What ISIS wants is military intervention

Sep 04, 2014

Andrea Tornelli with Professor Massimo Introvigne
To present the events in Iraq as a clash between Islam and Christianity is to ignore the complexities of this tragic situation in the Middle East. It is essential that the international community intervenes, with the involvement of Muslim countries. Otherwise we end up acting out the script of the self-proclaimed caliph al-Baghdadi, who is doing all he can to present the war as “the final showdown between Christian crusaders and Islam”.

“The aggression by the ISIS militias against the Shiite Turkmen minority, after assaulting the Christians and the Yazidis, lets us know that the Sunni caliphate attacks other Muslims as well, namely the Shiites,” says Professor Massimo Introvigne, founder of the CENSUR (Centre for Studies on New Religions).

We need to understand the strategy and ideology of ISIS, on which the West often circulates imprecise or oversimplified information. We can do this thanks to the caliphate’s magazine that is issued both in hard copy and online in numerous languages, such as English, and is entitled Dabiq.

Today the ideological market of Islamic ultra-extremism is flooded. And the enemies of ISIS are the groups headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother house of Islamic extremism, as well as al-Qaeda. From reading Dabiq, we find that ISIS deems the death of international Jordan terrorist Abu Musa al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006 as its foundation. Zarqawi distanced himself from Osama Bin Laden because Bin Laden considered throat-cutting methods, that culminated in the decapitation of American hostage Nicholas Berg as counterproductive for al-Qaeda.

So, Zarqawi theorised the massacre of all non-Sunnis: Christians, followers of other religions and also all “heretic” Shiite Muslims. His militias destroyed entire Shiite villages in Iraq, killing all inhabitants. ISIS today wants to create fully Sunni areas, killing followers of all other religions, including Shiite Muslims.

The last showdown will be between Muslims and Christians and this will take place at the end of time and the way to Rome will be opened for Islam. It is an apocalyptic ideology which is written in a well-known hadith in Syria. We can then understand why ISIS does not only fear but also desires an intervention in its territory from Americans, Europeans and also Russians: that is why they are increasing anti-Russia provocations in Syria.

The so-called Christians (Europeans, Americans, Russians), who are identified with the crusaders, must be drawn into a war in Islamic territory and defeated there. Ironically, this ‘Christian’ invasion will show the Islamic world that al-Baghdadi is the true caliph, thus attracting Muslims from all over the world to enlist under his banner.

By reading Dabiq, we understand that among the enemies of ISIS there are the al-Qaeda faction that fights against Assad in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra), the Muslim Brotherhood, including the direction of Hamas in Palestine. These groups are considered deviant because they maintain relationships with the Shiites.

So, if we want to stop the caliphate and protect the minorities it threatens to exterminate, we need to consider its ideology. A military intervention from Americans alone, or even Americans and Europeans, fits in with the cliché that the self-proclaimed caliph has predisposed so that he can present the war as the final showdown between assaulted Islam and Christian crusaders. That is why Pope Francis’ words on the involvement of the United Nations are important: the intervention to halt the unjust aggressor of minorities must be multilateral and involve the countries of the area, the other Muslim countries. We believe that it is essential not to give the impression of sticking to the script dictated by ISIS.

Source: Vatican Insider, (edited).