xbn .

Become a Member Home Around the Network Blog Podcast ! "

By Guest Post ! " #

August 12, 2014
QUICK TAKES

Iraq: Between Radicalization and

Sectarianism (Dara Salam)
. . . What makes the ideology of ISIS appealing to its members and young recruits,
especially those who travel from Europe and desperately want to join the !ght, is
actually the global message that this group tries to address to its Muslim
audience. It has declared its determination to go beyond the parochial nationalist
discourse and to establish a sovereign Islamic caliphate that aspires to global
jihad.

Some Muslim scholars and imams have rebuked the recent declaration of the
Islamic caliphate by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in the newly
captured areas of Iraq, as well as in those parts of Syria which the group has
seized in a bloody fight against the other Syrian fighting groups. They have
argued that the declaration of a caliphate has to be on the basis of some
consultation, as was practiced in the Islamic tradition, and as is mentioned in
the sacred text. However, since this process was followed, in most cases, within a
small circle of elite ruling members, then it is not clear whether this argument
has any purchase with the ISIS. After all, this group sees no need for
consultation not only with excommunicated secularists, but even with other
Islamic groups who consider this declaration of an Islamic caliphate false.

What makes the ideology of ISIS appealing to its members and young recruits,
especially those who travel from Europe and desperately want to join the fight, is
actually the global message that this group tries to address to its Muslim
audience. It has declared its determination to go beyond the parochial
nationalist discourse and to establish a sovereign Islamic caliphate that aspires
to global jihad. By this means it hopes to win the hearts and minds of all those
who consider such an entity a dream that was lost for generations. However,
their acts of collective and sectarian punishments, including those of beheading
and practicing Hadd (cutting the hand of thieves and stoning women) have made
them deeply unpopular within the wider Muslim community.

The recent military success that enabled ISIS to control large swathes of territory
in Iraq is, one should argue, not in any way due to their ideological success in
gaining wider popularity among that part of Iraq; they are simply not the vox
populi. The lack of resistance and the support they have enjoyed in these areas
are, to a large extent, due simply to the vacuum of legitimacy in the region. The
dismal aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq undermined the credibility of
the occupiers, and coupled with the exclusionary and domineering politics of the
Iraqi government, helped create the conditions for ISIS’s success. On the other
hand, the violent direction that the Arab Spring took, especially in Syria,
contributed to the creation of conflicting interests and players who helped
empower and popularise these groups to serve their political ends.

If some have initially dismissed ISIS as a terrorist group that operates on the
basis of causing the maximum damage in their assaults, without considering
longer run gains, they might have missed the point. What ISIS has been trying
to do is to consolidate its power and establish itself as an Islamic state by
stripping part of Iraq and part of Syria and establishing new institutions, such
as a police force and Sharia courts. The radical move of declaring an Islamic
caliphate and installing an ISIS leader as the caliph comes as a shock to their
extremist rivals who never considered to initiate such a move.

It is not only that the gains of ISIS in Iraq are a huge blow to the future of Iraq as
a country. The most catastrophic consequence of the military success of ISIS in
Iraq (it is yet to be seen whether they can hold the territories which they have
controlled in Syria) is the fact that it consolidates and perpetuates the cycle of
the sectarian war and politics, most likely, in the region as a whole. Needless to
say, the media coverage of this destructive war and politics is, in most cases,
based on a single-sided view of how sectarianism is characterised in Iraq and
the region; it is a view which depicts this politics in a comprehensive way and
suggests that every single individual is immersed in this politics of hate and
elimination of the other, as if it is the war of all against all. Although the
sectarian war is fundamentally based on theological differences and tensions, it
is deep down a war for regional power alliances and supremacy.

The group’s claim that they want to establish an Islamic state or caliphate in the
region is in itself a sectarian claim based on an ideologically-oriented view that
intends to wipe out differences including other faiths and doctrines. What is at
stake under such a fundamentalist group is not the endangering of the relation
between religion and politics, but the complete annihilation of any possibility for
such a relation. The only form of politics that can be envisaged under the rule of
such groups is theological politics in its most dangerous form, that is to say,
whatever view or practice goes against a certain theological interpretation, it is
then considered to be anti religious and, therefore, condemned and punished.
The destruction of many religious shrines (considered to be non-Islamic) in
Mosul, the expulsion of its Christian population from their homes and the
ruthless attack on the whole of the Yazidi community are evidence of this
radicalism, as are the rise of public show punishments, which cultivate the
pleasure of tormenting victims (reminiscent of the Taliban era in Afghanistan).
These represent dangerous precedents that could throw the country into
intractable political and religious conflicts, and set a dark example for other
radical groups in the region that might seek to emulate ISIS’s practices.

Dara Salam received his PhD from the Centre for Ethics and Global Politics at LUISS
University, Rome. He was a visiting researcher at King’s College London. He completed his
MA and MPhil in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. He is a fellow member of
the International Research Network on Religion and Democracy. He has published in
Political Studies Review and Public Reason.

By Guest Post

Caliphate Current Events Iraq ISIS Islamic Political Theology Jihad Sectarianism

States of Exception History

Become a Member
Sacred Texts Ecology
Pedagogy The Politics of Scripture
ABOUT THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY Justice Essays
NETWORK
Body Politics Around the Network
SUBMISSIONS
Traditions Quick Takes
MASTHEAD

LOGIN

© 2021 Political Theology