Rise of ISIS

Akhilesh Nagari
As I was surfing internet on 29th June 2014, I came across a post in which Abu-Bakr al Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria declared himself as the new “caliph” of the world’s Muslims. Baghdadi as standing on the Mosul’s Great Mosque demanded the loyalty of Muslims and urged them to “obey” him and “make jihad” for the sake of Allah.
After seeing this post it took me a year to go through each and every possible document on ISIS available on internet, books and many journals and as the result I found answers to some of the question such as what makes IS so powerful? There are no simple straightforward answers, as the group it derives the strength from a complex set of factors that are deeply intertwined with regional politics, culture and ambitions. To understand the rise of IS, we have to look into the geopolitical conditions.
Before the Syrian civil war broke out into 2011, Baghdadi was the leader of Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda , which has been pushed to the brink of collapse by U.S-Iraqi forces as well as Sunni tribal fighters. When anti Government protest in Syria took a violent turn, the  regional heavyweight took a strong position against the Syrian President Mr. Bashar al-Assad  and  Baghdadi found an opportunity for the revival of the prospects. When the civil war intensified he sent Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, one of the deputies in the ISI, across the border to Syria in late 2011.
Joulani set up the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syria branch to fight Mr. Assad’s soldiers. In an extremly complicated syrian civil war, where multiple opposition forces backed MR. Assad’s regional rival, which were fighting both Government troops and each other, Joulanis Nusra front emerged as the most formidable anti-Government rivals. Money and weapons from Assad’s enemies fled to Joulani which makes Nusra Front even more ferocious. But Joulani fell out with Baghdadi in 2013 after that the latter anounced a formal merger of the Nusra front and his ISI. Both the Nusra Front and the leadership of al-qaedacenteral opposed the move, following which a bitter war broke between Baghdadi group, which came to be known as ISIS and the Nusra front. Powered by fighters from Iraq and foregin countries, ISIS drove the Nusra front out of the territories it captured in Syria and established a base for the future caliphate. ISIS channelised this discontent with the new strength it earned from the Syrian battlefields and launched an ambitious military campaign against the Iraq army in Fallujah and Mosul must have surprised even Baghdadi. With Mosul under conrol he went to declare the caliphate, anointing himself as one of the key figures in Islamic history.
Though it can be identified as an islamist oranisation IS is differrentfrom the popular political islamic stream. The root of IS lies in Wahhabism, a stricter, puritanical stream. Wahhabism which is derived from the preaching of Muhammad ibn-abd al-wahhab, an 18th centuary religious scholar. Wahhab rejected muslims worshipping the dead or having any saints or making pilgrimages to tomb or special Mosque. He asked his followers to return to the “fundamentals” of Islam, declined practice of shia, sufis and others as invalid interpretations of the Islam. The modern day Islamic state uses wahhab ideals to explain its barbarism. When it bombs a Shia Mosque, its point is that it is “non-islamic”. When it destroy a tomb or ancient statues, it says that it has no place in Islam. Minorities are being target beacause they are “apostates”.
Wahhab’s interpretation actually stands in contrast with several Koranic verses. [There shall be no compulsion in the religion (2:256); if Allah had so willed, he would have made you a single person, but to test you in what He Hath given you: so strives as in a race of all virtues (5:48);  nor will you be a worshippers of what I worship for you is your religion and for me is my religion (109:1 to 6)]. But wahhabism gained prominance in Arabia after it become a tool to stand a political power.
It was Muhammad Ibn Saud, a tribal chieftan in centeral Arabia, who first used wahhabs ideas to mobilise socio-political power in the 18th centuary. His son, Adb al-Aziz Ibn Muhammad, used takfir(the practice to be declaring the fellow muslims to be a Kafir) as a weapon to silence resistance to his political ambitions. In the early 19th centuary, he attacked the shia city of Karbala, in todays Iraq and slaughtered thousands of Shia. IS approach towards shia is same as by Ibn Muhammad. During the first World War, when the saudi started mobilizing power under Adb al-Aziz, Wahhabism gained political relevance again. His Bedouim Army, known as Ikhwan, who was infamous for its vbrutality and orthodoxy. The Ikhwan’s brutality actually helped al-saud family to gain political power and establish the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is emulating Ikhwan when his men behead hostages and prisoners and publicize such acts.

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