These days, scholars, intellectuals and politicians are debating the origins of the organisation known by the acronym ISIS, which has recently claimed a caliphate. Much of this debate attributes ISIS to Eastern or Western powers, but it will remain within conjecture lacking conclusive evidence. It is better not to occupy ourselves with speculation, but instead to understand the “ISIS movement” through its public statements and conduct. These are conclusive indications that it serves the plans of Islam’s enemies in targeting the region and distorting the image of Islam and Muslims before the whole world, regardless of its hidden motives and intentions. We can then discover the actual thought that produced ISIS.
It is clear that ISIS regards “establishing the Islamic state”, according to its own conception, as a “religious necessity” that cannot be subjected to weighing benefits and harms. In pursuit of this “necessity”, it justifies abhorrent acts contrary to Islamic law, the least that can be said of which is that they distort Islam’s image and drive people away from the true religion. Yet “necessities permit prohibitions”, and establishing the “state” is treated as the greatest and most pressing necessity. It therefore hastened to proclaim a “caliphate” despite lacking the legal, political and practical conditions and possessing none of the foundations of statehood. At a point of “necessity”, consideration of “conditions” and other qualifications is discarded. The claimant to the caliphate, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, expressed this in his famous Mosul sermon. People were occupied with his black clothing and the price of his wristwatch, overlooking this statement: “God, blessed and exalted, created us to affirm His oneness and worship Him… People, God’s religion cannot be established, nor the purpose for which He created us realised, except by enforcing God’s law, referring judgement to it and carrying out the prescribed penalties. This cannot happen without force and authority.”
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is therefore governed by the theory of the political interpretation of Islam, which reduces the end and objective of prophethood, the prophetic message, religion, Islamic law and worship to one thing: “establishing Islamic government”. This was theorised by al-Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb and many other Islamic writers and thinkers. “Movement-based thought” arose on this foundation, and all Islamic movements are governed by this theory. Worship, the foundation of religion and God’s right over His servants, is for them merely a training instrument to prepare people to establish the state. Religion as a whole becomes a means, while developing the earth and gaining political power become the end and objective. This belief contradicts Islam’s foundation and the beliefs of all Muslims despite their different sects and schools. Its only predecessors are extremist philosophers and esotericists, as I explained and documented in The Political Interpretation of Religion, recently published by Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islamiyyah in Beirut.
Understanding this creedal and methodological foundation that formed ISIS’s thought and behaviour helps us understand, for example, why Muslim youth in Europe travel to Syria and Iraq to fight. They grew up and lived in safety and security, enjoying complete freedom to practise their worship and rites, with wide opportunities to learn their religion and advocate it openly in every sphere and through different means. European governments find themselves providing possible assistance and facilities: prayer spaces in airports, hospitals, schools and universities, while mosques, schools and Islamic centres increase steadily. Despite all this, young people raised in Islamic movements on the political interpretation of Islam leave these religious and worldly blessings for a land of turmoil whose days are as dark as its nights. They have been taught that worship and outreach are merely means of establishing the state, and that prayer, alms, fasting and pilgrimage have no meaning, indeed Islam has no existence or meaning, unless its people gain political power. See Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Qur’an, 2/1057. They must implement the project of “developing the earth”, presented as the purpose of human existence and divine obligation. ISIS and “ISIS thought” are certainly products of this theory that interprets all Islam politically. I do not thereby deny other secondary factors, including religious excess: ISIS has surpassed earlier organisations and movements born of the political interpretation of Islam in its extremism. There is no power or strength except through God, the Most High, the Magnificent.
Written by Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani.
Shawwal 1435 AH.