The Diabolical Appeal of ISIS

Last update: 2024-12-16 15:57:43

Both before and after the appearance of al-Qa’ida, the pressures on Sunni Islam and Arab countries were strong. And it was these pressures that generated the race towards the international war against terrorism when the moment came. However, Arab and Muslim observers, just as at that time they sought in dismay to find the reasons for the appeal of  al-Qa’ida, now today they analyse in an astonished way the reasons why ISIS attracts whole swathes of young Arabs from the Levant to the Maghreb.

The most banal argument of the adversaries of al-Qa’ida was that al-Qa’ida was an expression of the original nature of Islam – this was the meaning of the ‘green menace’ and the clash of civilisations. Naturally enough, the supporters of this interpretation could, and can, cite past and present events to support their thesis. But side by side with the purported religious origins of the phenomenon, they also listed as a joint cause ‘the culture’ produced by a century and a half of aversion and hostility in relation to the West. And in this there was no difference between Left and Right or between Islamists and nationalists. In their view it is, therefore, hatred with a religious, historical and psychological background that explains the extraordinary reaction of entire strata of young Arabs and Muslims to the lifestyle of Westerners and their presence over two centuries in Arab and Islamic territories. In fact, colonialism did not only involve Arabs (and Muslims): it also affected the peoples of East Asia, Africa and Latin America. And yet none of these peoples have ever thought of engaging in a blind war against Western civilians because of the fact that their ancestors colonised India or China or killed or enslaved millions of Africans.

Despite the undeniable horrors of Western colonialism and the fact that the West bequeathed us the gracious presence of Israel, what gives extra weight to these arguments was the fact that the members of al-Qa’ida  never hesitated a moment to kill other Arabs and Muslims in the terrible waves of violence that destroyed countries such as Somalia or to threaten to destroy others such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thus the question should not be confined to the appearance within religion of violent forms of fundamentalism but should embrace, beyond this, relations with civilisation and humanism and an inability to establish well organised States and to live in societies where harmony, dialogue with one’s neighbour and internal and external peace prevail.

 

The Outstretched Hand

 

However, this way of understanding the causes of religiously motivated violence did not last long. Four or five years after the attack on al-Qa’ida, Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States of America and some European countries hurried to establish organisations for dialogue and concord between the two civilisations and various studies on the ‘normality’ of religiously motivated violence appeared despite the exceptional character of some of its aspects and expressions. Serious scholars did not exclude that such anomalies could be led back to manipulation by the secret services and to infiltrations that reignited confessional, sectarian and ethnic tensions. Many believed that Israel had played an important role in everything that had occurred.

For their part, Arabs and Muslims hurried to respond in a positive way to the invitation to engage in a dialogue of civilisations and spoke about Andalusian pluralism and the conciliatory and peaceful nature of Islam, inviting their counterparts at the same time not to forget about the frightening injustices of colonialism and the Zionist usurpation which had lasted for seventy years, while in the rest of the world colonialism disappeared some time ago.

With the weakening of the wave of polemic or at least its notable regression, Westerns hurried to greet the Arab movements for change, seeing them as proof of the end of the Arab and Islamic exception. The Arabs, or so the argument ran, in normal conditions are able to effect change in a peaceful and ordered way as every other people is capable of doing. These proponents of such a justification also affirm that due attention had not been paid to the fact that the Arabs went through dictatorships and tyrannies that other peoples have not experienced, indeed could not even dream about, something which in part is said to justify widespread violence in one context or another.

 

The Return to Striking Actions

 

But the lightening-quick appearance of ISIS brought back memories of the attack of al-Qa’ida in New York and Washington, as though it had happened yesterday.  Although at the time of Bin Laden everybody (albeit with difficulty) could attribute a political or human motivation to that violence, the violence perpetrated by ISIS, like that committed by al-Zarqâwî beforehand, is dark, devastating, crazed, incomprehensible and unjustifiable. Al-Zarqâwî (2005-2006) and ISIS (2013- 2014) carried out, and still carry out, striking public executions (decapitations), as the French did in Algeria in the 1830s and the Italians in Libya in the 1920s. But the most spectacular aspect, if it can be defined as such, is the link between this terrible violence and a political institution which Arabs and Muslims remember well, that is to say the Caliphate. The phenomenon is different from the manifestations of violence that usually accompany the creation of states or regime change after revolutions, as was the case with the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions. The difference lies in the fact that ISIS sees violence as a ritual, if it can be defined in these terms, and believes that religion is defective and reaches perfection only through violence. To sum up: it is thought to be an inseparable part of religion. This sacredness (harâm) or holiness (muqaddas) involves the profanation of other sacred realities and the sacredness of other people and requires seeing the authority that goes under the name of the Caliphate as one of the columns of religion. Atrocities on this scale have never been experienced by Arabs in their history, not even during the height of their struggle against colonialism over the last two centuries.

 

Threatened Religion

 

In the studies that I have published over the last fifteen years, the most recent of which came out a few months ago, I have argued that the reproduction of the ‘Caliphate’ does not mean a return to political or religious tradition (taqlîd) because for Sunnis political power is an organisational question and one of public interest and not a [sacral: editor’s note]  imamate without which religion could not exist. This is without doubt true from a historical point of view. But the fact that the political system has become a pillar of religion changes things completely. Indeed, this transformation constitutes a threat to religion and societies because it places religion in the body of the State. And, wrongly believing that it attains fulfilment, it is absorbed by the struggle for power, breaks into pieces and collapses.

This is certainly true. But the facts remain. In a few decades, the Islamists, both Sunnis and Shiites, have managed to manipulate fundamental religious concepts and use them to achieve power. And to do this they have not hesitated to kill a frightening number of people in the name of religion.

As if this was not enough, one can read in ISIS the matching of what happened in 1979-1980 in Mecca (with the occupation of the Great Mosque), in 1979 in Iran, in 2001 in New York, in 2005-2006 in Iraq, in recent years in Nigeria with Boko Haram, and in western Africa with other organisations. These have been recurrent and growing waves of violence perpetrated in the name of religion, equipped with a strong appeal to groups of young men of the Arab world and not only that world, and to third generations of emigrants. It is a mistake to underestimate them or justify them. These are the crude facts: our religion, our countries, our ethics and our humanity are threatened.

The utility of ISIS and its counterparts – if one can speak about utility – is that it makes manifest this grave contagious illness which is the illness of extremism in the name of religion. And ‘there is no power or force but in God’.

 

* Article published in Al-Sharq al-Awsat on 19 September 2014

 

 

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