mask, and their role in it is a form of Kabuki theater—wearing black uniforms, beards, hair locks, expressing piety, and enforcing an unwavering religious drama in the face of the cameras, but they still drink Red Bull, rape women, and secretly drink alcohol among themselves. Swearing to follow al-Wala wal Bara—“allegiance to all thing Godly and forbidding of all ungodly”—but using un-Islamic Western inventions such as personal mobile phones, chatting with women on Facebook and Twitter, driving to battle in Cadillac Escalades, or showing off hijab-clad women posing on 2014 BMWs. All of the false piety is designed to lure the wannabe to the glimmering sexual and personal treasures of the Caliphate, all while mass-murdering Muslims.
In fact, by posting photos of themselves in combat action poses and praising images of smiling dead, the jihadis clearly harbor a deep narcissistic desire to be honored as heroes and martyrs. By their own definition their self-indulgence is a form of selfie Shirk—idolatry and worship of images—with the photos and videos of their heroes placing them above the average Muslim and next to God. They have killed other Muslims for less.
Evidence suggests that ISIS and al-Qaeda have been using cult recruiting and control models for more than just religious fanaticism. Intelligence, counterterrorist, and police agencies may make inroads by understanding this is a dehumanized cult. Steve Hassan believes that law enforcement requires extensive training on the methods of cult recruiting and to learn to identify how people become situationally susceptible, particularly through the Internet. As of now, the agencies are facing a behavioral control network that has perfected a mind-control subroutine that makes recruits impervious to family, love, intimidation, or death.
ISIS Cultist Demand Changes in Islam
In the end ISIS or any future variant will continue to be a vindication for the plan established a quarter century ago. Bin Laden’s challenge to any and all jihadists contained three goals: (1) fight and die to establish a neo-Islamic Caliphate; (2) re-engineer Islam to topple the existing power structures through terror; and (3) provoke and fight the rest of the world to fulfill the prophecies of the End of Days.
WHAT THEY REALLY WANT: TO RE-ENGINEER ISLAM… AT GUNPOINT
It is far worse than heresy to work to destroy the 1436 years of Islam for their own amusement. In fact, where they believe the Qur’an is wrong or too accommodating for their tastes, they correct it. In their visually vibrant and slick online recruiting magazine, Dabiq, ISIS turns the words of the Prophet Mohammed as a religion of peace on their head. The February 2015 cover article was “Islam is the religion of the sword, not pacifism.” What can be more un-Islamic than rejecting the Prophet’s own teachings?
Clearly the usurpation of the Qur’an and Islamic history in this manner is not only crazy to any Muslim you would care to ask, it’s a reengineering of Islam. The members of this cult believe it is the other 1.8 billion Muslims who were corrupted by centuries of bad Islam.
The Cult of Jihad now led by ISIS and a close second al-Qaeda seek nothing less than the seizure, dismantling, and destruction of the entirety of Islamic thought, culture, jurisprudence, and tradition since 632. All of those centuries of tolerance, discovery, and compromise with the rest of the world are weakness to be ruthlessly eliminated. To them, little of Islam can be salvaged—the Muslim world is going to have to be burned to the ground to be saved for God.
The ideology has always been clear about one thing: For victory against the other world’s civilizations, everyone under their mandate must vow themselves to two new pillars which do not exist as obligations in Islam—Jihad and Martyrdom. Not satisfied with the destruction of Islam, the CoJ intends to harness the slave nation it will build from Muslims and march with what remains for the destruction of all other religions, cultures, and national boundaries. When this mass march and slaughter is complete, only then will they be satisfied that the groundwork has been laid for the glorious end of days. Those jihadists left behind will be brought to paradise to be reunited with their dead comrades and sit next to the Prophet Mohammed and God.