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The World’s Richest Death Cult:

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

!A comprehensive analysis on the rise of the Islamic State, its origins in the Iraqi power and security

vacuum, application of social movement theory, and predictions for the future of the movement with

the black flag.

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Evin Phoenix, Gender and Culture Scholar

Excelsior College Sociology Department

September 27, 2014

Who is Isis?

Over the past summer, a media firestorm began when a radical Islamist group

exploded into the headlines. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an offshoot of Al

Qaeda, is a formidable death cult which has taken vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria

(Piven, 2014). Under the banner of Islamic Jihad, they have instituted extreme law over their so-

called caliphate, committed crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing, broadcast

public executions and beheadings, engaged in systematic violence against women, and

recruited child soldiers (Piven, 2014). This group is Al Qaeda, Mexican drug cartels, Robert

Mugabe’s torture and death squads, and the devil all rolled into one; except ISIL isn’t just a

social movement - they are actually now acting as a burgeoning international state.

This paper will explore the complex origins of this astonishingly powerful movement,

and attempt to explain the lure of this social movement for people from developed nations.

Dozens of Americans and perhaps hundreds of Europeans have crossed the border of Turkey

and Syria and joined ISIL’s army, where perhaps half of the army is actually foreign-born

(Piven, 2014). What is causing foreigners to flow into Syria and Iraq and join terrorist groups

which have institutionalized the most barbaric and extreme forms of racism? This paper will

explore what ISIL is, how they recruit, and will include predictions for their future as a social

movement, based on theoretical frameworks of social movements.

!The Rise of IS

According to Paul Johnson, a British historian on the Middle East, Islam has been

experiencing an increasing radicalization for the past twenty-five years (Johnson, 2004). In

Syria, civil war has been ravaging the country for years (Johnson, 2004). Millions of refugees

and hundreds of thousands of casualties later (Johnson, 2004), it still rages on with no end in

sight. When US forces left Iraq, the Iraqi government struggled to maintain law and order. The

removal of Saddam Hussein was the beginning of the crumbling of the Iraqi state and its

entire society. The Syrian civil war, the removal of Hussein from power, and the withdrawal of

the vast majority of US forces left an intense black hole; a power vacuum within which the

most extreme was likely to prevail. In this vacuum formed one of the most severe and cruel

organizations and movements the world has seen in modern history. Fueled by the flow of

arms from Russia, Europe (especially France), and the US most of all (Johnson, 2004), the

extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were able to implement their

fundamentalist brand of violent state-building with the weapons and equipment left behind

by fleeing Iraqi forces, the US troops, and conquered Syrian army and rebel territory.

The group known currently as the Islamic State has existed under various names since

the 1990s, and eventually evolved out of Al-Qaeda (Ghosh, 2014) and a similar group, Jama’at

al-Tawhid w’al-Jihad (the Party of Monotheism and Jihad). Individuals from both

organizations combined to form present-day IS. Al-Qaeda and JTJ eventually combined in a

way around 2004, and began to splinter immediately due to disagreement on tactics (Ghosh,

2014). They split in 2005, when Osama Bin Laden’s “right-hand man” Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote

a letter to the leader of the JTJ movement criticizing his targeting of Muslim civilians due to

sectarian disagreements (Ghosh, 2014). The Sunni organizational terrorist leaders of JTJ chose

to target Shiite Muslims instead of the typical Al-Qaeda target of primarily American citizens.

At this point, the two groups split from one another, and the leader of the JTJ group, Abu

Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US bombing of his hideout.

After this point, US troops saw a way to capitalize on the death of Zarqawi. Petraeus

funded and trained Iraqis in fighting the followers of Zarqawi, who were mostly foreign

(Ghosh,2014). The US was able to manage to do this to engineer an exit form Iraq, but it did

nothing to heal the Sunni-Shiite rift. The power vacuum deepened, and the JTJ further split

from their former name of Al-Qaeda Iraq (the Iraqi regional organization of Al Qaeda) and

rebranded themselves as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, under the leadership of a

local extremist, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. More than just an organizational jihadi leader, he was

an official spiritual leader and an Islamic cleric, giving his power an authenticity and

legitimacy as a Muslim fundamentalist (Ghosh, 2014). ISIL was born, and its ranks were full of

former soldiers of Saddam Hussein’s military and other terrorist networks (Ghosh, 2014). They

had the capacity to make enormous gains, and they began to build their own caliphate, or

Islamic state.

Now rebranded, the caliph Baghdadi began to reflect his broad ambitions of ruling

from the Mediterranean to the Gulf (Ghosh, 2014), with renaming to the more generic Islamic

State, and they made gains in territory in Syria and Iraq, implementing extreme Sharia law

(Ghosh, 2014). Further, local Islamic State commanders were able to choose for themselves

how to deal with local religious minorities (Ghosh, 2014), whether Shiite, Christian, or Jewish.

!IS Mobilization Process Tactics

The Islamic State has become incredibly powerful in its operating region. They appear

to have given a platform and sense of belonging to many people who may have felt that their

faith and their communities were ravaged by international meddling, armed conflict, and

sectarian violence. As members of the Islamic State movement, they are building their own

large community in the Middle East, a cultural homeland. Those in the movement may feel

that they are finally building a state for themselves as “faithful Muslims” who were denied a

home of their own. If they feel that the only true Muslims are like them, then more moderate

Islamic people would be seen as a threat to their lifestyle, not to mention foreign nationals

who lived in their communities or foreign armies that attempted to form their governments.

Analyses of the rise of the Islamic State and other extremist Islamic movements fail to

recognize the political motivations and foolishly fixate on theological debates. The

explanations behind any Quranic interpretations of jihad tend to dominate any discussions

regarding Jihadist movements, but the explanations are actually much more complex. The

lack of socioeconomic mobility in Muslim countries, coupled with the legacies of Euro-

American imperialism, and magnified by limited natural resources (compared to other regions

of the world), as well as damaging US foreign policy (that at times has aided the Islamist

movements) is more to blame than a single sentence in the Quran being taken in a very

specific way. The verses of the Quran appear to be interpreted in a way that merely allows for

justification of armed conflict to make political gains.

According to Robert J. Brym (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 296), suicide bombing and

other tactics used by Jihadist movements are a “last resort” after more traditional approaches

may have been exhausted. The Palestinians, for example, resorted to Islamic Fundamentalist

answers when diplomatic negotiations broke down in the 1990s (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p.

296). As stated in the text, “When secularism failed, notions of ‘martyrdom’ and ‘holy war’

gained in importance,” while most suicide bombers were found to have little religious

inclinations. The suicide bombings in Iraq, for example, began out of a very specific context of

political conflict, not necessarily religious alone. The US and UK - led invasion of Iraq

established a “Shi’a - controlled regime,” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 297). That left out the

now-fighters in the Islamic State of the government, greatly to their detriment. So when

Saddam Hussein was forcibly removed, and the state of Iraq fell, the US helped form a

government without proportionate representation of Sunnis and Shiites. The Islamic State and

Al Qaeda have wanted to create Sunni governments for years (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p.

297), and the US troops withdrawal allowed for a large staging of an armed push for control. In

part, IS may be a result of this, as well as retaliation for counterinsurgency operations, and a

“strategic response to institutional developments which suggest that Shiite-controlled Iraq is

about to become more stable,” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 297). If this was the same

perception held by members of IS at the time, they may have seen this moment (US troop

withdrawal) as the perfect political opportunity. In this way, the formation and success so far of

the Islamic State may be a result of adopting last resort tactics to “help them restore control

over territory they perceive as theirs,” (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 297). Unfortunately, their

expansion into much of Syria and Iraq is indicative of their successful movement building.

Furthermore, it is also unfortunate that many attempts to repress these Islamist and Jihadist

movements end up reinforcing “radical opposition, and even intensify them,” (Goodwin and

Jasper, 2003, p. 299). Ultimately, this is about political conflict, and focusing on the religious

narrative is a deliberately orchestrated distraction that undermines any international response.

Now, the children of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 are all grown up, and they are

turning to extremism as a solution in a desperate political climate for socioeconomic struggle.

Their generation is defined by this political response. The case and point of this particular

notion rests in the public relations representations of life under Sharia law in the Islamic State

caliphate (specifically, a contested area of Syria). According to a fascinating VICE News

documentary (2014), the leaders of the Islamic State in Syria have implemented the full

spectrum of infrastructure of state-building. From governing court structures that assist in

settling agricultural and family disputes, to a street law enforcement agency that polices

women's garments and shopkeepers’ operations, it appears to be a full-scale attempt at

maintaining their version of law and order. VICE News may have been privy to only what IS

wanted the West to see (especially possible foreign recruits to IS territory), as many of the

more extreme policies weren’t discussed. However, the bodies of crucified law-breakers were

on full display in public areas, a reminder that the Islamic State is no Utopia for the Muslim

faithful and international sympathizers.

In this way, IS is trying to build more than a movement; they are trying to create a

unified Muslim nation with statehood status and full social, governmental, and cultural

infrastructure. As part of the IS propaganda machine, they even released a map of the five-year

plan for expanding the caliphate as shown below in Figure 1.

!

Figure 1.

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The Islamic State has carefully constructed a narrative of justifications and a modus

operandi that “establish authoritative claims to speak on behalf of their constituency,” as stated

by Roxborough (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 402). They claim to “constitute an alternative

government” currently in Iraq and Syria, and later, a large part of the rest of the world in the

Eastern Hemisphere (Goodwin and Jasper, 2003, p. 402). They have effectively framed their

movement with theological legitimacy, political authority, and cultural monopoly. This has

been systematically done via terrorization, intimidation, violence, and propaganda that

provides further enticement for the disenfranchised and disillusioned members of a society

from which some may feel alienated from the false universal claims of socioeconomic

opportunity. Framing their movement in this way has been highly effective because it provides

extremists a global collective identity with cultural authority and legitimacy that grows more

effective as IS gains more ground.

!!Figure 2. - IS fighters in a US tank,

likely abandoned by fleeing Iraqi

armies. From an ISIS Instagram

account.

!!!!

Not only is the Islamic State a socio-political movement, but they are a religious cult

due to their theological claims of legitimacy and authority. According to Janja Lalich (Goodwin

and Jasper, 2003, p. 123), IS meets every requirement for the formation of social structure cult

dimensions. One, that they have “charismatic authority,” such as in the caliph Baghdadi. Two,

that they have a “transcendent belief system,” of “inviolable” quality that is allegedly based on

the words of the Muslim prophet Muhammad and in service to God Allah. Three, that they

have “systems of control,” such as “rigid boundaries which define inaccessible space and topics

closed to discussion or inquiry,” as IS has an extremely repressive and inflexible Sharia law

system of governance. Finally, that they have “systems of influence,” such as “internalized

norms, all-pervasive modeling, and constant peer monitoring.” IS has all the trappings of a

glorified cult.

The Islamic State appeared to benefit from the power vacuum that was created when

US troops withdrew from Iraq. Between this and the perception that a Shiite government may

be on the road to some stability (though Iraq still suffered from immense sectarian violence),

members of IS may have perceived an ideal political opportunity to grow their movement. This

cultural perception was exemplified by the growth of the Islamic State since the withdrawal of

US troops. Additionally, discontent grew with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,

contributing to political motivation and perceived opportunity as discontent grew publicly

(Stratfor Analysis, 2014). The resource mobilization theory is applicable somewhat also, given

that the Islamic State has liberal access to the Internet and social media, as well as big-budget

film production, with which they can distribute effective propaganda movies for recruitment

and cause justification. Without social media and the Internet, the Islamic State would not be

enjoying their global popularity among Islamists.

!IS Recruitment Tactics

The main tactics used for recruitment are propaganda videos and intimidation. They

have built a fragmented state by targeting important sites with military strategy, such as

bridges, oil pipelines, power stations, and water facilities (Stratfor Analysis, 2014). Most of the

Islamic State’s funding comes from their captured oil fields and refineries, which brings in

several million dollars a day to finance their activities (Rhodan, 2014).

Additionally, the Islamic State has turned to social media as an effective recruitment

tool. Capitalizing on the cultural alienation often experienced by Muslims in Western society

(which is rife with Islamophobia, intolerance, and ignorance of Islam), they use social media,

forums, and propaganda films to attempt to radicalize people especially in the West, and even

provide resources on getting to Syria to fight with the Islamic State, or be a bride to an IS

fighter (or widow) (Wood, 2014). Recruitment of socially vulnerable people in this way has

become such a problem that entire community groups have mobilized to prevent the

radicalization of immigrant Muslim youth, such as a Somali program in a Minnesota suburb

(Al Jazeera America, 2014).

The religious narrative of IS hopes to emulate the style and content of early Islamic

leaders, considered a golden age of Islamic empire building (Wood, 2014). The medieval

practices of the day, such as beheadings, stonings, crucifixions, slavery and taxing non-

Muslims are main tenets of Sharia law and IS culture (Woods, 2014). As Wood notes (2014), this

romanticized period of early Islam has been a major fantasy for both terrorist groups such as

Al Qaeda, and Muslims worldwide for many years. Islamic scholars point out that the idea of a

unified Muslim state would be the manifestation of the goals of many Islamic movements

throughout the centuries, making the recent developments of IS very easy to romanticize for

traditional Muslims who may wish to overlook the crimes against humanity (Wood, 2014). Still

other Muslim scholars debate the true meaning and interpretation of “jihad,” with some

claiming that the Quran indeed calls for violence against non-Muslims (Paul, 2014).

As for legitimacy, the current caliph of the Islamic State meets lineage requirements

and a grasp of classical Arabic, as well as ancient Islamic thought, that lends an authoritative

color to his otherwise illegitimate use of Islam as justification for such acts of violence (Wood,

2014). Muslims who identify as conservative may have mixed feelings about such a religious

figure, who appears to be a legitimate authority; even if they disagree with his means to his

ends. Such means have actually served to alienate so many Muslims in the world that IS has

made far more foes than friends, as Muslims worldwide condemn the group (Eichenwald,

2014). These enemies so far include the US and its allies, Salafis (traditionalist Muslims who do

not support violence), the Arab oil sheikhs, all Shiites, Iran an its military, Iraq and its military,

Syria and its military (as well as the rebel Free Syrian Army), Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda,

and the overwhelming and vast majority of the world’s one-billion-plus Muslims (Eichenwald,

2014). The enduring hope is that IS will destroy itself by alienating everyone else.

!The Future of IS

So far, the jury is out on the success of the Islamic State. The gains in territory as well as

on social media have been extraordinarily rapid and severe, but there can be no certainty of

their future. Based on sociological theoretical frameworks of social movements theory, IS will

probably decline as rapidly as they formed. Firstly, IS demands too much of their adherents. In

a recent viral video, a woman secretly filmed life in a captured Syrian city. One young woman

is seen at an Internet cafe conversing fluently in French with her parents, who sob openly that

their daughter left France for the Islamic State, aided by Internet forums. She explained that

she is committed to the cause, and that nothing will convince her. Eventually, this kind of

absolute requirement of denouncing everyone and everything that questions the role of IS in

one’s life will alienate people even more than whatever drove them to such extremism. In such

a society, no one can truly feel a sense of confident solidarity, because danger is omnipresent.

There will be burnouts. Though participants may benefit from selective solidary and

purposive incentives (Staggenborg, 2011, p. 32), such high-risk activism and strict requirements

are unsustainable. These structural factors of those living in the caliphate create

organizational bonds, but how long will people perceive the benefits as greater than the costs

of being a member in this movement?

One way to guarantee the success of the Islamic State is for the US to make another

major foreign policy blunder and invade Syria and Iraq on a large scale. The mass killing of

Muslim civilians by the US is exactly what ISIS wants, because the Islamic world will unite

against the US. They are baiting us with the enormous pressure of beheading our citizens and

sharing the videos with the world. Let IS alienate the entire world, but let’s not succumb to

precisely what they want in order to engineer their own terrorist state.

References:

!EICHENWALD, K. (2014). ISIS WILL FALL. Newsweek Global, 163(11), 12-15.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Presents Challenges for Baghdad. (2014). Stratfor

Analysis, 58.

Ghosh, B. (2014, August 14). ISIS: A Short History. The Atlantic. Retrieved October 10, 2014.

Goodwin, J., & Jasper, J. (2003). The social movements reader: Cases and concepts. Malden,

MA: Blackwell Pub.

JOHNSON, P. (2014). THE CURRENT SPASM IN ISLAM. Forbes, 194(2), 30.

Minnesota community launches program in effort to prevent ISIL recruiting. Al Jazeera America.

(2014). Retrieved September 28, 2014.

PAUL, S. (2014, September 19). Muslim Scholar Tells Obama: Islamic State Is Indeed Islamic.

Investors Business Daily. p. A15.

Rhodan, M. (2014). U.S. and Allies Launch New Strikes Targeting ISIS Oil Fields. Time

Magazine. Retrieved October 11, 2014.

Staggenborg, S. (2011). Issues in the Study of Social Movements and Collective Action. In Social

Movements. New York: Oxford University Press.

VICE News. (2014). The Islamic State. Vice News.

WOOD, G. (2014). THE SECRETS OF ISIS. New Republic, 245(15), 14.