Muslim protesters in India marching against the Islamic State after the 2015 terror attacks in Paris. Divyakant Solanki/EPA

Restrictions on Muslim immigration have been openly discussed – most recently by Senator Fraser Anning in his maiden speech to parliament – and many believe another terrorist attack in the name of “Islam” is inevitable.

Confronted with this reality, the media are playing an essential role in informing us about Islam and influencing how we respond. But, perhaps due to a limited understanding of Islam or a fear of antagonising Muslims, a fundamental point has largely been absent from reporting: the threat of terrorism does not stem from Islam. Rather, it stems from Islamism, a political ideology.

The two terms may sound similar, but Islam and Islamism are not the same thing. Islam is a faith observed by over 1.6 billion people, whereas Islamism is the political ideology of relatively small groups that borrow concepts like shariah and jihad from Islam and reinterpret them to gain legitimacy for their political goals.
 

How the media legitimises the aims of terrorists

Islamist groups like al Qaida and the Islamic State use violence against non-Muslims with the aim of establishing a political institution (“caliphate”) based on shariah law – neither of which have a basis in the Quran or hadith (Islamic prophetic traditions).

Part of the appeal of the Islamic State comes from its insidious ability to selectively use Islamic teachings and repackage them as legitimate religious obligations.

In particular, Islamists have appropriated the concept of jihad to legitimise an offensive “holy war” against non-Muslims. This interpretation, however, has been rejected by studies that have examined the Quran’s principles concerning war and peace.

Islamic teachings, for instance, prohibit terrorism and the use of violence against civilians. Further, Muslim leaders and scholars around the world have repeatedly condemned terrorism, issuing fatwas (Islamic legal rulings).

By reporting on this misleading interpretation of jihad and under-reporting Muslim condemnations, the Western news media reinforce the perceived connection between Islam and terrorism.

In some cases, media pundits explicitly make this link, pointing to the fact terrorists specifically refer to “Islam” as the basis for their actions.

This uncritical acceptance of terrorists’ claims and misrepresenting of Islam legitimises and unwittingly promotes the Islamist agenda.

In other words, the media plays into the hands of terrorists by allowing them to become the representatives for Islam and Muslims in general.

Islamic State recruiting tool

Islamist terrorists have a strategic interest in propagating the belief that Islam and the West are engaged in a civilisational war.

As the Islamic State outlined in its online magazine in February 2015:
 

Muslims in the West will soon find themselves between one of two choices.

The group explained that, as the threat of further terrorist attacks looms, Western Muslims will be treated with increased suspicion and distrust, forcing them to:
 

…either apostatize [convert] … or [migrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens.

The Islamic State’s divide-and-conquer strategy is crucial to its ability to replenish its ranks with foreign recruits. The group targets disaffected and marginalised Western Muslims and invokes an Islamist narrative with promises of brotherhood, security and belonging.

In turn, the Western news media indirectly advance the group’s interests by repeatedly linking Muslim communities to terrorism and failing to meaningfully distinguish the Islamic faith from Islamist political ideology.

For example, as the first wave of Syrian refugees arrived in the UK in 2015, The Daily Mail warned of “the deadly threat of Britain’s enemy within” and associated refugees with the threat of “Muslim extremists”.

In the midst of the 2014 Sydney siege, The Daily Telegraph prematurely linked the Muslim hostage-taker with the Islamic State – a claim that was later dispelled by terrorism experts.

The impact of careless reporting

This kind of overly simplistic and sensationalist media coverage serves the Islamic State’s objective to pit Muslims and non-Muslims against one another.

As a study conducted at the University of Vienna in 2017 confirmed, media coverage that does not explicitly distinguish between Muslims and Islamist terrorists fuels hostile attitudes toward the general Muslim population.

With growing awareness of the impact of this kind of reporting, some media outlets like CNN have tried to distinguish between “moderate Islam” and “radical Islam”, “Islam” and “Islamic extremism”. But this, too, is misleading because it focuses on presumed religious motivations and overlooks the central role of Islamist political ideology.

A survey of almost 1,200 foreigner fighters by the Combating Terrorism Center revealed that over 85% had no formal religious education and were not lifelong, strict adherents to Islam. The report suggests the Islamic State may prefer such recruits because they are:
 

less capable of critically scrutinising the jihadi narrative and ideology.

Islamism masquerades as religion, but is much more a post-colonial expression of political grievances than a manifestation of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. While the establishment of a caliphate or shariah-based order is the expressed agenda of Islamist terrorists, this is not a religious obligation for Muslims.

And it is not an assault on Islam for non-Muslims to say so.
 

Political correctness, or a more nuanced discussion?

In an effort to strip the Islamic State of its legitimacy, some governments have advised news outlets in the UK and France to use the derogatory acronym “Da’esh” to refer to the group, although this is not always practised.

Malcolm Turnbull also adopted the term “Islamist terrorism” in order to differentiate between those subscribing to the Islamist ideology and Muslim communities.

But many politicians such as Donald Trump continue to blur the distinction by using rhetoric like “radical Islamic terrorism” instead.

Some argue that our “political correctness” inhibits us from tackling the problem head on.

But those who say the problem stems from Islam are are mistaken. We should be able to have a constructive conversation about the central concepts of Islam, including whether establishing a “caliphate” and committing violence against non-Muslims are indeed religious obligations or have legitimacy in Islam.

Given the extent to which concerns about Islam have impacted on our society, there is an ethical obligation to differentiate between Islam and Islamism – or at least present a counter to the Islamist perspective.
 

Audrey Courty, PhD candidate, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University and Halim Rane, Associate professor, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A wall with the logo and slogans of the Islamic State that unknown people tried to erase. Mosul, Iraq, 9 May 2017. Picture by Jan Kuhlmann/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

The Middle East and North Africa is a competitive, fragmented and highly penetrated regional system. However, it is a place that lacks a security system and is unique for its absence of a region-wide architecture. 

The Arab League – the region’s largest IGO – has been mobilized on numerous occasions, for a number of structural, political and ideological reasons but these efforts have failed. At the state level, the post-colonial state has failed to establish a fair model of governance. The region is dominated by authoritarian regimes and yet is also bereft of a hegemonic power able to impose its own will on the subsystem and therefore awash with rivalries. 

Thus, the region is characterized by inter-state rivalries and increasingly exposed to identity politics which is manifesting itself in inter-confessional and inter-communal conflicts. Consequently, signs of deep social trauma and crisis of identity and governance at both state and society levels are visible. 

Sub-communalization is taking place across the region, thus gradually eroding the hard won century-old national societies that independent states forcefully but carefully have put together. In addition, the region’s ‘contested’ states seem to be unravelling into smaller communities of sects, religious affiliations, tribal groups, and ethnicities. 

The MENA region is suffering from an imbalance in the forces pushing for change – the peaceful mass mobilizations and the violent nihilistic ones. This is a region, which is at once both post-modern and pre-modern. Both post- and pre-modern forces compete for power.

The regional system is vulnerable to the actions of these sub-state and non-state actors and many of its states are suffering at the hands of violent jihadi groups who have stepped into the vacuum created by the weakening of the iron grip of the central government in several Arab countries.

Modernity as the norm for much of the twentieth century – in terms of rationality as a driver of decisions, transparent institutions of governance, rule of law, reliable public services (education, health, etc.), accountable public servants, functioning state institutions, enhancement of opportunity – has been taking a back seat in driving change in the region.

Power is fluid, unevenly distributed, and does not necessarily manifest itself in terms of such traditional indicators as the size of population, territory, economy (GNP), or geography; nor does the size of military budgets, of the armed forces, or military hardware provide sufficient indicators of power and influence. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, it seems to be the smaller Arab states who are outperforming their larger counterparts; and non-state actors making waves.

Violent-Salafism seems to be one of the most challenging issues that face the region
The region is still lacking alternative political forces able to fulfill the expectations of the people and achieve development and security. Eventually, the Islamic radical groups, such as the Islamic State, seem to have become the substitute for the past political forces in doing this mission.
Thus, violent-Salafism seems to be one of the most challenging issues that face the region. Salafism in the Islamic tradition was a reformist movement. It emerged at the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in the eleventh century. All called for the return to the true Islam, where the law of the divine is represented in Quran and Hadith (the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad).

Violent-Salafism is a relatively contemporary phenomenon. It was arguably introduced in the writings of the Egyptian Sayyid Quṭb (October 1906 – 29 August 1966), who came at a time when leftist radical movements were rising in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. Sayyid Quṭb resented pan-Arab policies of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and called for regime change. Qutb introduced what is known as Global Jihad and was later arrested for plotting against President Nasser and executed in late August 1966.

The Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s became the life blood of violent-Salafism in the region. Yet the milestone arguably is the Kuwait crisis in 1990-1991. The occupation of Kuwait divided the Arab world. Furthermore, American soldiers were not welcomed in the Holy Land by the Arab mujahidin of Afghanistan who established their group, al-Qaeda, just two years earlier, in 1988. As a result, the Kuwait crisis provided the opportunity for these jihadi groups to operate in the region. When House of Saud rejected Osama Bin Laden’s offer to defend the Holy Shrine, the latter vowed to attack the US and its allies.

The war on Iraq in 2003 brought about a new wave of global Jihad
The Algerian civil war (1991-2002) and the Bosnian war (1992-1995) had also their own share in the rise and the development of violent Salafism. However, the establishment of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan witnessed the birth of a new trend of global Jihad following Sayyid Quṭb’s school of global Jihad. While the Taliban, the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) and Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) had locally based agendas in Afghanistan, Algeria and France, al-Qaeda unleashed radicalism onto the international scene. Al-Qaeda began to attack the US and its allies in the world. The first attack was on the US army residence Gold Mohur hotel in of Aden in 1992, followed by the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993, and the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar al-Salam in 1998. The most disastrous attacks were the attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, DC.

The war on Iraq in 2003 brought about a new wave of global Jihad. The occupation of Baghdad was a major turning point for the pan-Arab and revolutionary forces in the region one that compares to the defeat of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982. 

The collapse of the Iraqi state provided the space where Jihadists can operate and attack the US and its allies in the region. Al-Zarqawi, an ex al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan, travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2002 and established his network with the Jihadists there. In 2003, he and his followers began to attack the Americans and the Shiites. They called themselves Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād (The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad, initially established in 1999 by al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan). In 2004, the group pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and changed its name to Tanẓīm Qāʻidat al-Jihād fī Bilād al-Rāfidayn, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). 

The group played on sectarian tensions between the Shiite and the Sunni communities inside Iraq. It was calculating that if they attack the Shiite, which they did, they would retaliate by attacking the Sunnis, which they did. The Sunnis would then seek protection from al-Zarqawi and his followers, which they also did. This has been the group’s usual strategy since the days of al-Zarqawi’s leadership. By doing this, it would gain Sunni sympathy and it did so quite dramatically (see al-Zarqawi letter to Osama Bin Laden, 2004).

Al-Zarqawi was killed in an American air strike in June 2006. His death, though, did not decrease the group’s vision of statehood. The Egyptian militant Abu Hamza al-Muhajir took over the lead. Later he will pledge allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as the leader of what later became known as the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), arguably to give the group an Iraqi flavor. Yet, as soon as the Sahawat were established by the Iraqi government and the US and composed of Sunni tribes that had cooperated with ISI, the Islamic State was driven out of the Sunni areas in 2006.
The civil war in Syria helped ISI to expand and flourish again. The armed conflict between al-Assad and the opposition, which started a few months after the peaceful protests in 2011 turned into what many Syrians now perceive as a sectarian war. The chaos attracted ISI. The group began to control areas in Syria between 2012 and 2013. As soon as it controlled Raqqa in 2013, it changed the name of the group to the Islamic State in Iraq and a-Sham (ISIS). And once Mosul fell under their control in the summer of 2014, the group began to call itself the Islamic State (IS).

Although IS has lost most of the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, it has not been defeated.
IS transformed the Islamic Jihad within a short space of time. What al-Qaeda could not do in years, IS did in months, in terms of political and military successes and in terms of recruitment. This was partly due to the use of technology and social media, but also to the adoption of offensive Jihad, or Jihad al-Shauka, rather than defensive Jihad, or Jihad al-Nikaya as in the case of al-Qaeda, thus attracting scores of young people worldwide. 

The difference between the two forms of Jihad is that defensive Jihad aims to deter impairment, offensive Jihad on the other hand, features the work of Machiavelli in terms of land-control, the ends justify the means, and most importantly, fighting the near enemy – essentially any local or regional group that opposes the jihadi group or refuses to pledge allegiance to it.

Although IS has lost most of the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, it has not been defeated. The group rose on the aches of the regional disorder and the failure of the state, and these fertile conditions have not changed. Furthermore, violent Salafism acts as a catalyst for the entrenchment of other sub-state actors, like the Shiite militias, Iran’s proxies in the region, mainly Hezbollah in Lebanon and recently operating in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq. These Iranian-backed militias pose threats not only to the security of those countries they are operating in, but also to the stability of the entire region.

Leadership is still lacking and no solutions for the many regional problems are in sight. Meanwhile, with the lack or weakness of alternative forces able to fulfill the expectations of the people in the region, Islamic radical groups, such as the Islamic State, are appealing to the masses, and seem to have become the substitute for a failed regional order and failing domestic conditions. Thus, violent Salafism is a phenomenon that will continue to shape the politics of the region, irrespective of military offensives against its different adherers.

Anoush Ehteshami is professor of international relations and head of the school of government and international affairs at Durham University. His many book-length publications include Globalization and the Middle East: Old Games, New Rules (Routledge, 2007); (co-author) Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives (IB Tauris, 2007); (co-editor) The Middle East’s Relations with Asia and Russia (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (co-editor) (Lynne Rienner, 2002); (co-author) Iran’s Security Policy in the Post-Revolutionary Era (Rand, 2001).
 

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From macabre hide-and-seek exercises, in which children hunt and kill enemy prisoners in specially constructed mazes, to the mass execution and decapitation of adult soldiers, young people living under IS have been indoctrinated and encouraged to engage in violence.

Meanwhile, IS’s quasi-government instituted an education system explicitly aimed at indoctrinating and weaponising the children living under it.

Mathematics was practised by determining how many more fighters IS has than an opposing force. Chemistry was taught by discussion of methods of gas inhalation. And physical education focused on the correct body positions for firing various weapons.

Their education has been compounded by the retaliatory and sometimes excessive violence of the vast array of forces committed to destroying IS. Through this, children have been exposed to horrific violence on a daily basis – thus generating trauma and, undoubtedly, genuine long-term grievances.
 

How IS’s use of child soldiers differs

There is a fundamental difference between IS’s use of child soldiers and the practice elsewhere.

IS hasn’t just recruited child soldiers. It systematically militarised the education systems of captured Iraqi and Syrian territory to turn the region’s children into ideological timebombs.

These children, saturated in IS’s particular brand of violent and uncompromising “religious” instruction from about the age of five, were trained in the use of small arms before their teenage years. They constitute a new challenge for the international community.

IS’s state-building efforts appear to have been thwarted for now. But saving the children exposed and potentially indoctrinated in its ideology is key to avoiding further terror attacks in the West, tackling the root causes of regional upheaval, and working toward a future where children play instead of fight, and schools teach instead of drill.
 

What children have been taught

Military activity, superiority based on IS’s interpretation of Islam, and the need to defeat unbelievers are embedded in its school textbooks.

Various videos, produced both through journalistic investigation and by IS itself, show the more practical side of education under the group’s rule. Children are taught how to fire small arms and use hand grenades.

Although IS extensively forced children into its ranks, many joined voluntarily – with or without their families’ blessing. But, in the long term, it doesn’t matter whether a child is forcibly recruited or not. And this is the matter of gravest concern.

IS’s primary concern is building and maintaining the children’s loyalty. The phrase “cubs of the caliphate” is a microcosm of how it views them. Cubs are unruly, ill-disciplined and dependent on strong (sometimes violent) guidance from their elders.

However, with time, resources and patience they can turn into a generation of fighters and idealists who will foster IS’s ideology even if its current military setbacks prove terminal.
 

Programs need to take a new approach

Disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation programs designed to reintegrate child soldiers into post-conflict society have significantly progressed in recent years. This represents the continued evolution of military-civil partnerships in the quest for a conflict-free world.

But IS’s systematic and meticulous radicalisation of an entire region’s children presents new challenges.

It’s understandable to interpret IS’s rapid retreat as its death knell, and thereby view traditional rehabilitation techniques as an appropriate remedy for yet another region recovering from violence at the hands of a radical armed insurgency. However, this conflict has been highly unusual in its pace, tactics and impacts – both now and potentially in the future.

So, we must revisit the fundamental assumptions of what it means to inspire peace within a society. This starts with the children subjected to the ideological extremism of IS and other armed groups.

If there is to be sustainable peace in the areas liberated from IS control, rehabilitation programs must be viewed as a community-wide process. Even if children did not directly participate in IS activities, the group has moulded their worldview and underpinning life philosophies.

Such philosophies may be especially productive in a region where resentment of perceived foreign – Western – interference and exploitation is long-lasting and multifaceted.
 

What can be done

The regular processes of identifying child combatants, disarming and reintegrating them into their communities through rehabilitation (such as by ensuring they are physically and mentally capable of rejoining their communities) and reconciliation (developing peace, trust and justice among children and their communities) are all necessary. But they are vastly insufficient in this instance.

Rarely has there been such systematic youth radicalisation and militarisation. So, the international response must be equally far-reaching and methodical.

Rapid reimplementation and revisiting of pre-IS school curricula is of the highest priority. National and local governments should ensure children are shielded from further recruitment by instituting a curriculum drawn from principles of tolerance and inclusion.

It’s essential to develop locally run initiatives to measure the level of radicalisation among a community’s children and to construct child-friendly spaces for young people to socialise, reconnect with their wider community and “unlearn” what they adopted under IS.

Such practices will help to heal the wounds of IS occupation and ensure the potential for cyclical violence is removed. Done right, it will hinder IS’s ability to rise anew.

James S. Morris, PhD Student in International Security and Child Rights, The University of Queensland and Tristan Dunning, Lecturer in Modern Middle East History, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Photo credit: The Nation

In light of the recent commotion created by some Barelvi clerics, which the federal government bungled up with its characteristic incompetence, it is time that someone speaks out the truth about the Pakistan movement and its ideology. Let me say without mincing words: Pakistan was created in negation of principles of secular democracy.

Barelvi clerics had spearheaded the All India Muslim League’s campaign for Pakistan ahead of the 1945-46 general elections. A handful of Deobandis led by the followers of Ashraf Ali Thanvi (who died in 1943) including Shabbir Ahmed Usmani also supported the demand for a separate state for Indian Muslims. However, the main Deobandi party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, led by Hussain Ahmed Madani advocated a vision of wataniyat or nationalism that was fore grounded in territory, rather than religious identity.

Madani warned that even if the Muslim League manage to win a separate state, it will inevitably be a state dominated by some sect of Islam — there could be no such thing as a Muslim or Islamic state of all Indian Muslims because the latter were notoriously divided into sects and sub-sects. Another prominent religious scholar, Abdul Kalam Azad also shared similar sentiments. His speeches are available on YouTube on the question of Muslims’ in a post-British India.
In my opinion, those who say that Pakistan, as it exists today, is not Jinnah’s Pakistan, are missing the point. Jinnah may not have anticipated that his two-nation theory would lay the foundation of a state in which the organic relationship between Islam and the state would result in the rule of the ulema. However, he could not have been unaware of the fact that the religious establishment, including Barelvi clerics, saw the state he demanded and won as having been established in the name of Islam.

Read more on Daily Times, Pakistan.
 

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Islamic State information on a hand-held device (via LobeLog)

Cyberspace is the ideal platform for terrorists because, unlike conventional warfare, barriers to entry into cyberspace are much lower. The price of entry is an Internet connection. The surreptitious use of the Internet to advance terrorist group objectives has created a new brand of Holy War—“virtual jihad”—that gains thousands of new adherents each day. Long after the current terrorist groups have ceased to be a major threat from a physical perspective, they will remain omnipresent in cyberspace, promoting a virtual caliphate from their safe haven behind computer keyboards around the world. Islamic extremists are natural candidates to transition to a virtual world that offers them automatic citizenship beyond the nation-state.

Since the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) was founded, its leaders have deftly and continually rewritten the narrative to claim that the group’s desired caliphate exists, has a specific location, and maintains a defined group of adherents. Unconstrained by the absence of a definitive Quranic guideline for what constitutes a caliphate, IS created its own self-promoting doctrine. The group expanded its caliphate narrative to include a wide range of options for participation: membership included everyone from the passive observer reading a blog or curiously following a Twitter feed to the keyboard jihadist editing Rumiyah or hacking a website to the real-world operators attacking a nightclub or running down holiday celebrants with a delivery truck.

IS has successfully exploited the sociopolitical environment and young adults’ obsession with technology to establish a growing community of devotees in the ungoverned territory of cyberspace, ensuring its ability to continue to coordinate and inspire violence well into the future. IS has found its own salvation via the Internet, particularly since it has already passed the peak of its real-world power.

IS has also capitalized on the world’s evolving propensity to integrate online activities with real-world activities. Social media has had an incredible multiplying effect on radical messaging, and IS has had great success publishing online, which has resonated particularly well with disenfranchised Muslims and youths, inspiring some to act on inspiration and guidance received online. IS has exploited their search for meaningful identity by promising to restore their dignity so that they may find personal fulfillment and purpose.

The virtual world is in some ways more compelling than the real world, because storylines can be artfully crafted for maximum appeal, while omitting anything that may be perceived as negative. A promise is much easier to make online, as is the vision of fulfilling aspirations. The IS has created virtual messaging that is wildly at odds with the reality of life as an IS fighter on the ground. Cyberspace has enabled IS to turn tactical defeats on the battlefield into glorious martyrdom operations that highlight the bravery and commitment of its fighters. The loss of territory and the deaths of key leaders have served to feed propaganda efforts that are used to prove the resiliency of the caliphate.

Since all that is required to be a virtual planner is an Internet connection and good encryption, they can operate from anywhere, although being geographically dispersed carries heightened risk of detection in some nations. The virtual planner model has revolutionized jihadist external operations. IS has taken advantage of recent advances in online communications and encryption so that the group’s top operatives can directly guide lone attackers, playing a central role in the conceptualization, target selection, timing, and execution of future attacks. Virtual planners offer operatives the same services once provided by strictly physical networks. They seamlessly execute the group’s guiding strategy and maximize the impact and propaganda value of attacks waged in its name, while avoiding many of the risks typically associated with physically training operatives, such as being tailed or getting caught returning to a home country.

Integrated into the group’s geographical command structure, virtual planners function much like theater commanders but in the cyber realm. IS virtual planners are also assigned areas of responsibility according to their nationality and linguistic skills, and are tasked with actively recruiting and handling attackers from these areas.

The advancement of Internet-based communication and the explosion of social media have enabled the planner to reach a larger audience than ever before. By building an “intimate” relationship with a potential attacker, the virtual planner provides encouragement and validation, addressing the individual’s doubts and hesitations while generating confidence and a strong desire to carry out an attack. Virtual planners can replicate the same social pressures that exist with in-person cells. Individuals can simply wander into searchable online networks rather than identify with and be socialized by covert in-person networks. Unlike with physical networks, the virtual planner model does not risk the capture or punishment of the network’s key operatives.

Individuals inspired by IS can directly reach out to virtual planners for guidance and assistance in carrying out attacks. In addition to recruitment and operational guidance, virtual planners can bring disparate individuals and cells together to form larger attack networks. IS virtual planners allow the group to effectively seize ownership over what would previously have been considered lone-wolf attacks. Virtual planners transform these individuals into ambassadors for the IS global brand at relatively low cost. Virtual planners help maximize the psychological and reputational impact of violence committed in the IS name, further enticing other potential devotees to join its cause.

The success of the virtual-planner model underscores the ongoing process of organizational learning by jihadist groups. But the model also has disadvantages, such as the inability to provide in-person training or be optimally nimble during an attack to modify plans as circumstances change. Cells directed by virtual planners are also at greater risk of being detected by Signals Intelligence, despite advances in end-to-end encryption. Nonetheless, the virtual planner approach is a low-cost, high-reward strategy with enormous destructive potential, especially as IS and other terrorist groups continue to refine the model.

Adaptations to jihadists’ modes of operation have continually outpaced states’ ability to effectively counter them, and will likely continue to do so. Virtual jihad has not only gained prominence and credibility as an alternative to traditional conceptions of jihad but has also progressively outpaced physical jihad. Although physical jihad continues to appeal to a great many actors, virtual jihad has supplanted traditional notions of jihad for a new generation of adherents who are either unwilling or unable to engage in physical violence themselves. The rise of the virtual jihadist has assumed an important (perhaps irreplaceable) role in rejuvenating the concept of jihad and facilitating the dissemination of its “counterculture” narrative to new audiences for many years to come.
 

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Police work near a damaged Home Depot truck on Nov. 1, 2017, after a motorist drove onto a bike path near the World Trade Center memorial. AP Photo/Andres Kudacki

Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the attack, isn’t a devout Muslim. He cursed and came late to prayers, according to acquaintances who talked to The New York Times. So why would he want to be a martyr?

As a professor of modern Middle Eastern history, I have spent the majority of my professional life studying the region, its culture, society and politics. In recent years, I have researched and written about IS and its terrorist activities. While other experts and I have long looked at how radicalization occurs, some new ideas are emerging.
 

Of lone wolves, flaming bananas and machismo

Like this recent attack in New York, many IS attacks around the globe are carried out by individuals the media have dubbed “lone wolves” – that is, freelancers who act without the direct knowledge of the IS leadership. To avoid glamorizing them, the RAND Corporation prefers the term “flaming bananas.”

There are two theories as to why these individuals pledge allegiance to the group. The first is that they get “radicalized.”

Radicalization refers to a step-by-step process whereby individuals become increasingly susceptible to jihadi ideas. First, they cut themselves off from social networks such as family, which provide them with support and a conventional value system. They then immerse themselves in a radical religious counterculture. They might do this on their own, or a jihadi recruiter might bring them into the fold. Either way, the result is the same.

Some observers claim IS propaganda plays a key role in recruitment. Rather than presenting a religious rationale for the group’s actions, IS propaganda tends to focus on the violence the group perpetrates. IS has even released a video game based on Grand Theft Auto 5 in which, rather than stealing cars and battling the police, the player destroys advancing personnel carriers and shoots enemy soldiers.

Perhaps, then, the radicalization model is wrong or not universally applicable. Perhaps there’s something other than religious zealotry at play.
Consider the widely reported story of two would-be jihadists who, before they left Birmingham, U.K., for Syria, ordered “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies” to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

Newspaper stories time and again puzzle over the problem of how it happens that individuals who go on to join IS were found in bars, even gay bars, or had Western girlfriends and smoked and drank almost up to the time they committed some act of violence for the group. The most common explanation is that their dissolute lifestyle was a cover.

After the driver of a truck ran down and killed 84 people in Nice, France, for example, the French interior minister was at a loss to explain how someone who drank during Ramadan – which had ended a week and a half before – could have radicalized so quickly.

Former French President Francois Hollande in Paris in September 2016 at a memorial service for victims killed by terrorism in France. AP Photo/Michael Euler

A number of experts have argued that the radicalization model should be replaced by, or supplemented with, a different model.

Rather than joining a radically different religious counterculture, individuals are attracted to IS, these experts argue, because its actions reaffirm the cultural values of those who are marginalized, or those who exhibit what psychiatrists call “anti-social personality disorders.”

Could it be that IS volunteers are drawn to a value system that asserts an aggressive machismo, disparages steady work and sustains the impulse for immediate gratification? Could it be that they are attracted to a culture that promotes redemption through violence, loyalty, patriarchal values, thrill-seeking to the point of martyrdom and the diminution of women to objects of pleasure?

In this reading, IS more closely resembles the sort of street gang with which many of its Western and Westernized enlistees are familiar than its more austere competitor, al-Qaida.
 

James L. Gelvin, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of California, Los Angeles

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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(Photo: Jordi Bernabeu Farrús / Flickr)

The Middle East today is enduring a replay of World War II — with the Islamic State in the role of Nazi Germany.

Having seized much of Europe and parts of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany reached the peak of its expansion by the fall of 1942. Then, stopped at Stalingrad and unable to overwhelm Britain, the Nazis began to fall back, and the war turned into a race between the Soviet troops marching from the east and the Allied soldiers surging from the west. After the war, as a result of the competition between these two sets of armed forces, Europe would remain divided for the next half century.

The Islamic State likewise reached its peak expansion in mid-2014 when it controlled large chunks of Iraq and Syria. It has experienced a rise and fall even more precipitous than the Nazis’. By mid-2016, a mere two years later, it had already lost 45 percent of its territory in Syria and 20 percent of its territory in Iraq.

Today, with the fall of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the Islamic State has dwindled to a swath of land around the border of the two countries. Once a “state” of 11 million people with an economy worth about $1 billion a year — the size of Great Britain, the population of Greece, the economic output of Gambia — ISIS is now little more than the several thousand fighters desperately fending off attacks from all sides. From the west, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is attempting to retake as much of Syria as it can. From the east, Iraqi forces and Kurdish peshmerga operating under the cover of U.S. air support have been steadily ejecting the would-be caliphate from Iraqi territory.

In both Iraq and Syria, significant divisions exist among the anti-ISIS fighters. Indeed, the lands encompassing Iraq and Syria would be lucky to experience the frozen hatreds of a Cold War in the wake of the fall of the house of ISIS. The shrinking of the caliphate will more likely lead to a new level of fighting — over the future structure of both Iraq and Syria and, more ominously, the dispensation of the region as a whole.

In Syria
It not only feels like 1945 in Syria, it looks that way as well. After months of saturation bombing, the cities that ISIS once controlled look like Germany after it had been reduced to rubble in the final months of World War II, as the Allies and the Soviets tightened their vise grip on the Nazis.

Thanks to the help of both Russia and Iran and to its ruthless aerial campaign, the Syrian government has managed to regain 60 percent of the country. Syrian forces have continuously bombed civilian targets, such as hospitals. Of the 1,373 attacks on civilian infrastructure in 2016, for instance, Syrian and Russian forces were responsible for 1,198. Last month, September, registered the largest number of casualties for 2017, with nearly 1,000 civilians killed, including over 200 children, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Assad regime has specialized in the comparatively low-tech barrel bombs, which maximize civilian casualties, dropping nearly 13,000 of them in 2016.

The U.S.-led coalition, meanwhile, has been equally brutal in its effort to dislodge the Islamic State from its capital of Raqqa. The city now looks like Dresden after the firebombing of World War II, as the Russian government has rightly pointed out. According to Syrian activists, over 1,000 civilians died in the bombing.

The third leg of brutality in Syria is Sunni extremism. True, ISIS is on the decline. But other militant forces aspire to kick Assad aside, keep the Kurds down, and beat back the Americans, Russians, and Iranians. After several name changes, the latest collection of al-Qaeda-like factions in Syria — which may or may not maintain a link to al-Qaeda itself — is the Levant Liberation Committee (Tahrir al-Sham or HTS). With its ISIS rival shrinking daily, HTS could emerge as the insurgency of choice for those who hate Assad as well as anything associated with the Americans.

Large tracts of ISIS territory in Syria were thinly populated desert, but the caliphate possessed some jewels in their crown. This weekend, on the heels of the liberation of Raqqa, U.S.-backed militias took over the Islamic State’s largest oil field. Syrian government forces were reportedly within a few miles of the strategic asset, but were pushed back by ISIS fighters. The Syrian Democratic Forces that took over the Omar oil field are led by Kurds, but some of the soldiers are also Arab. Although the SDF as a whole is putatively fighting for a secular democratic Syria, the Kurds are more pragmatically trying to gain leverage to safeguard their gains in the north where they have established the de facto autonomous region of Rojava.

Hatred of ISIS has been the lowest common denominator for a broad range of actors in Syria, from American neocons and Syrian generals to Kurdish militias and al-Qaeda sympathizers to Kremlin geopoliticians and Hezbollah. ISIS has been a knife stuck deep into Syria. There’s no argument that the knife is life threatening. But remove it, and Syria risks bleeding out.

In Iraq
On his recent swing through the Persian Gulf, where he failed to get Qatar and Saudi Arabia to kiss and make up, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also made some especially ill-conceived comments about Iraq.

“Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home,” he said.

There aren’t any Iranian militias in Iraq. The Popular Mobilization Forces that have played a major role in pushing the Islamic State out of Iraq are largely Shiite, but they also contain Sunnis and Christians. Many of the brigades in this coalition force have links to Iran, but at least one major unit so far has been incorporated into the Iraqi army. In other words, the so-called “Iranian militias” are already home. They’re Iraqis, after all.

Tillerson also said, “Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home, and allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their lives with the help of their neighbors.” Was Tillerson announcing that all U.S. soldiers currently in Iraq — 5,262 according to the Pentagon, but possibly as high as 7,000 — are about to go home? If so, everyone in the media and the U.S. government seems to have missed this second “mission accomplished” announcement.

Thanks largely to the United States and its earlier decision to invade and occupy the country, Iraq faces the same kind of fragmentation problem as Syria. Iraqis have divided loyalties. Now that the acute threat of ISIS has passed, the fissures in Iraqi society are once again widening.

Consider the ongoing conflict between Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad. The residents of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq went to the polls last month and overwhelmingly endorsed independence. The central government immediately went on the offensive, putting economic pressure on the wayward province and sending army units to seize the disputed oil-rich region around the city of Kirkuk. With ISIS on the decline, anti-Kurdish sentiment can unite the rest of Iraq. As Juan Cole points out, the Kurdish move brought out Iraqi nationalism even in the Shiite militias that helped the Iraqi army retake Kirkuk.

In retrospect, Kurdistan President Mahmoud Barzani’s bid to use the independence referendum to boost his own political fortunes was, according to veteran Kurdish politician Mahmoud Osman, a “miscalculation.” It may revive Iraqi nationalism and thwart Kurdish aspirations. Or it could trigger more centrifugal forces. With ISIS on its way out and the U.S. military presence relatively modest, Iraqis may well turn back to their post-invasion preoccupation of fighting each other to the point of the country’s dissolution.

After ISIS
The war against ISIS is like a matryoshka “nesting doll” from hell. The campaign against the caliphate is inset in the larger Syrian civil war and the Iraqi federal conflict. These are in turn nested within a larger confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And this regional tug-of-war is itself part of an even larger competition for influence between the United States and Russia.

Now, imagine giving this matryoshka doll to a six-year-old child prone to tantrums. Enter Donald Trump. He has done just about everything he can to make a bad situation worse short of destroying the doll with nuclear weapons. He has antagonized the Iranians at every turn, encouraged the worst tendencies of the Saudis, done little to keep Iraq together, made no effort to push the warring sides in Syria back to the negotiating table, and pursued a woefully inconsistent policy toward Russia.

Yes, the looming defeat of ISIS is to be cheered, but the costs have been huge. There’s the enormous loss of civilian life and the destruction of ancient cities. There’s the uptick in ISIS attacks abroad. Iraq remains fragile, though the Kurds have offered to freeze their independence vote. Syria is no closer to an end to its civil war, though more rounds of peace talks are set to begin shortly. Human rights violations by the Assad government continue, though the first trials have taken place in Europe to hold those responsible for those violations.

Most importantly, no one is tackling the nested conflicts in the region. The first step is to take the matryoshka doll out of Donald Trump’s hands. Give him something else to play with, perhaps another tour of his favorite campaign stops in the United States. Then let some real adults — the UN, the EU, Jimmy Carter? — grapple with the post-ISIS realities of the Middle East.
 

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A memorial on Las Ramblas following the attack. EPA/Quique Garcia

The fact that there was a 13-year gap between these incidents and the Madrid train bombings of March 11 2004 – should not be interpreted as a loss of interest on their part in such a strategic target.

Indeed only the diligence and efficiency (admittedly, coupled with strokes of fortune) of the country’s security and intelligence services have prevented further attacks.

According to government sources, some 180 jihadists were arrested in the four years leading up to July 2016. Meanwhile, interventions by law enforcement agencies, with investigative skills honed by decades of experience in fighting terrorism by Basque separatists, are believed to have directly prevented at least 15 major attacks since 2011.

Police gather in Cambrils, the scene of the second attack. EPA/Jaume Sellart

Not all the plots were typical. One that was thwarted in 2011 aimed to poison water supplies in tourist campsites and resorts with chemicals. This was apparently in response to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Searches of the homes of suspects arrested during operations uncovered encrypted videos with detailed maps of major Spanish cities, photos and plans of key buildings and guides to handling explosives.

According to the El Mundo newspaper, the jihadist ranks fighting in Syria currently include more than 100 fighters of Spanish nationality or former residents of Spain. These are among the most fanatical members of the terrorist groups and their active calls to strike in Spain serve as inspiration for followers still in the country.
 

A key target

Such vast potential is not lost on organisations such as Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack. The group is known to be keen to extend its theatre of operations beyond Syria and Iraq to demonstrate that it is not a spent force. And, equally important, it wants to prompt a public opinion-driven rethink of support by Western governments for anti-IS campaigns.

Spain was mentioned 24 times in jihadist videos, newsletters and other forms of online propaganda over a period of just five months in 2016. That’s a reliable indicator that the Iberian country is firmly fixed in the terrorists’ sights.

There are geopolitical reasons for this keen and permanent interest. Spain has long been an active ally of the United States – particularly while conservative governments are in office as at present. For jihadists, the country is a key member of the international military coalition that “occupies” Muslim lands.

The picture of the Spanish premier of the day, José María Aznar, standing shoulder to shoulder with George Bush and Tony Blair in the Azores in March 2003 – effectively sealing the pact which led to the invasion of Iraq – served to establish Spain further as an enemy of Islam in terrorist’ minds.

Blair, Bush and Aznar in 2003. Harry Page/EPA

Less than a year later, Aznar was ousted from office due to the political fallout from the Madrid train bombings. His successor, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, immediately announced he was pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq. Al-Qaeda was swift to highlight this cause-and-effect sequence in subsequent propaganda.

The Spanish government has adopted a less active stance in the Middle East recently. It has refused to join airstrikes in countries such as Syria, for example. However, the government does not criticise its allies in their endeavours, so jihadists continue to see Spain as a legitimate target.

Hundreds of thousands of people protest in Madrid following the 2004 bombing. Andrew Parsons/PA Archive

Various historical issues aggravate the threat posed by such groups. It is important to recall that a priority of jihadist ideology is the reinstatement of the original borders of the Caliphate. Spain is considered the illegitimate occupant of Al Andalus (Islamic Iberia), the medieval territory under Muslim control and cultural influence between 711 and 1492. The reconquest of Granada – the last Islamic stronghold in Spain – by the Catholic Monarchs led to forced conversions and mass expulsions of Muslims.

A number of references in jihadist propaganda to Spain emphasise that the country is part of the umma (the supranational community of Islamic peoples), despite it having been seized by “infidels”. The territorial claims are wholly unrealistic today, but nonetheless strike a useful chord among radicalised jihadists desperate for a cause in which to believe.

The government is also often criticised for its permissiveness towards the formation of immigrant ghettos. Many fear that these socially excluded areas provide fertile ground for the seeds of the discontent that feeds radicalism and extremism, making young people easy prey for the ideology of jihadist terrorism.

Spain’s history, both in its recent and more distant past, makes it particularly vulnerable to jihadist terrorism, which is why these terrible events are unlikely to have come as a surprise. While none of this legitimises the ideology espoused by Islamic State, it goes some way to explaining how the organisation operates and how it convinces followers that cities like Barcelona should be targets of their violence.

Karl McLaughlin, Senior Lecturer in Spanish, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Spain plays a relatively inconsequential role in the fight against Islamic State. Reuters/Sergio Perez

The location and targeting of the attack deviates from IS’s previous efforts. These have typically focused on punishing countries directly involved in military operations against it in Syria and Iraq.

But how reliable are its claims of responsibility? And why was Spain chosen, given its relatively inconsequential role in the fight against IS?
 

The validity of IS’s claims

Verifying the culpability of terror attacks can traditionally be a tricky affair. Given that organisations that engage in terrorism are doing so from a position of weakness, there is always an incentive to lie in order to bolster mystique and inflate the image of threat.

But in this regard, IS seems to differ from previous groups. It has typically been reliably truthful in what it claims to have been its actions.

One Australian example of this can be found in the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege. The perpetrator, Man Haron Monis, proclaimed he was acting under IS auspices. But despite this declaration, and the potential propaganda victory it could bring, IS resisted such advances and distanced itself from the incident.

While IS would go on to posthumously praise Monis’ actions, it never made any explicit claims to having organised or directed them. No pre-existing relationship was found in the subsequent inquest.

This incident, along with many others, seems to indicate that while IS claims a butcher’s bill of heinous activities, it doesn’t tend to overtly lie about them.

Such a policy, while initially appearing counter-intuitive, maintains IS’s perception as a trustworthy source of information. This is particularly important in recruitment efforts, and makes it difficult for governments to challenge the IS’s claims in counter-propaganda.

For IS, maintaining a twisted sense of chivalrous virtue remains paramount.
 

Spain and the clash of civilisations

The Barcelona attack also reflects IS’s view of the world as a civilisational clash.

Described as a “reluctant partner” in the anti-IS coalition, Spain has resisted entreaties to join military efforts. Instead, it has opted for what it sees as a less risky role – providing logistical aid and training to local Iraqi forces, as well as preventing homegrown attempts to support IS abroad.

Spain’s limited role in the fight, particularly in contrast to other terror victims such as France and the US, might lead one to expect it to be relatively low on IS’s hit list.

But in terms of IS’s conflict narrative, Spain represents just another manifestation of a hostile Western civilisation in a state of war against the Islamic community. This leaves it more than open for reprisals.

At a spiritual level, Spain also holds a special place in IS’s mythology. Once a part of the Islamic empire, al-Ándalus, as it is known in Arabic, is seen by many IS ideologues as a natural territorial part of the end-state caliphate and currently under direct occupation by infidels.
 

Shock and bore

Terrorist reprisals like this attack are likely to intensify temporarily against Western targets throughout Europe and further abroad over the coming months and years, as the IS is systematically deconstructed on its home turf in Iraq and Syria.

IS remains heavily dependant on an image of defiant dynamism and a commitment to challenge the international status quo, which it claims subjugates the chosen community. As its ability to function as a “state” continues to decline, it will increasingly seek to maintain such a mystique through acts of spite against those that have prevented it from achieving its goal of a “caliphate”.

Despite a likely future increase in terrorist attacks, IS also risks a growing public disinterest and apathy toward its activities.

As one commentator has written, the banality and nontheatrical nature of IS’s approach to terrorism – particularly in contrast to al-Qaeda’s keen eye for spectacular symbology – has left many onlookers less than impressed and far from terrified.

Ben Rich, Lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Rebels linked to Islamic State have taken control of several neighbourhoods in the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with army artillery and aerial attacks unable to completely dislodge them after six days.
At least 61 militants and 17 security forces have been killed, according to the armed forces. Nineteen civilians have died.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city of 200,000.

Read the rest of the story here
 

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