Why we focus on Arabic – Stating the Obvious for the Oblivious

While many reports focus on social media accounts and sources that use English, Arabic is the primary language of jihadi groups globally. And this is not new. 99.9 % of all materials by jihadist groups is released in Arabic. Yet, out of a lack of lingual expertise, and an absence of “reading their lips”, has led to simple answers for Arabic illeterate audiences – produced by Arabic illerate opinion makers – out of touch with the massive ecosystem of writings. This post is about why Arabic matters, which should be evident to anyone dealing with jihadist materials due to the sheer amount of Arabic produce. To focus on this question, we repackage previously released posts, expand on the issue and emphasize, given by the evidence of collected materials, why Arabic matters.

On March 22, 2016, two bombings hit the city of Brussels. The bombings at Brussels airport and the metro station Maelbeek, which is located in the heart of the city and close by many European Union institutions, left 32 people dead from around the world – not including the three suicide bombers. As would later be the case with the Manchester bombings (May 22, 2017), several days later documents by IS were released to outline and justify these attacks. Based on theological grounds and grievances echoing from within the territory held by IS, a document was published on March 25, 2016, by al-Wafa’. The text is entitled “Ten Reasons to Clarify the Raids on the Capital [of Belgium] Brussels.” Penned by a woman by the nom de guerre of Umm Nusayba, ten reasons are clearly outlined why suicide bombers had attacked the airport and metro station. This Arabic language text has not played any meaningful role, in the media reporting or the wider academia, to understand the motivation behind this terrorist attack – in the words of the terrorists.

The same occurred when a similar text was released days after the May 2017 Manchester attack.[1] It seems that ISIS has the luxury of disseminating their coherent extremist writings well knowing it reaches their Arabic speaking target audience and bypasses the vast majority of the non-Arabic speaking counter-terrorism policy officials, academic analysts and commentators. Apart from being published on Telegram where a wider range of ISIS sympathizers are initiated into this mindset – and where most speak Arabic, the text references theological nuances and sentiments which are familiar to those acquainted with content ‘intimately tied to the socio-political context of the Arab world’,[2]

Neglecting the corpus of Arabic writings produced by Jihadist groups due to the absence of fluent Arabic speakers who understand the deep nuances of these writings is a luxury we should no longer afford. This enables content to remain online undetected in the open due to human ignorance. Caron E. Gentry and Katherine E. Brown have both shown how approaches, including cultural essentialism and neo-Orientalism, can cause a ‘subordinating silence’ which veils particular groups or perspectives from view.[3] This veil of silence still falls over the majority of the Jihadi movement which operates in Arabic, as the majority of research focuses on peripheral languages, particularly English, and interpret meaning of images based on a Western Habitus.

Violent extremist religious groups, often referred to as violent jihadist groups, have issued since the 1980s over 300,000 pages in Arabic promoting their brand of theology to justify violent jihad. In addition, contemporary Jihadist material references elements of the rich 1,400-year long tradition of Islamic writings. Part of this massive corpus are thousands of writings by the extremist Salafist spectrum. This violent jihadist theology informs their actions of violence and allows groups to communicate concepts and meaning through shared understandings of specific references, across languages, by conveying symbols and codes expressed in pictures, writings, videos or key words – strengthened by re-distributing historical and contemporary Salafist writings and, as often the case, citing these in their self-published propaganda.

ISIS shares more extremist Salafist writings (in pages) then producing their own

From ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam’s books from the 1980s Osama bin Laden’s declarations in the 1990s, or Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s statements in the 2000s (in sum 620 pages), Abu Mus’ab al-Suri’s “Global Resistance” book (1604 pages), Yusuf al-‘Uyairi’s “Constants on the Path of Jihad” (78 pages), or his “Truth of the New Crusader Wars” (119 pages), the first electronic AQ magazine “The Voice of Jihad” (in sum 1353 pages) etc.; for any Arabic speaker researching this field, “it is crystal clear – to virtually anyone who has the linguistic capacity to grasp and the opportunity to witness what jihadists are actually saying, writing and doing, both online and offline – that religion matters.”[4]

AQ, IS documents and the videos of the “Islamic State” are a treasure trove and yield to the audience the true power IS holds (and uses as nostalgia as of 2018 after great territorial loss): having (had), for the first time ever in the history of modern Jihadist movements, the power to apply theology penned by historic and contemporary theologians on conquered territory in the Arab world. This power is furthermore enhanced by the ability to project influence on the world outside of the “caliphate” by using social media as a launching pad. Sunni extremists seek to fulfil two objectives that are deemed as divine commandments: (i) commit to militancy often termed as Jihad bi-lsayf (Jihad by the sword) while (ii) being driven by the dedication to missionary work. Instead of the traditional term da’wa (proselytism), Sunni extremists, militant as well as non-militant, refer to this as Jihad bi-l lisan (verbal jihad).^[5]

Sunni extremists continue operating freely online, expanding their existing databases of texts (theory) and videos (theology applied in practice) for future generations. Organizing on platforms such as Telegram allows the ‘Media Mujahidin’ to swarm on other platforms[6], social media sites and the internet in general, in their belief to fulfill the divine obligation of da’wa (proselytising) to indoctrinate future generations for their cause. Groups as IS can operate conveniently online, as their clandestine networks are protected by, as noted before:

Arabic language required to access clandestine networks, the ongoing paucity of these language skills amongst researchers is appalling (lingual firewall),
Knowledge of the coherent use of coded religious language and keywords, which few researchers can demonstrate in their writing (initiation firewall),
With the migration to Telegram, IS succeeded in shifting and re-adapting their modus operandi of in-group discussions & designated curated content intended for the public (as part of wider da’wa).

Media raids ensure that dedicated content gets pumped to the surface web, ranging from Twitter to Facebook, while the IS-swarm can (re-) configure and organize content related to what is happening offline on the ground to ensure the cycle of offline events influencing / producing online materials is uninterrupted. The theological motivation, coherently repacked and put in practice, based on 300,000 pages of writings and over 2,000 videos just by IS needs to be addressed. Yet, “without deconstructing the theology of violence inherent in jihadi communications and practice, these religious ideas will continue to inspire others to act, long after any given organized force, such as the Islamic State, may be destroyed on the ground.”[7]

As outlined in this post from July 2019.

This is where we stand as of May 2020, with IS resurging for over a year in MENA and expanding in Africa, from Sahel to West Africa; not to forget the fierce battle for Marawi and the growing presence of IS in South East Asia, using both soft and hardpower. Yet, the West only seems to comprehend hardpower giving soft- and hardpowered orientated extremists areas to exploit and thrive in.

And now further details on the recent post:

The Caliphate Library on Telegram – Evidence of the importance of extremist Salafist writings

Note: for a deep diver on the Caliphate Library, please click here.

To recap:

Many Telegram channels and groups operated by Jihadi groups, distribute lengthy Arabic documents. An analysis of the content shared by one such channel, ‘The Caliphate Library’ Telegram Channel shows how the Jihadi movement thrives on lengthy documents that sets out their theology, beliefs, and strategy.

Overview of findings:

This individual library contained 908 pdf documents, which collectively contain over 111,000 pages. This is far from what one might expect from a movement which thinks in 140 characters, as some Western commentators suggest.
In addition to the material produced by Dawlat al-Islamiyya, the channel;
- republished earlier writing through Maktabat al-Himma, a theological driven publication house of Dawlat al-Islamiyya.
- shared earlier work produced by al-Qaeda
- distributed historical and contemporary Salafi writing which intersects with their theology.
ISI era is an important part the identity for Dawlat al-Islamiyya – over 15% of the pages in ‘IS media products’ category originate from that period.
While 10% of PDF were encrypted, most documents were produced using tools easily available on most modern laptops.
Not one of the texts envisages a ‘Jihadist Utopia’ nor proposes a ‘Utopian narrative’. The idea of a ‘Utopian Narrative’ is an artefact of Western misinterpretation. It is not rooted in the texts of of Dawlat al-Islamiyya nor their predecessors.
Graphics on the documents – not so the content – is availabe in the previous post.

Sample Set taken of the Telegram IS channel “Library of the Caliphate” – more ISIS poroduced articles then historical and contemporary extremist books shared (left) yet the number of pages (right) outweigh what terrorist groups produce.

The pie-chart on the left shows the number of pages of each category. The categories are:

AQ era (without ISI) in red;
IS media group in yellow;
Extremist Salafist books by contemporary and historical authors in green. These writings are neither banned nor illegal in most countries around the world and provide the religious ecosystem to degrade humans and define the ‘other’ as enemy and so forth. The number of pages of these writings outweigh what terrorist groups produce.
Blue shows the dedicated re-publication of such legal extremist Salafist writings by IS’ Maktabat al-Himma, marking the importance for the extremist constituents.

The pie-chart on the right side shows the quantity of documents in the Caliphate Library. 596 uniquely IS (and ISI) produced document make up over 13,000 pages. Hence, the number of IS produced documents are shorter, quicker to read, more in number, yet reference to the rich ecosystem of the (green) 87,000 pages of extremist Salafist writings.

The AQ Era – The Arab Peninsula Documents

6% of the 908 PDF documents are from the AQ era, excluding the Iraqi AQ side, The Islamic State of Iraq, the forerunner of IS. It is significant to note, for IS and their readership, the ‘historical’ AQ documents of the Arab Peninsula jihadist ecosystem matter. It provides the theological legitimacy to kill fellow Sunni Muslims in the service of Arab regimes (i.e. al-Zahrani), the historical jihadist legitimacy of indiscriminate killings (i.e. al-Fahd[8]) or the re-enforced intellectual argumentations of fighting jihad until the end of times (i.e. al-‘Uyairi[9]). The first generation of al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) had been pioneers in facilitating the Internet as a constant medium for their output in the early 2000s and had a major crossover to the unfolding jihad in neighbouring Iraq. AQAP not only produced the first electronic jihad magazines but also had been key and cornerstone to develop the Sunni jihadist online activism.[10]

Of these core pre-IS AQ documents one AQ author is dominantly featured: Abu Hummam Bakr bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Athari. Al-Athari gained fame by his real name: Abu Sufyan Turki bin Mubarak bin al-Bin’ali, who had been a keen supporter of the Islamic State in Iraq when it was part of AQ and later sided with al-Baghdadi before falling out with him.[11] He was a prolific writer and, for example, under his pseudonym eulogized the Islamic State of Iraq leaders, the “believer of the faithful and his minister”, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir in April 2010. His writings regarding the Arab Spring in 2011, calling for violence as the only possible means in Syria[12] are shared by the Library as well. A document from February 2010 entitled “Conversation or Mooing”[13] is shared as well, highlighting the framework of that time when the West sought to engage moderate Islamic forces to undermine extremist groups – whereas this document shared in this context almost ten years later is seen as proof for the Caliphate Library target audience that ‘true’ Islam is victorious despite the odds. His 2011 fatwa styled ruling on banning women from driving is also part of the collection and was enforced during the reign of IS during its physical territorial phase in Syria and Iraq.[14]

Other writings of the AQ era feature Nasir al-Fahd, a treatise on “What a Woman should wear in front of other women”, dated to the year 2000. Nasir al-Fahd was a prominently featured scholar among the ecosystem and his writings among other things called for indiscriminate revenge bombings of citizens of enemy nations and the like. Nasir al-Fahd was arrested after the May bombings 2003 in Riyadh and recanted his support of terrorism while in prison. AQ, at that time active in Saudi Arabia, was keen to support al-Fahd by the emergent online ecosystem at the time and al-Fahd’s alleged letter “recanting the alleged recantation” was featured within this ecosystem.[15] Unlike al-Fahd, Abu Jandal al-Azdi was executed by the Saudi state after his arrest in August 2004. Abu Jandal al-Azdi aka as Abu Salman Faris al-Zahrani by his real name, was a key jihadi-theologian. In the Caliphate Library collection his work on “Usama bin Laden – Reformer of our Time and Crusher of the Americans” (640 pages) is featured and a new IS version of his early 2000s writing regarding the permissibility to kill Muslims in the service of Arab nation states had been re-published. He was on a wanted list of Saudi Arabia, to which AQAP responded by issuing a 65 page long ‘counter-narrative’ featuring the 26 individuals. This writing was edited by al-Azdi and is part of the Caliphate Library.

The Documents of the precursor Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and IS

In addition to the material produced by IS, the channel republished ISI era documents. This is an important part of the identity for Dawlat al-Islamiyya (IS) and a religious authoritative source – over 13% of the pages (over 13,000) in ‘IS media products’ category originate from that period. Most documents are martyr stories that had been published by the AQ Iraq media diwan (2005) and was then distributed by the Majlis al-Shura al-Mujahidin and al-Furqan, the foundations of ISI. IS re-published these early martyr stories of Iraq fighting against mainly the Americans in 2018. The document of 235 pages features over 50 martyr stories, including prominent al-Zarqawi lieutenant Abu Anas al-Shami[16], valuing the avant-gardist jihadist operations of the time that led to the success of the Islamic State a decade later. The textual cohesion laid by such martyr stories of the ISI-era is continued by similar stories by, for example, IS’ al-Rimah media featuring the martyr Abu ‘Ali al-Shammari, a member of a large tribe, from Iraq, following the “examples of Khattab [Samir Saleh ‘Abdallah, Chechnya], Shamil [Basayev, Chechnya], Usama [bin Laden] and other” jihadi foreign fighters.[17] A focal point, naturally, are the IS era documents that to a degree are transcripts of IS radio al-Bayan programs, featuring lengthy theological explanations by iconic IS figures such as Abu ‘Ali al-Anbari outlining the Sunni jihadist understanding of being a muwahhid, of professing the meaning of the “oneness of God”.[18] Other key documents include the series about the “Bath party – it’s history and ideology” (al-Battar), the treatise “legal ruling on defending against an attack against the Islamic shari’a and the ruling of the [jihadist] banner”, an updated re-print from the Saudi AQ era and released by al-Battar in 2015. The collected speeches by Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani are likewise featured with IS Maktabat al-Himma re-releases of slain ISI leaders writings, prominently having featured the “30 recommendations to the amirs and soldiers of the Islamic State” by ‘Abd al-Mun’im bin ‘Iz al-Din al-Badawi aka Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. This 74 page long advise, in the sense of his legacy, was re-distributed in multiple languages by Maktabat al-Himma in 2016. Several Arabic articles translated from English released in English in Dabiq appear alongside selected articles taken from the weekly al-Naba’ magazines. Showcasing the active side of the Islamic State, the constant emphasize that jurisprudence during their reign was actively implemented, lengthy documents clarifying everyday legal issues are part of the library, explaining in a Q&A styled process legal rulings (fatwa) to mundane issues such as who has to recompense what to the family of a victim of traffic accidents or general rulings in regards of blood money and revenge killings.[19] Ashhad writings on the proper process during Ramadan[20], reacting to AQ claims and drawing a line of distinction between AQ under bin Laden and that of al-Zawahiri[21] and classical jihadist-styled theological treatises that in sum can be labeled as anti-democracy analysis.[22]

Not one of the texts envisages a ‘Jihadist Utopia’ nor proposes a ‘Utopian narrative’. The idea of a ‘Utopian Narrative’ is an artefact of Western misinterpretation. It is not rooted in the texts of IS nor their predecessors.

The Salafist Distributions by Maktabat al-Himma

While the majority of single PDF documents are crafted by the two dominant Sunni jihadist groups AQ and IS, the Caliphate Library distributed historical and contemporary Salafi writing which intersects with modern Sunni jihadist theology. Earlier writings through Maktabat al-Himma, a theological driven publication house of IS republish writings by authors of the ‘Abd al-Wahhab family, mainly Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab. His writings are the backbone of modern-day Wahhabism that constitutes the state doctrine of Saudi Arabia and had been radical-revolutionary at his time. Banning veneration of graves and being outspoken anti-Shiite, the work of ‘Abd al-Wahhab gave birth to modern jihadism where a clear Sunni identity is laid out in cohesive literal format and with the Islamic State 2013 onwards, demonstrating the power of applying this form of extremist theology in audio-visual format to appeal to a less text-affluent zeitgeist on the Internet. Apart from extremist Salafist books re-published through Maktabat al-Himma (MH), using own created covers featuring the MH and IS logo with the slogan “upon prophetic methodology” many Salafist writings shared by the Library channel are scans made available as PDFs.

Maktabat al-Himma, IS core textual media foundation, distributes historical writings by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab to boost and promote their actions as theological sound based on the writings of the founder of Wahhabism.

Of the non-IS branded Salafist writings shared by the Library, not all works are to be associated with the extremist segment. The 40 hadith by al-Nuwawwi for example are an exception and are often simply party of any well stocked Islamic library. What makes the Salafist writings shared by the Library to be defined as extremist, however, is set on two principles:

The Salafist writings are linked to modern jihadist groups based on the shared theology, using the same language and referencing oftentimes the same religious sources to justify violence. Legitimizing killing those who insult prophet Muhammad (ibn Taymiyya 1263-1328 AD) is put into practice by AQ in the 2000s (following the Muhammad cartoons), sanctions the murder of Theo van Gogh (Amsterdam, 2004) and the main theme of a major ISI/IS themed video series (2012-2014). The writings are the basis of modern jihadist theology, relating the jihadist religiosity to violence against the defined ungodly, unholy or simply unhuman ‘other’.
Writings such as Minhaj al-Muslim featured in the Library are heavily cited by AQ and IS. Looking at the Arabic produced content of jihadist groups allows to reference and link the sources. The Caliphate Library Telegram channel provides a comprehensive collection of such core-jihadist historical and contemporary extremist Salafist textbooks that continue to inspire and fuel the Sunni jihadist movement as such. This is not limited to historical Salafist writers such as of ‘Abd al-Wahhab, ibn al-Qayyim, but includes modern extremist Salafist thinkers who are as outspoken in their works.

The Extremist Salafist Connection

The Salafist books featured in the Caliphate Library Channel by far outweigh in number of pages the jihadist documents. Apart from classical works by Imam Shawkani or Ibn al-Qayyim, the “shaykh al-Islam”, Ibn Taymiyya is overrepresented. Ibn Taymiyya, died 1328, was a prolific writer and member of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence. His work has influenced the Wahhabi movement of which the theological jihadist branch is the most extremist extension thereof. Within the 300,000 penned pages by AQ authors and IS productions, Ibn Taymiyya is referenced over 40,000 times. His jurisprudential (fiqh) works justify the persecution and killing of non-Muslims and provide a clear-cut definition of when Sunnis become apostates – the very essence of almost every contemporary jihadist author (and applied in the videos of jihadist groups). Ibn Taymiyya is renowned for his “characteristically juridical thinking”[23] and has a high level of competence as a legal scholar expressed in his writings that are based – at least in parts – on Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).Ibn Taymiyya is frequently cited in Sunni extremist, writings since the 1980s and accordingly referred to and quoted by jihadist ideologues in audio-visual publications. The “Islamic State” is basing all of its audio-visual output on the theology that has been penned by AQ since the 1980s – with the significant difference, however, that IS has had the territory to implement and enforce this corpus of theology upon the population of the self-designated “caliphate” – which as of 2019 serves as the filmed legacy and pretext for the return of IS. Featured in the Caliphate Library is the over 4,000 page long multivolume “tafsir shaykh al-Islam”, the exegesis of the Qur’an by Ibn Taymiyya and his notorious book “The drawn sword against the insulter of the Prophet” (al-sarim al-maslul didda shatim al-rasul). Within the Sunni extremist mindset, the sword must be drawn upon anyone who opposes their worldview and specific interpretations of Qur’anic sources, the hadith (sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad) or frame of references that have been penned since the 1980s. Ibn Taymiyya’s book has been used by Muhammed Bouyeri to justify killing Dutch filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in November 2004 in Amsterdam and is part of a long list jihadist operations in recent years.

“The text details how and why to kill targets, first of all because of insult (shatm, sabb, adhan) of Islam. Bouyeri tried to sever van Gogh’s head with a big knife after he had shot him several times. In the text we find the passage: “the cutting of the head without mercy is legal if the Prophet does not disapprove it.” Moreover, the text advises multiple times to use assassination as an act of deterrence. The slaughter of van Gogh in open daylight seems like a one-to-one translation into reality of the directives we find in the text.”^[24]

For example, Ibn Taymiyya has been used to justify the suicide bombing attack of the Danish Embassy in Pakistan (2008)[25] after the Muhammad cartoons had been released. In June 2012 the Jund allah (soldiers of God) media outlet of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan published a German language video featuring Moroccan-German “Abu Ibraheem” (Yassin Chouka) calling on his associates in Bonn from Waziristan to kill members of the German rightwing party Pro-NRW.

This exact notion was picked up by German speaking Global Islamic Media Front activists in 2012 in the wake of the violent protests in parts of the Islamic world in response to the movie “Innocence of Muslims.” A German translation of al-Maqdisi’s pamphlet, presumably by Austro-Egyptian jihadist Muhammad Mahmud, enriched the fatwa by the Egyptian pro-jihadist Ahmad ‘Ashush calling for the death of anyone involved in the movie project.[26]

In January 2015 two brothers, apparently trained by al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula in Yemen, attacked the offices of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. The Kouachi brothers after the massacre are seen and heard in one video made by a bystander shouting “we have avenged the Prophet” (li-intiqamna al-rasul), and then shoot wounded French police officer Ahmad Merabet in the head.[27] A video published on January 11, 2015 by the IS affiliated media outlet, Asawitimedia, praises the attacks. The video is entitled “The French have insulted the Prophet of God – thus a merciless reaction.”

To cite Rüdiger Lohlker once more: “without deconstructing the theology of violence inherent in jihadi communications and practice, these religious ideas will continue to inspire others to act, long after any given organized force, such as the Islamic State, may be destroyed on the ground.”[28]

This applies not just to deconstructing the massive literature corpus produced by Sunni Jihadists. Without understanding the linguistic-theological links to the extremist Salafist spectrum that is of intimate importance to the modern Jihadist movement, and taking steps against the maintained presence of extremist Salafist materials online (as well as the multilingual printed offline global dissemination), the threat of the most extreme form of religious terrorism is unlikely to diminish any time soon.

[1] Nico Prucha, The Context of the Manchester Bombings in the Words of the “Islamic State” on Telegram, onlinejihad, August 2017, https://onlinejihad.net/2017/08/27/the-context-of-the-manchester-bombings-in-the-words-of-the-islamic-state-ontelegram/.

[2] Paz, Reuven. “Reading their lips: the credibility of jihadi web sites as ‘soft power’in the war of the minds.” Global Research in International Affairs Center, The Project for the Research of Islamist Movements 5.5 (2007).

[3] Brown, Katherine E. 2011. “Blinded by the Explosion? Security and Resistance in Muslim Women’s Suicide Terrorism,” in Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, eds. Women, Gender, and Terrorism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 194-226.

[4] Rüdiger Lohlker, Why Theology Matters – The Case of ISIS, Strategic Review July –September 2016, http://sr-indonesia.com/in-the-journal/view/europe-s-misunderstanding-of-islam-and-isis

[5] Both references, jihad by the sword as well as the tongue are based on Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding thereof, whereas Ibn Taymiyya declares “jihad by one’s hand, heart, and tongue.” Ibn Taymiyya, Qa’ida fi l-inghimas al-‘adu wa-hal yubah? Riyadh: Adwa’ al-salaf, 2002, 19. The first generation of al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) referenced the “tongue” as part of the overall endeavor to commit themselves to God and using violence to deny the application of man-made laws: “We call all Muslims to work on behalf of the religion of God, and to jihad on the path of God, by dedicating one’s live, financial abilities and one’s tongue.”

“Statement by the mujahidin on the Arab Peninsula regarding the latest declarations by the Ministry of Interior”, translated and commented in Nico Prucha, Die Stimme des Dschihad – al-Qa’idas erstes Online Magazin, Verlag Dr. Kovac: Hamburg, 2010, 137-144.

[6] Ali Fisher, “Netwar in Cyberia: Decoding the Media Mujahidin”, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, (Paper 5, 2018) https://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/uscpublicdiplomacy.org/files/Netwar%20in%20Cyberia%20Web%20Ready_with%20disclosure%20page%2011.08.18.pdf

[7] Rüdiger Lohlker, Why Theology Matters – The Case of ISIS, Strategic Review July –September 2016, http://sr-indonesia.com/in-the-journal/view/europe-s-misunderstanding-of-islam-and-isis

[8] Nasir al-Fahd, a long-time sympathizer and endorsed by the classical AQ, currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.

[9] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, former bin Laden bodyguard and key AQAP theologian whose writings are in parts of analytical sobriety and in other parts clear theological instructions. His writing “constants on the path of jihad” is one of the most important documents and was indirectly cited by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he re-iterated that “god commands us to wage jihad, he did not order us to win”, emphasizing jihadist motivation in this world is to strive to be certified to enter paradise in the next.

[10] The range of pioneer activist media operations spanned from re-thinking jihadist videos to professionally broadcast the testimonies of suicide bombers, include important textual sources in filmed documents to legitimize beheadings (before these became a symbol in Western mindset for AQ Iraq with the filmed beheading of Nick Berg 2004), and even a first form of streaming: a squad of AQAP operatives maintained a cellphone connection allowing an audio recording as the operation unfolded. This audio was then included in a later video production to praise the attack and commemorate the killed operatives. Nico Prucha: Die Stimme des Dschihad – al-Qa’idas erstes Online Magazin, Dr. Kovac: Hamburg, 2010.

[11] Falling out over takfir issues – killed – link

[12] Al-Bin’ali (al-Athari): Ya ahl al-Sham inn al-asima fi l-husam, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l Jihad, 2011.

[13] Al-Bin’ali (al-Athari): Hiwar am khuwar?, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l Jihad, 2010. He notes the term khuwar “mooing sounds” by citing the Lisan al-‘Arab reference of the Qur’an: 7:147

[14] Al-Bin’ali (al-Athari): al-Ishara fi hukm qiyyada al-mara’t al-siyyara, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l Jihad, 2011.

[15] For more on the online operations and key players of the first generation of AQ in Saudi Arabia: Nico Prucha: Die Stimme des Dschihad – al-Qa’idas erstes Online Magazin, Dr. Kovac: Hamburg, 2010.

[16] Abu Anas al-Shami was a renowned theologian and a vital figure for al-Zarqawi and his group. He died in a targeted missile strike by American forces in 2004 near Abu Ghraib in Iraq. He was a Palestinian based in Jordan. He grew up in Kuwait, where arguably many Palestinian workers and engineers had been exposed to the strict teachings and interpretations of the Wahhabi dominated Arab Peninsula Islam. Experiencing war and expulsion again, the Palestinian migrants, who nevertheless had been refugees in Jordan and had come to Kuwait in pursuit of economic opportunities, had to flee back to Jordan because of the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1990, taking the Arab Peninsula Salafism with them. As the PLO sided with Saddam Hussein, the Palestinians lost their base in Kuwait and in most cases returned to the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere. Hazim al-Amin, Al-Salafi al-yatim – al-wajh al-Filastini li “l-jihad al-‘alimi” wa-l “Qa’ida”. Beirut-London: Dar al-Saqi, 2011, 114-127.

[17] Abu Mu’adh al-Shammari, Qissa shahid min ard al-‘Iraq Abu ‘Ali al-Shammari, Rimah Media, 2018.

[18] For example, the – as featured in the library as of time of writing – 26 transcribed episodes of al-Anbari’s lessons how to avoid involuntarily shirk (‘polytheism’).

[19] i.e. Fatawa ‘abr al-athir: Qatl wa-mawt wa-qisas wadiyyat wa-l jana’iz, al-Bayan, 2017.

[20] Abu ‘Ammar al-Ansari, al-Khuttab al-madhbariyya istiqbal Ramadan, Ashhad, 2018.

[21] Abu l-Bara’a al-Yamani, al-Radd al-qasif ‘ala shuyukh al-qa’ida al-khawalif, Ashhad, 2018.

[22] Abu Mu’adh al-Shammari, al-Dimukratiyya wa-atiba’uha fi mizan al-shar’i, Ashhad, 2018.

[23] Wael b. Hallaq: Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians. Translated with an introduction by Wael Hallaq, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, xxxiii.

^[24] Ibid.

[25] Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan in 2008. In video entitled al-qawla qawla al-sawarim, “the words [are now about action and hence] words of the sword”, shows the testimony of the suicide operative identified as a Saudi by the nom de guerre Abu Gharib al-Makki [the Meccan]. The one hour long video justifies the attack – among a rich blend of theological narratives – by the referencing of the time to talk is over, the time for actions (i.e the swords must be drawn) has come to avenge the insults of Prophet Muhammad, referring to the work of Ibn Taymiyya.

[26] Nico Prucha, Fatwa calling for the death of the director, producer, and actors involved in the making the film “Innocence of Muslims”, Jihadica, September 18, 2012, http://www.jihadica.com/fatwa-calling-for-the-death-of-the-director-producer-and-actors-involved-in-making-the-film-%E2%80%98innocence-of-islam%E2%80%99/

[27] A detailed oversight is provided by the BBC, outlining in depth also the attack by IS member Amedy Coulibaly who executed several hostages in a Jewish supermarket, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237

Amedy Coulibaly uploaded a video where he pledges allegiance to al-Baghdadi. Part of his video is used in one of the ‘official’ IS videos to applaud the January 2015 Paris attack, Risala ila Fransa, Wilayat Salah al-Din, February 14, 2015.

[28] Rüdiger Lohlker, Why Theology Matters – The Case of ISIS, Strategic Review July –September 2016, http://sr-indonesia.com/in-the-journal/view/europe-s-misunderstanding-of-islam-and-isis

Come Home: Jihad in Arabia

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The Islamic State, which is oftentimes referred by its Arabic acronym Daesh, proclaimed the re-establishment of the Caliphate with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as Caliph. Daesh stands for al-dawlat al-Islamiyya fi l-‘Iraq wa-sh Sham. The name change reflected the expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq into Syria and since 2014 often refers to itself as the Islamic State or the Islamic Caliphate State. It had been groups such as al-Qaeda (AQ) that theorized about restoring a Islamic State[1] with partially having been able to establish proto-states,[2] but never to the extent of having been able to assert control over a greater population within traditional core Arab Sunni territory. Jihadists had fantasized about being able to combat Arab regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, urging in their rhetoric to be empowered to liberate Palestine, as in their perspective, they had just defeated the Soviet Union with the withdrawal of the Red Army from Afghanistan.[3] Not seeing, yet hoping, in 1989 that one day jihad can be waged inside Arab countries, ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam wrote: “From the morning into the middle of the night, and we are like this, if we have liberated Afghanistan tomorrow, what will we work on? (…) Or God will open a new front for us somewhere in the Islamic world and we will go, wage a jihad there. Or will I finish my sharia studies at the Islamic University in Kabul? Yes, a lot of the Mujahideen are thinking about what to work on after the jihad ends in Afghanistan.”[4] Jihad further internationalized as the zones of conflict diversified. In the 1990s conflicts arose featuring jihadist groups in Bosnia, the Caucasus, prominently Chechnya with jihadist revenge operations throughout Russia, Somalia, it continued in Afghanistan with the Taliban taking over the country and time and again Kashmir. None of these regions of conflict are part of the Arab world, yet from all of these conflicts Arabic-language media items originated, featuring a range of languages, yet dominated by Arabic. Non-Arabic fighters and tales had been subtitled in videos or released as translations, and Arabic native speaking foreigners had been either in key positions (i.e. Khattab) or Arabic affluent local fighters gave their testimony. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that AQ was able to manifest in Saudi Arabia (AQAP) for a few years but the game-changer for Sunni jihadis had been the American occupation of Iraq in 2003. Even when the first generation of AQAP failed, and was forced to re-establish itself in Yemen, jihad was finally able to gradually establish itself in Iraq in the chaotic aftermath of 2003 – giving birth over time what would be known as ISIS. Finally, after the AQAP 1.0 phase where jihadis fought inside Saudi Arabia, referred to as the land of the two holy sanctuaries, and where Arabic was the common language with few exceptions, a Sunni jihadist arm was able to persist in Iraq and produce almost exclusively materials in Arabic featuring Arabic native speakers – to seek to attract more recruits to their cause.

As the late Reuven Paz wrote in 2005, “viewing the struggle in Iraq as “return home” to the heart of the Arab world for Muslim fighters after years of struggle in “exile” in places such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Central Asia.”^[5] Building a media heritage and tradition, Muslim fighters, referring to the first and early foreign fighter generation had been keen to write about their experiences in “exile” and document their “struggle” by releasing writings, martyr stories, audio-recordings and most important – and on a more regular basis – videos. Especially written accounts of the shuhada’, the martyrs, had been a popular and a unifying element of all conflict zones where foreign and local fighters presented their struggle as a fight for justice and their cause as decreed by God on his path. Increasingly – and as early as the early to mid-1990s – this form of documented “struggle” in “exile” entered the Internet where it is meant to stay and continues to inspire individuals to this day.^[6] The martyr-stories are an integral part of the jihadist literature. Documents in Arabic outline individual biographies from 1980s Afghanistan[7] to the 1990s Chechnya[8], Bosnia[9], Somalia, to the 2000s with Afghanistan[10], the Caucasus, Somalia, Saudi Arabia[11] and Iraq[12]. From every region, from throughout the 1980s (Afghanistan) to the 2000s, Sunni extremist militant groups used the media as a tool to report to fellow Muslims (mainly in Arabic but not exclusively) about their – in their view – pious acts and deeds in fighting against injustice and oppression. Arabic is the lingua jihadica while only parts of the literature, including selected martyr biographies, are specifically translated into other languages. In cases where the martyr is not a native Arabic speaker, his account usually is translated into Arabic and the original language biography is published as well – within the respective lingual networks. The power and the value of jihadist video productions from a lingual outreach perspective in this regard is strategic: any non-native Arabic speaker issues his filmed farewell testimonial, in Arabic referenced as wasiyya, in his native language – Arabic subtitles are added. Only a portion of Arabic native speaker videos, however, are released at a later point with non-Arabic subtitles.

The theology of IS, AQ and any other Sunni extremist groups, however, is based on Arabic-language religious scriptures, not just Qur’an and Sunna, but also references elements of the rich 1,400-year long tradition of Islamic writings. The “Islamic State” applied the theology of AQ in full within its territory – and manages to post videos from other regions of the world as of 2019 where the group manages to control or at times dominate parts of territory.[13] ‘Amaq statements with claims of IS attacks in Congo und Uganda surfaced the past days as well, with pictures showing looted assault rifles and cell phones – and looted tanks and burning village homes in Nigeria. These media items, videos, pictures, writings justifying the occupation of Marawi and the outlook of jihad in South East Asia etc. are ALL in Arabic. In regions where Sunni jihadist groups pop up, Arabic language emerges within the group projected to the outside – core target audience – for native Arabic speakers. Local fighters, as is the case since the existence of VHS tapes featuring local fighters in the 1980s Afghanistan, 1990s Bosnia, Chechnya etc. speak in their local language – with Arabic substitles for the core target audience.

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Whereas past AQ generations, in particular in Saudi Arabia^[14], had to theologically justify their specific targeting of non-Muslims, IS enforces these theological decrees and legal rulings, in Arabic referred to in the authoritative use of language as fatawa[15] and ahkam: judicial rulings and religious conditions based on chains of arguments allowing or ban i.e. certain behavior or acts.

Jihadist online materials is a rich blend of various media, never short of content, ranging from simple homepages, discussion forums, blogs, various online libraries for texts and videos, to every single social media platform as of writing.^[16] The online media footprint today is the development of nearly three decades of committed media work by jihadist actors – with two decades of online cyberpunk styled activism, ensuring that content once uploaded will stay online – and thus findable – somewhere in the rich online ecosystem. This dedicated work has been and is the expression of a strategic discourse on how to conduct jihadist warfare online and has been penned in a highly coherent manner by leading jihadist theoreticians such as Abu Mus’ab al-Suri.^[17]

As Reuven Paz, a fluent Arabic speaker (and reader of Arabic language extremist materials) noted in 2007, “Jihadi militancy is … almost entirely directed in Arabic and its content is intimately tied to the socio-political context of the Arab world.”[18] As Ali Fisher notes: “People who live in that socio-political context, or habitus, easily pick up on the factors that make up the ‘narratives’”, and furthermore: “The habitus is itself a generative dynamic structure that adapts and accommodates itself to another dynamic meso level structure composed primarily of other actors, situated practices and durable institutions (fields).” And because habitus allowed Bourdieu, Fisher concludes;

“to analyze the social agent as a physical, embodied actor, subject to developmental, cognitive and emotive constraints and affected by the very real physical and institutional configurations of the field.[19]

In their habitus and manifestation, jihadist media discourses refer to certain principles of belief, or define norms, issue symbols, introduce and enforce wordings, and sources with the intention of having resonance within their target audience. As members of their respective societies, or religiously influenced cultures, they operate from “within” in crafting public messages and framing their narratives, sanctioning violence and defining “justice” and “values” – conveyed by jihadist media groups in a pedagogical fashion, using a highly coded religious language, first and foremost for their target audience: native Arabic speakers, born as Sunni Muslims. It is as if

“the form in which the significant symbols are embodied to reach the public may be spoken, written, pictorial, or musical, and the number of stimulus carriers is indefinite. If the propagandist identifies himself imaginatively with the lives of the subjects in a particular situation, he is able to explore several channels of approach.”[20]

Jihadist media groups operating in Arabic and to a much lesser degree in western languages have perhaps taken note of al-Suri’s “Message to the British and European Peoples and Governments regarding the Explosions in London”, July 2005, where he outlined the Internet as the most important medium to propagate and spread the jihadists demands and frame of reference in general.^[21] He referred to “the jihadi elite” residing in Europe to partake in this venture.

With the rise of the Islamic State and their declaration of the caliphate in mid-2014, the propaganda and the interspersed media strategies to fan-out such content had reached an unprecedented peak. The move by IS to shift to social media (first Twitter 2012 until late 2015, then Telegram 2016 to as of writing (2019)[22], with a change of modus-operandi)[23], their supporters, like other Jihadist groups, have become increasingly adept at integrating operations on the physical battlefield with the online effort to propagate their ideology (=theology) and celebrate their ‘martyrs’, being able to echo contemporary stories to the rich literal corpus that exists since the 1980s.

[1] For example referred by ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam in his 1989 sermon in Seattle, USA, telling the stories of the war against the Soviets and why the ultimate goal can only be to re-establish a Islamic State. ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam,

[2] Yemen / Mali source

[3] ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam, al-jihad bayna Kabul wa-l Bayt al-Maqdis, Seattle, 1988.

For a contextual reading, Nico Prucha, “Abdallah ‘Azzam’s outlook for Jihad in 1988 – “Al-Jihad between Kabul and Jerusalem””, Research Institute for European and American Studies (2010), http://www.rieas.gr/images/nicos2.pdf.

[4] ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam, Muqaddima fi-l hijra wa-l ‘idad, 85.

[5] Reuven Paz, The Impact of the War in Iraq on the Global Jihad, in: Fradkin, Haqqani, Brown (eds.); Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol 1, The Hudson Institute, 2005, 40.

[6] Nico Prucha, “Die Vermittlung arabischer Jihadisten-Ideologie: Zur Rolle deutscher Aktivisten,” In: Guido Steinberg (ed.), Jihadismus und Internet: Eine deutsche Perspektive, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, October 2012, 45-56, http://www.swp-berlin.org/de/publikationen/swp-studien-de/swp-studien-detail/article/jihadismus_und_internet.html.

[7] Of the many works from this time, the accounts of martyrs by ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam are popular to this day: ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam: ’Ashaq al-hur” martyr biography collection, http://tawhed.ws/dl?i=pwtico4g, accessed August 29, 2013. To give readers an impression, this book by ‘Azzam is

[8] The al-Ansar mailing list, a branch of the al-Ansar online forum, released a collection of martyrs who died in Chechnya: al-Ansar (ed.): qissas shuhada’ al-shishan, 2007; 113 pages.

[9] This tradition was continued in the 1990s with the influx of Arab foreign fighters in Bosnia, see for example the 218 page long collection by: Majid al-Madani / Hamd al-Qatari (2002), Min qissas al-shuhada al-Arab fi l-Busna wa-l Hirsik, www.saaid.net

[10] Abu ‘Ubayda al-Maqdisi and ‘Abdallah bin Khalid al-‘Adam. Shuhada fi zaman al-ghurba. The document was published as a PDF- and WORD format in the main jihadist forums in 2008, although the 350-page strong book was completed in 2005.

[11] With al-Qa’ida on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) active, a bi-monthly electronic magazine, the Voice of Jihad, was featured and martyr stories had been released online as well. The most prominent martyrs are featured in a special “the Voice of Jihad” electronic book (112 pages): Sayyar a’lam al-shuhada’, al-Qa’idun website, 2006.

[12] Sayyar a’lam al-shuhada‘ was a series that featured the martyr biographies in 2004-2006; the collected martyr biographies (in sum 212 pages) had been re-released by al-Turath media, a media organization that is part of IS in 2018. Since the launch of IS’ weekly newspaper al-Naba’, prominent martyr stories have been featured there.

[13] As displayed in IS videos, i.e. Hijra wa-l qital, Wilayat Gharb Afriqa (January 15, 2019) or Radd al-Wa’id, Wilaya Diyala (January 29, 2019).

[14] Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi-Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[15] Plural for fatwa.

[16] For a discussion on how Twitter was used by jihadist actors: Nico Prucha and Ali Fisher. “Tweeting for the Caliphate – Twitter as the New Frontier for Jihadist Propaganda.” CTC Sentinel (Westpoint), June 2013, http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/tweeting-for-the-caliphate-twitter-as-the-new-frontier-for-jihadist-propaganda

[17] Lia, Brynjar, Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

[18] Paz, Reuven. “Reading Their Lips: The Credibility of Jihadi Web Sites as ‘Soft Power’ in the War of the Minds.” (2007).

[19] Ali Fisher, How 6^th Graders Would See Through Decliner Logic and Coalition Information Operations, Onlinejihad, January 2018, https://onlinejihad.net/2018/01/26/how-6th-graders-would-see-through-decliner-logic-and-coalition-information-operations/

[20] Harold D. Lasswell, The Theory of Political Propaganda, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 21, No. 3. (Aug., 1927), 627-631, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0554%28192708%2921%3A3%3C627%3ATTOPP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L.

[21] Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, ila Britaniyyin wa-l Eurupiyyin bi sha’n tafjirat London July 2007 wa-mumarissat al-hukuma al-Britaniyya

[22] Although

[23] Martyn Frampton with Ali Fisher, and Nico Prucha. “The New Netwar: Countering Extremism Online (London: Policy Exchange, 2017).

As of 2019, the Islamic State, but also AQ or the Taliban continue to operate on Telegram and from this protected realm newly produced propaganda is injected into online spaces that are (more) accessible than the closed and hard to find groups on Telegram.

Notes on the “Salil al-sawarim” series: the theological framework – from Amsterdam to the “Islamic State”

SAS4 cover

The release of the video Salil al-sawarim (SaS) by ISIS’s media department al-Furqan in May 2014 demonstrated the sophistication of the jihadist use of social media to disseminate their video content. At the time, this had been Twitter – needless to write, Telegram as of early 2016 – and now in full swing as of end of 2017 – has replaced Twitter as the first entry point for new IS curated content. The Twitter metrics are detailed at Jihadica (two part series). Notions and sentiments visualized by videos such as Salil al-Sawarim over the past years have enabled to jihadists to project influence on a number of layers and levels, demonstrating how – in their mindset – Islamic territory has to be “restored” and “cleansed”. The first three Salil al-sawarim videos had been very popular, high quality edited and showed a mix of extreme obscene violence and ideology at play by IS’ predecessor “the Islamic State of Iraq”.

This post provides a few elements of Salil al-sawarim 4, or the “clanging of the swords, 4” as it provides an excellent example of a certain form of IS propaganda. More specifically, it is a key example of how IS uses theology to justify the actions of its fighters and legitimise its occupation of territory in Syria and Iraq – and the legacy it leaves behind as of end of 2017 with the loss of most of the territory the jihadists had managed to control, according to al-Quds al-Arabi.

The series Salil al-Sawarim is particularly illustrative of this emphasis on theology. Readers sufficiently initiated into the mainly Arabic language corpus of Sunni extremist theology will understand the title’s particular reference right away;[1] it refers to the book al-Sarim al-maslul ‘ala shatim al-rasul, “the Sharp Sword on whoever Insults the Prophet.” Its author is 13^th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328 AD), who is often referred to as shaykh al-Islam (“the scholar of Islam) in the conservative / orthodox Arabic-Islamic framework.

Ibn Taymiyya is renowned for his “characteristically juridical thinking”[2] and viewed as a highly competent legal scholar. His writings are based – at least in part – on Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).

IT asSarim almaslul

Ibn Taymiyya has featured prominently in Sunni extremist thought since the 1980s, when AQ established this ideology. The “Islamic State” has based all of its audio-visual output on the theology penned by AQ. The crucial difference is that IS has the territory to implement and enforce this corpus of theology on the population of the self-designated “caliphate”.

Ibn Taymiyya provides a legal framework based on jurisprudential findings for killing “an insulter of the prophet, regardless whether he is a Muslim or a disbeliever”.[3] Whoever insults the Prophet, according to Ibn Taymiyya, “must be killed, no matter if he is a Muslim or disbeliever, and has no right to repent.”

Within the Sunni extremist mind-set, the sword must be drawn upon anyone who opposes their worldview and specific interpretation of Qur’anic sources or the hadith (sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad). In various AQ and IS videos, a specific sound effect subtly underscores references to Ibn Taymiyya’s writings. This sound effect, popular within jihadist online subculture, is that of a sword drawn from its shaft, clanging in the process.

Jihadists have also used the writings of Ibn Taymiyya to justify specific attacks. For example, Muhammed Bouyeri cited Ibn Taymiyya’s book before killing Dutch filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in November 2004 in Amsterdam:

“Shortly before he [Bouyeri] killed van Gogh, he circulated the theological tractate on the “heroic deed” of Ibn Maslama^[4] per e-mail to his friends. It is one of the 56 texts Bouyeri wrote or distributed. The fatwa of Ibn Taymiyya was among them also in a short leaflet-form downloadable from tawhed.ws titled “The drawn sword against the insulter of the Prophet” (al-sarim al-maslul didda shatim al-rasul). It is likely that the text not only influenced Bouyeri’s decision to assassinate van Gogh, but also his method.

The text details how and why to kill targets, first of all because of insult (shatm, sabb, adhan) of Islam. Bouyeri tried to sever van Gogh’s head with a big knife after he had shot him several times. In the text we find the passage: “the cutting of the head without mercy is legal if the Prophet does not disapprove it.” Moreover, the text advises multiple times to use assassination as an act of deterrence. The slaughter of van Gogh in open daylight seems like a one-to-one translation into reality of the directives we find in the text.”^[5] vanGogh_Buyairi

User-created content on Twitter praising the killing of Theo van Gogh, outlining the theological obligation to hunt anyone who insults Prophet Muhammad or God.[6]

In addition, AQ alluded to the writings of Ibn Taymiyya in a video claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing targeting the Embassy of Denmark in Pakistan in 2008[7] after a Danish newspaper published cartoon depictions of Muhammad.

Ibn Taymiyya is among several traditionalists and historical scholars who have explored the subject of avenging the Prophet Muhammad. The work by Jordanian-Palestinian jihadist scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi stands out in its attempt to clearly outline who can be killed legitimately for insulting Prophet Muhammad. Al-Maqdisi extends this beyond individuals, and says any government deemed to have insulted either the Prophet, God or religion in general is a legitimate target for reprisal.[8]

In January 2015 two brothers, apparently trained in Yemen by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, opened fire in the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. After the attack, a bystander filmed the Kouachi brothers shouting, “We have avenged the Prophet” (li-intiqamna al-rasul), before fatally shooting wounded French police officer Ahmad Merabet.[9] A video published on January 11, 2015 by the IS-affiliated media outlet, Asawitimedia, praised the attacks. The video is entitled “The French have insulted the Prophet of God – thus a merciless reaction.”

fransasabbu

“The French have insulted the Prophet of God”

There is a coherent message across jihadist writings, videos, and theological decrees that say vengeance restores the dignity of Prophet Muhammad. They command individuals worldwide to demonstrate their faith by responding violently to those who insult the Prophet.

IS’ fourth Salil al-Sawarim movie, in which retribution for insulting Prophet Muhammad is the underlying principle of a brutal and rapidly emerging sectarian war (harb ta’ifi), shows IS fighters seeking to exterminate the Shiites, portrayed as a group that has insulted the prophet, his companions, God, and in sum, Islam, since the early days of the religion. This is one of the key theological principles of “the Islamic State of Iraq” that then became even more important in the phase of conquest and expansion into Syria 2012 onwards. The countless videos by the then re-named “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham” ensured to reformat its newley conquered territory – on the one hand, killing or forcing locals to join – or public “recant” and return to IS understanding of ahl al-Sunna wa-l jama’a – and on the other hand the systematic eradication of Sufi shrines, graveyards, sacred trees, Shiite mosques, Yazidi temples, Christian churches etc. as based on AQ’s penned and yet fiercly deployed theology by IS’ Godfather Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi – and embodied by the IS and the khilafa as tradition henceforth.

2014IRdes

Such nuances are at the very core of all Sunni extremist Arabic language releases – not since IS, but since the very 1980s. What we have witnessed is a subsequent expansion of theological steered acts across regions and countries where Sunni extremists in recent years have had the chance to set up a foothold – no matter how temporary that has been.

in the above sequences of screenshots Ibn al-Qayyim, the disciple of Ibn Taymiyya, referred to as shaykh al-Islam by orthodox Muslims is cited in regards of the destruction of the “site of veneration by the rafidimushrikin”. The text serves as the jurisprudence for IS to act:

“it is not permissible [for Sunni Muslims] to leave the sites and places of shirk and idols untouched once the power to destroy them is established, even if just for one day. For these are the symbols of kufr and shirk are the from the greatest of evil. Therefore, it is not permissible to rule maintaining after conquering these sites.”
In Arabic: tawaghit, plural of taghut, a term used in reference of worldly tyrant rulers and idols, worshipped in violation of tawhid. The fight against taghut in jihadist mindset is bound by both elements – fighting worldly un-Islamic Arab regimes and thus restore the ‘true’ Islamic community (umma).

For example, SAS4 shows several sequences in which murdered Iraqi soldiers are described as Shiites, or rejectionists (rafida), a degrading term in Sunni extremist literature. The film marks Shiites as inferior humans who constitute the “interior enemy” because they are Arabs – in Iraq at the time as opposed to the Iranian intervention later. It follows that they are Islam’s most important foe and must be fought first and foremost.

Text and videos are not the only means of spreading the theoretical principle of avenging the Prophet; two of the most popular jihadist songs, or nashid, on YouTube reference Ibn Taymiyya and the notion of killing all those who insult Islam. A nashid by Abu Yaseer has had over 1.5 million views and can easily be retrieved online by searching for “Salil al-Sawarim”.[10] A related nashid with the title “the words [are now about action and hence] words of the sword” by Abu ‘Ali has over 3.5 million views.[11] The reference of the “sword” unites both nashid.

The four-part Salil al-sawarim series conveys three main themes:

Punishment: It is legitimate to kill anyone considered a non-Sunni Muslim, in particular the Shiites of Iraq. Shiism
by Sunni extremist standards is portrayed as a sect that has deviated from Islam and seeks to destroy Sunni Islam from within.
Inclusion and representation: IS is shown operating carefully within Sunni territories in Iraq and Syria, assassinating key government figures and offering the Sunni majority a chance to reintegrate into the true Sunni community – represented solely by the “Islamic State” – by repenting (tawba) their sin of having worked for non-Sunni Muslims.

The chance to repent has become an integral part of IS strategy to consolidate newly-conquered territory. Key IS ideologues such as Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani have supported this strategy; it consists of annihilating key figures of the Iraqi government; punishing Sunnis who collaborated with the Americans or Shiites; and offering Sunni police and soldiers a chance to be cleansed of their sins and restored as true members of the Sunni community by renouncing their past actions and swearing allegiance to al-Baghdadi.

Salil al-sawarim has turned into a popular and active meme online. It fosters IS identity and creates role models in a fandom-styled environment where users can create and upload their own images to praise videos like SAS and the worldview they depict.

IS has become more than an idea or a physical movement. It has managed to spread its “values” and theological reference points across a wide range of online platforms in a number of languages, primarily Arabic.

[1] Rüdiger Lohlker, Why Theology Matters – the Case of Jihadi Islam, Strategic Review (July-September 2016), http://sr-indonesia.com/in-the-journal/view/europe-s-misunderstanding-of-islam-and-isis

[2] Wael b. Hallaq: Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians. Translated with an introduction by Wael Hallaq, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, xxxiii.

[3] The book is available online on various websites and outlets, for example Dorar al-Sunniyya, www.dorar.net. A print version is available in most religious book shops in Arab countries. The image is a book cover illustration of a commented version published as: Ibn Taymiyya, al-Sarim al-maslul ‘ala shatim al-rasul li-shaykh al-Islam Taqiyy al-Din Ahmad bin ‘Abd alHalim Ibn Taymiyya al-Harrani, Shibra al-Khayma: Alexandria and Medina, 2008.

^[4] As the author of the citation Philipp Holtmann explains, “terrorists are called upon to identify with the Muslim Ibn Maslama who volunteered to kill Muhammad’s critic Ka’b bin al-Ashraf.” Philipp Holtmann, Virutal Leadership in Radical Islamist Movements: Mechanisms, Justifications and Discussion. Working Paper, The Institute for Policy and Strategy, Herzliya Conference February 6-9, 2011, http://www.herzliyaconference.org/eng/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/PhilippHoltmann.pdf

^[5] Ibid.

[6] The text praises Muhammad Bouyeri as a jihadist role model. Not only has he acted to avenge the violation of van Gogh against religion in general, but rather he, according to the text, denounced the worldly law in the Dutch court, claiming to only acknowledge shari’a law.

[7]A video entitled al-qawla qawla al-sawarim, “the words [are now about action and hence] words of the sword”, shows the testimony of the suicide operative identified as a Saudi by the nom de guerre Abu Gharib al-Makki [the Meccan]. The one-hour video justifies the attack; “the time to talk is over, the time for actions (i.e the swords must be drawn) has come to avenge the insults of Prophet Muhammad”.

[8] Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, al-Sarim al-maslul ‘ala sabb al-rabb aw al-din aw a-rasul sala l-llahu ‘alayhi wa-salam, Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l Jihad.

[9] A detailed oversight is provided by the BBC, also outlining in depth the attack by IS member Amedy Coulibaly who executed several hostages in a Jewish supermarket, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237

[10] Hosted by the YouTube Channel “The Great Breakfast War” – the channel & link have been deleted. Thank you YouTube!

[11] This singer was featured in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula videos as far back as 2003/4.

The March 2016 Brussels Attacks – 10 Reasons by the “Islamic State” & the context of the Sunni extremist universe

On March 22, 2016, two bombings hit the city of Brussels. The bombings at Brussels airport and the metro station Maelbeek, which is located in the heart of the city and close by many European Union institutions, left 32 people dead from around the world – not including the three suicide bombers. As would later be the case with the Manchester bombings (May 22, 2017), several days later documents by IS were released to outline and justify these attacks. Based on theological grounds and grievances echoing from within the territory held by IS, a document was published on March 25, 2016, by al-Wafa’ – an official media organ of the “Islamic State”. The text is entitled “Ten Reasons to Clarify the Raids on the Capital [of Belgium] Brussels.” Penned by a woman by the nom de guerre of Umm Nusayba, ten reasons are clearly outlined why suicide bombers had attacked the airport and metro station.

This Arabic language text has not played any role, in the media reporting or the wider academia, to understand the motivation behind this terrorist attack – in the words of the terrorists. The same re-occurred when a similar text was released days after the May 2017 Manchester attack (here). It almost seems that ISIS has the luxury of disseminating their coherent extremist writings well knowing it reaches their target audience and bypasses most of the non-Arabic speaking counter-terrorism, media and academic analysts. Apart from being published on Telegram where a wider range of ISIS sympathizers is initiated into this mindset – and where most speak Arabic. The text references theological nuances and sentiments such as shirk as outlined earlier and maintains the obligation to attack the mushrikin and to “shake their thrones”.

“The Brussels raid that shocked the world and shook the thrones of the tawaghit[1] while the men of the caliphate – by the grace of God – have the capability to strike anywhere. Despite heightened security efforts.”[2]

The author then outlines the ten points which had been disseminated as well using the hash tag “Brussels raid” (ghazwa Bruksil) on Twitter while the document was released on Telegram. The ten points have to be read from a theological perspective from within the Sunni extremist ecosystem to understand the gravity and depth:

The author describes Brussels as one of the main urban hubs where attacks against Muslims are organized. Addressing non-Muslims, the author asks, “isn’t Brussels the capital of the European Union which operates against Muslims? [This is] where hostile decision processes are undertaken against Muslims from within your [i.e. EU] territory.”

Brussels was chosen furthermore as these decisions result in “you bombing Muslim civilians and innocent children, yet you claim to only target fighters of the Islamic State. Is an infant a grown male IS fighter and are the houses of civilians part of the barracks of the men of the Islamic State? Your mistakes in your war against the Islamic State have led you to dance in a cycle of death; for you are targeting unarmed civilians. Therefore, our response is proportionate to what you have done.” This reference is clear to those who are initiated into the Arabic-language dominated Sunni extremist mindset and ecosystem. It is a reference to Qur’an 16:126 as discussed only here in the framework of a just war against non-Muslim aggressors (as opposed to revenge operations within the sectarian war inside the Middle East). “You are the ones that started this wicked cycle of violence, God, exalted and might He is, says: “So if anyone commits transgression against you, attack him as he attacked you.”[3]

IS is part of the Sunni extremist tradition – and has to be considered within this context of an ocean of Arabic language Sunni extremist materials

This divine equation of life – by jihadist standards – is not new or unique to ISIS. Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, former bin Laden bodyguard, first leader of al-Qa’ida in Saudi Arabia and prolific theologian published online in 2002 a 14-page long assessment of the hostage operation in Moscow by Chechen jihadists. In the wake of the hostage crisis at the musical “Ost-West” killing the hostages had been the last resort and not the main intention of this operation. Had this been at the center, the hostage-takers would have had lured the Russian Special Forces into the theater to kill as many as possible before starting to execute the hostages. “The Mujahideen do not desire to massacre civilians as the Russians do in Chechnya. For had this been the objective of previous operations then the Russian people would appreciate to a great extend the voices of the hardliners,[4] granting them to increase death and mayhem in Chechnya.”[5] Rather, as al-‘Uyairi outlined, the failure of “the Mujahideen to execute all hostages and likewise to blow up the building had not been their prime objective (…); killing the hostages was only a last resort for the Mujahideen.”[6] As

“the world is allied against the Chechen cause, America and Europe are in unison with Russia. When the Russians had been allowed [by their allies] to penetrate the territory of Georgia to fight the Mujahideen and the muhajireen, there had been no other option. All the states of the world remained silent regarding the massacres committed by the Russians in Chechnya. The Chechen people received no help at all from the world, neither mercy nor sympathy.”[7]

The right of self-defense, by all means, is the underlining justification. For how else could “the people of Chechnya defend themselves against the invaders[8] (or in the sense of the attack in Brussels: military aggressors that indiscriminately bomb targets in ISIS held territory) who came to their land, corrupting the religion and this world (al-din wa-l dunya).”[9] In the Russian context, al-‘Uyairi reasons any kidnapping and execution, any harm against the Russians as justified in the Qur’an and therefore as approved by shari’a law standards. He references Qur’an 2:194, but only the part suitable for his interpretation in the context of cloaking the ‘an-eye-for-an-eye’ equation in the divine language, as much as Umm Nusayba did in the 2016 document:

“So if anyone commits aggression against you, attack him as he attacked you, but be mindful of God.” (2:194)

Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, AQ leader in Iraq and the Godfather of IS used the very same part of the Qur’an to reason the kidnapping and execution of four staffers of the Russian embassy in Bagdad. The crimes committed in Chechnya and the Russian presence in Iraq had been the prime motivation to individually punish the members of the embassy for the Russian military engagement in the Caucasus – and ten years later to dispatch suicide bombers to attack critical infrastructure in Brussels and hit civilians.

Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, even though dead for over a decade, has left a substantial legacy. His speeches are from time to time featured in new IS videos and highlight the claim of fighting on behalf of the “prophetic methodology” that was conveyed by avantgardist fighters and leaders such as al-Zarqawi and others.

The reading of this particular verse is not only applied in the framework of kidnapping or executing individuals, but also to sanction greater attacks. As Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (Mustafa ‘Abd al-Qadir Sit Maryam Nasir), the alleged mastermind of the Madrid bombings (2004) wrote in an analysis to reason the London bombings in 2005,

“for our Qur’an and the sunna[10] of our prophet command us to refrain from killing women, children and pious men[11] devoted to religious worship, if they are clearly distinguished from men [of war] and have not fought [against Muslims]. However, the prophet commanded us to show hostility to those who committed aggression against us by committing the same aggression against them. Written in for you in the [holy] script is:

“so if anyone commits aggression against you, attack him as he attacked you.” This is a repetition of what had been prescribed for you in the Holy Script “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”[12] Our historical as well as contemporary scholars, however, decided that the enemies, when they have slain women, children, and non-combatants, it is our obligation to treat them likewise; compelling them to cease committing their crimes [and as deterrence]. This ruling is not just made by the scholars of the Mujahideen and the terrorists (irhabiyyin), but by all of the scholars, with the exception of the vermin and the apes of the munafiqin (hypocrites).”[13]

Al-Suri equates the tens of thousands killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to the deaths of 9/11:

“if we summon the death-toll of our two operations [9/11] to now [2005] as not more than 4,000 killed civilians since September 11^th.”[14]

According to al-‘Uyairi, without any reference to works or scholars, the above mentioned parts of the Qur’an in it’s selective reading and interpretation are proof of sanctioning jihadist operations such as the Moscow theater siege, or as al-Suri related, to bomb the London public transportation. Or Brussels in 2016. For, in jihadist mindset,

“these verses are thoroughly discussed among the scholars [of Islam] and the like. In short, it is permissible for us to punish them as they punish us. For the Russians target innocent women and children, killing them intentionally and unabated. The Russian people are the ones supporting the military; they are the ones electing[15]them upon their nomination by the military hardliners. For if the people of Russia do not drink of the cup the Chechens have to drink of, for then they will not feel the bitterness. For if the Russians taste (dhaqa) the fire of war, then this will surely lead to the withdrawal of the peoples support for the operations of the army.”[16]

This is part of the basis of the partial reading of Qur’an 2:194 within the Sunni extremist ecosystem. All of the above-cited works are translated from Arabic. All writers had been native Arabic speakers and their works and actions continue to inspire the current as well as future generations of extremists. The readers of Umm Nusayba’s 2016 reaction to the March Brussels attack have most likely seen videos of al-Zarqawi killing hostages and at least parts of al-‘Uyairi’s work. This is part of the materials disseminated (either in full or partially) on Telegram, where Nusayba’s authoritative work, as published by ISIS official media al-Wafa’, has been released.

Ten Reasons to Attack Brussels (continued)

The third point is in particular relevant, as the growing polarization comes into play, roughly eight months after the refugee crisis hit Europe in the Summer of 2015.

Brussels was attacked “as within your territory Muslims are threatened all the time and anywhere. Even up to the point of Christian extremist groups threatening Muslims in their mosques, turning them into targets and killing them. And your governments do nothing, turn a blind eye to these actions and do not refer to these acts as terrorism.” Umm Nusayba again references the above detailed parts of Qur’an 2:194 only in the active past tense: “therefore we have attack you as you have threatened and attacked (…).”
“You have insulted our messenger – peace and blessings upon him – in your capital. You have sprayed graffiti insulting Muslims on their mosques and hung pictures of pigs as well on the mosques in your capital. [Belgian] Muslims organized demonstrations to have these attacks prohibited and those responsible punished. Your government has done nothing. And you believe we will forget the insults of our prophet? By God, never! And be it ten years later, we will and always will avenge our prophet and our mosques. Wherever our prophet has been insulted, we will strike in revenge. This is reason enough to conduct raids against you and wipe you out completely by nuclear weapons. You do not understand the depth of our love for our prophet. When the time is right, we will get even.”
“For you imprison the virtuous, pure, chaste Muslimas or have you forgotten what you have done to our sister Malika [El-Aroud]?[17] You even took away her citizenship, all she did was marry a man who is a mujahid and tell the story about You took away her citizenship because she is a Muslima and you despise her Islam (…) while you make decisions to combat Muslims. (…) you may have forgotten her, we haven’t. Neither have we forgotten her sisters of the pure, virtuous Muslimas that are imprisoned by your hands. We have avenged them.”
We attacked Brussels “for you imprison our men such as [the Paris master mind] Salah ‘Abd al-Salam, until when will he be held in prison? He did not attack your country and out of passion for France you arrested him. Don’t you understand that we are passionate for our imprisoned brothers (…)?”
“The pressure on Muslims and the ban of the hijab as ruled by the Belgian courts. Likewise, the ban of the hijab in schools. You claim religious freedom and women’s rights, yet it does not apply to Muslims and their interests. You have forfeited your every principle and philosophy. (…) you assume Muslims are weak[18] and can be oppressed as you please, we, however, will not forget and therefore we have struck in revenge.”
“You lie. Your media lies. You accuse Muslims of injustice and enmity. Even in the weakest phases [of the history] you repeat these accusations against them. You in your lies are misguiding people and frame Islam as a religion of savagery (…). Yet you switch the truth and take no responsibility for perpetrating crimes on Muslim soil and occupying it (…).”
“We have been commanded to combat [non-Muslim] people until they confess “there is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” (…) as reported by Ibn ‘Umar, the messenger of God – peace and blessings upon him – said: “I am ordered to combat the people until they confess there is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God; and they profess the prayer and give zakat. For if they do this, then I will restrain myself of their blood and their possessions, except for what is rightfully to be claimed by Islam and by their account for God.”

This statement made by prophet Muhammad is cited from time to time in the Sunni extremist ecosystem to justify attacks and to emphasize their absolute claim of fighting for the absolute Islamization of the world. Umm Nusayba references the source of this hadith as conveyed by al-Bukhari 17/1, number 25 and Muslim 53/1, number 22. The same hadith has been used by one of the key theologians for the AQ driven resistance in Iraq at the time while being a core member of AQAP in Saudi Arabia. In an article by ‘Abdallah bin Muhammad al-Rushud for the first bi-weekly electronic al-Qa’ida magazine, Sawt al-jihad (“the Voice of Jihad”), he cites the hadith in an article on the viewpoint of “shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya” to theologically outline the justification for violent acts in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In a second article, he states this hadith as the commandment to “combat people in general without discrimination as long as your objective is that they enter Islam.”[19] Umm Nusayba continues:

“I bring the joyful news to you that this religion will engulf the whole world (…). By God, we do not fight but to raise the speech of God and to spread justice among the people. There is no distinguishing between Arab and non-Arab, except for God-fearingness and piety, no white is more worth than black, except for piety.”

“Our amir, our caliph, our leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – may God protect him – has promised you revenge. He keeps his word and does not issue empty threats. Has he not promised revenge to anyone harming Muslims? Has he not told every taghut and their allies “for by God, we will avenge, by God, we will avenge and if it takes years.”[20] What is to come, will be more devastating and bitter.[21] His soldiers, operatives and followers are everywhere, waiting for the right time (…). We pledged loyalty and his orders are as [decisive] as a sword on our necks.”

The outlook that “Muslims are not being returned to the status they have been in the past” concludes the document. Because now there is an organized Sunni representation that is “a state and a caliph which is for Muslims, which won’t be destroyed as you would like to see it.” The greatest success ISIS reclaims is the conquest of territory and the consolidation under a formalistic rule of law, that is shari’a law by the most hardcore and extreme interpretation thereof – besides Saudi Arabia. By basing the legitimacy of rule on literally hundreds of thousands of historical writings of theological nature ISIS claims an Islamic statehood on highly coherent principles. Attacks in Brussels and elsewhere are framed as “state” foreign policy in the sense of western governments having formed an anti-ISIS coalition in combination with military action against the group in Syria and Iraq in particular. The “statehood” of ISIS is based theological literature – past and present. Authors in this repository, which is freely accessible online to anyone having the Arabic language skills needed and the openness to initiate into this engulfing, state of mind.[22]This ranges from Ibn Taymiyya to Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab as well as ‘intermediary theologians’ that had been key functionaries for the ‘classical’ al-Qa’ida – such as Yusuf bin Salih al-‘Uyairi or ‘Abdallah bin Muhammad al-Rushud. The application of this state of mind, embodied by the “Islamic State” and projected to the outside via social media in over two thousand official videos makes this Sunni extremist project one that has come true – and that is worth fighting for. In a simplified definition, ISIS represents the abode of Islam (dar al-Islam), promising “grievances for western states caused by lone lions who have assaulted them, penetrating deep in their flesh without mercy.”[23] For ISIS the war, despite territorial losses, is won. It has set the “correct creed as a seed in the minds of thousands of Muslims inside and outside of Syria and Iraq. Giving birth to a new generation on the grounds of the holy book and the sword.”[24]

[1] The “tyrants” as outlined in the previous chapters; the reference is commonly used for defined un-Islamic rulers in the Middle East and also references western governments who are engaged in a new crusade against Islam.

[2] Umm Nusayba, “’ashara asbab bayyina l-ghazwi Brussels al-‘asima”, al-Wafa’, March 25, 2016. Obtained on Telegram.

[3] Qur’an 2:194

[4] Lit.: “increase the voices of men of war”.

[5] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, ‘Amaliyya “masrah Moscow” madha rabiha ‘l-Mujahideen minha wa-madha khasiru?, 5-6.

[6] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, ‘Amaliyya “masrah Moscow” madha rabiha ‘l-Mujahideen minha wa-madha khasiru?, 5.

[7] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, ‘Amaliyya “masrah Moscow” madha rabiha ‘l-Mujahideen minha wa-madha khasiru?, 6.

[8] Lit.: “repelling the attacking aggressor”, daf’a al-‘adu al-sa’il. This is a reference to Ibn Taymiyya and also a slogan that was used in the Sawt al-Jihad magazine of the first generation al-Qa’ida branch in Saudi Arabia where al-‘Uyairi had been a core media member and its first leader.

[9] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, ‘Amaliyya “masrah Moscow” madha rabiha ‘l-Mujahideen minha wa-madha khasiru?, 5.

[10] In the meaning of “tradition” but in the jihadist mindset as the role model for the proper conduct of “customary procedures.”

[11] Lit.: “men of religion” (rijal al-din).

[12] A reference to parts of Qur’an 5:45:

“In the Torah we prescribed for them a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an equal wound for a wound.”

[13] Abu Mus’ab al-Suri. “Risala ila al-Britaniyyin wa-Europiyyin sha’ban wa-hukumat bi-sha’n tafjirat London”, July 2005, al-muqawamat al-Islamiyyat al-‘alimiyyat, 35.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Lit.: “giving their endorsement to them”.

[16] Yusuf al-‘Uyairi, ‘Amaliyya “masrah Moscow” madha rabiha ‘l-Mujahideen minha wa-madha khasiru?, 7.

[17] The story of Malika El-Aroud and her husband is available in the interview by Florian Flade: “Das Leben und Sterben des Moez Garsallaoui”, OJihad blog, October 17, 2012,

https://ojihad.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/das-leben-und-sterben-des-moez-garsallaoui/

[18] mustada’ifin

[19] ‘Abdallah bin Muhammad al-Rushud, “al-muqassid al-thani min muqasid al-jihad: al-da’wa ila llah” Sawt al-Jihad number 18.

[20] Risala ila al-mujahidin wa-l umma al-Islamiyya fi shahr Ramadan li-amir al-mu’minin Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, Mu’assassat al-Furqan, Ramadan 3, 1435.

[21] This is a slogan that was utilized by ISIS in the wake of the attacks in Paris, November 2015. Videos released by wilayat Homs in November 2015 show French foreign fighters responding to the attack. The same media tactic was repeated shortly after the attacks occurred in March 2016 in Brussels (w. al-Raqqa, March 26).

[22] Worldview might come to mind from a a-religious western angle, yet it would neglect the appeal of physical-spiritual life in this world and the continuation of one’s existence in the ‘afterlife’ and paradise.

[23] Mu’awiyya al-Baghdadi, “madha jana al-tahaluf al-duwwali khilal akthar min ‘amayn min harbihi dudd al-dawlat al-Islamiyya, Mu’assassat Ashhad, May 2, 2017.

[24] Ibid.

Part 7: How does IS use Telegram to recruit European foreign fighters and terrorists?

part 7 header

Throughout the Summer of 2016 apparent lone wolf attackers struck in France, Germany, Russia[1] and the U.S. The attackers acted on behalf of the “Islamic State” and in most cases selfie-styled videos had been made and uploaded to IS media operatives of Amaq Agency (wakalat al-‘Amaq). The short videos followed a classical Jihadist modus operandi, with the exception that these had not been foreign fighters, but rather either local French, American citizens, or as in the case of Germany, refugees from Syria or Afghanistan. Omar Mateen, U.S. citizen born in America, attacked a night club in Orland, Florida in June 2016, leaving 49 people dead and 53 injured.[2] Jihadist users on Telegram had been quick to disseminate pictures of Omar Mateen – after these had been released by the mainstream media – to praise the attacker as a martyr and a “soldier of the caliphate.” A trend on Telegram quickly emerged to refer to such attacks under the hashtag “in your homes”, a reference to the jihadist understanding of the division of world into “dar al-Islam” (abode of Islam) and “dar al-kuffar” (abode of disbelievers). As French, American and other nation’s combat aircraft continue to bomb IS, the “dar al-Islam”, IS seeks to inspire and theologically guide attackers such as Omar Mateen to conduct revenge operations in the “depth of your abodes” (fi ‘aqr diyarikum), as the Arabic hashtag for “in your homes” advocates. Whatever the jihadists produce for publication, always is theologically coherent.

The Syrian refugee who failed undertaking a suicide bombing attack in Anspach, Germany, as well as the Afghan refugee who at random stabbed passengers on train in the region of Würzburg had filmed their final statements beforehand. These statements are – just like the 9/11 “martyr’s” videotaped farewell message or the 7/7 bombing attackers last words – the testimony (wasiyya) as much as a legacy. Allegedly, Telegram was used to communicate from within the caliphate with at least some of the attackers who then in turn used the app to upload their self-filmed wasiyya. This video was then edited and branded with the Amaq logo and released to the IS Telegram community with the intention that the swarm with fan it out to other online sites and platforms for maximum visibility.

The value of continuing its successful influence operation has driven IS on Telegram to dedicate media channels and media operatives to translating and producing new content for a specific French, German, Italian, English, Russian, and Bahasa Indonesia audience. All of these non-Arabic materials are theologically coherent with the universe of over 30 years of Sunni jihadist writings and videos. This is not new, and was also part of AQ’s strategy to draw potential recruits in via the Internet, but IS has formalized the process having the advantage of time, money, territory and dedicated resources to elevate this process. This has led to a two-fold production line: (i) official and (ii) user generated content. Together, these packages carry a range of messages which focus on the importance of the individual to take action. They highlight the ethos captured in the ‘Open Source Jihad’ as set by AQ’s English language magazine “Inspire” where barriers to entry are low and anyone can contribute. For example, they encourage individuals to realise that not all attacks have to be complex coordinated operations, nor use sophisticated weaponry, nor focus on a specific high profile target. Instead they articulate that anyone can strike a blow for the Islamic State. A video, for example, published by IS in April 2015 entitled “Hunt the Safavids” a French suicide bomber speaking in French (with Arabic subtitles) eulogises Muhammad Merah, the Toulouse shooter and clearly phrases what ideologues have authoritatively stated for many years: hijrah is an obligation, however if one cannot physically join jihadist movements in the Middle East and elsewhere, attacks are a legitimate substitute. Both actions grant the individual entry to paradise, the objective that drives Sunni extremists worldwide.

On November 26, 2016, IS released a video in French with Arabic subtitles. The video was published by Furat Media, a dedicated IS-media institution that produces content for non-Arab(ic) audience. As always video is in 16:9, full high definition, and features eulogies and praise for the span of lone wolf attackers in 2016. The film, entitled “Sur leur pas” demonstrates vividly how IS uses and perceives Telegram for their purposes.

Part 6 sur leur pas furat.jpg

Screenshots of the video highlighting attacks, assailants and encrypted communication on Telegram.

Assailants are introduced and areas of attacks highlighted. Combined with mainstream media footage of respective attacks, IS boosts these as revenge operations and part of the “Islamic State” ‘foreign policy.’ Telegram chat exchanges claim to ‘document’ that some of the aspiring IS fighters had expressed the wish to conduct the hijra and join IS, but had been warned this being to dangerous. Rather, their intention can be translated into conducting attacks in their home countries instead of risking arrest for seeking to emigrate to Syria or Iraq. The final screen shows an elder Arab man crying over the death of his family and destruction of his home as a consequence of coalition bombing sorties against IS. A young man with his side arm ready watches the French language subtitled Arabic video and then shuts his MacBook to exercise revenge and restore dignity for the Sunni Muslim community.

—

[1] Thomas Joscelyn, Jihadists who Attacked Russian Police Appear in Islamic State Video, The Long War Journal, August 18, 2016,

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/08/jihadists-who-attacked-russian-police-appear-in-islamic-state-video.php

[2] Lizette Alvarez et al, Orlando Gunman was ‘Cool and Calm’ After Massacre, Police say, The New York Times, June 13, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/us/orlando-shooting.html?_r=0.

Part 4: Understanding the Resilience and Appeal of “Islamic State” Electronic Propaganda and Beyond

Resuming the ” Islamic state Briefing”, this week with part four. The depth of the jihadist movement ranges back to the 1980s and ISIS has its history since the 2000s.

The study of the Jihadist movement has tried to understand it in terms of street criminals, gangsters, individuals obsessed with computer games (particularly first person shooters), and a desire to go from zero-to-hero. It hardly addresses foreign fighters from Arab countries and often lack any attempt to address the theological aspects of the movement, imagery, encoded messages and prominence of scholars within the Jihadist movement’s overall interpretation of theological concepts, including an Islamic State model of governance. Reducing the Sunni extremist cosmos by only focusing on the “Islamic State” after 2013 at best, referring to them as “jihadists” while not even considering the history of IS since the very beginning in the 2000s, leads to a marginal understanding of the group and the motivations behind it. Neglecting the massive quantity of high quality Arabic language writings by ISIS and the Sunni extremist cosmos it stems from is a disaster. Core concepts such as tawhid or shirk are widely unknown and only briefly explained at best. What is missing is a discourse based on thorough, evidence based facts. However, these facts cannot weigh into discourse or echo within academic research, when Arabic sources and the theological universe that drives Sunni extremists remain neglected. Without proper Arabic skills and with no deep-rooted research on Islamic theology, the Sunni extremist movements remains hidden behind a firewall. Without knowing this content by heart and being able to decipher visual codes, uncovering extremist networks online is a challenge and has led to the assumption there is a decline of ISIS media production. This is the case, if researchers only look at superficial English language content on Twitter and do not see the rich blend of materials that are published in Arabic – and since early 2016 to a great extent on Telegram.

Ignoring the huge library of writing by focusing on only the narrow daily announcements, or English language material, leads to dangerous misinterpretations of the movement – even more so, when not even Latinized Arabic key words in English language propaganda releases are questioned or taken into consideration. Facing the contemporary challenge of the Jihadist movement, policy cannot afford to fall for superficial interpretations, which emphasize memes, general simplifications, infographics, and flashy videos – and generally ignore the deep theological nuanced Arabic publications.

The movement is significantly more complex than these interpretations suggest.

The ideology that is based on theological concepts and framings of al-Qa’ida (AQ) and subsequently the splinter group the Islamic State (ISIS) and its ability to propagate this theological spectrum as a monopoly of truth through professional promotion and marketing material disseminated via modern communication technology has proven to be its most resilient foundation and greatest innovation. This Jihadist media activism is evident and strengthens this resilience on a daily basis with new audio-visual and written propaganda uploaded from a number of conflict zones, in numerous languages, to a wide range of online social platforms and multimedia channels.

Policy makers in the U.S. and the E.U. lack a thorough understanding – for jihadist narratives that are widely based on religious scripture, advocating a cohesive and coherent ideology, that is, to be precise, theology. This theology is based on complex religious principals, offered mainly in Arabic and has its basis in the 1980s to contemporary al-Qa’ida ideologues, whereas ISIS in particular displays the implementation thereof in oftentimes easy to comprehend audio-visual productions. The Sunni extremist writings and videos from back in the 1980s to today refer and cite not only religious scripture, selected ayyat from the Qur’an and hadith – deeds and sayings ascribed to Prophet Muhammad – but also cite and reference historical Sunni Islamic scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Ibn al-Qayyim or Ibn Nahhas, to name a few. This is part of the textual layer that is being pushed out on all channels on the Internet. Historical scholars – overwhelmingly having written in Arabic – are often quoted “who says there is no distinction to be made between combatants and non-combatants. A Wahhabi scholar from the 19th/20th century is quoted saying that in principle killing unbelievers is allowed. This is another proof for the family resemblance between Wahhabism and Jihadism, easily substantiated by the number of theological tracts republished by IS”, as noted by Rüdiger Lohlker in reference to the Barcelona attacks. Without Arabic and the proper command of knowing who such historical scholars are and under which circumstances their theological treatises were penned and why this matters today and how this is used by online media savvy activists, most documents and videos by jihadists remain a safe haven. Not to mention the general lack of understanding the scope, pace and depth ISIS has on Telegram, whereas most studies of 2017 solely focus on Twitter, claiming twitter remains the entry point and primary dissemination hub for ISIS.

Community building takes place on Telegram and twitter is used for media raids – while the content varies between Arabic theological support materials and core graphic materials. Researchers need to focus on both while understanding and the ecosystem and where it all stems from.

The daily content is just the tip of the iceberg. The archive of Sunni extremism represents what the movement is about, lays out the strategy, and justification for actions. Alone ISIS released over 2,000 official videos and much more daily short clips; all in all, from the 1980s to today, over half a million – mainly Arabic – documents exist in digital format, whereas materials before the age of mass digitalization have been digitalized by the first generation of committed electronic media mujahidin in the 2000s.[1] 116 editions of the Arabic language magazine “al-Jihad” were printed and disseminated from 1984-1995, focusing on Afghanistan, Palestine and later the Balkans. The first generation of al-Qa’ida on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) pioneered the electronic frontier of jihad by releasing two magazines, “The Voice of Jihad” (in sum over 1,500 pages) and “The Military Camp of the Sword.” Nothing about ISIS as of 2017 is new, if such magazines have been read and taken into account when studying jihadism.

The cover of the al-Jihad magazine of June 1985 addresses “our sisters, the Mujahidat”, women who fought alongside males in the war against the Soviet occupation. More telling, however, is the advertisement for ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam’s book “The Defense of Muslim Lands is the Among the Most Important of an Individual’s Duties”. ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam was a Islamic scholar (shaykh) from Palestine and had been a university lecturer for Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in Amman, Jordan.[2] In 1989, he and his two eldest sons Muhammad and Ibrahim were killed in a car bomb in Peshawar, Pakistan.[3] ‘Azzam is until now, decades after he died, one of the most influential theologians, who is being regularly cited, referenced and eulogized by all outlets of jihadist media capacity.[4] In 1988, ‘Azzam travelled to Seattle, USA, and gave a khutba, the Friday prayer. This khutba was filmed and that video is part of the Sunni extremist ecosystem. While he was in Seattle, the conflict in Afghanistan was slowly but surely coming to an end. Dominated by the events of the jihad against the Soviet Red Army, ‘Azzam not only tries to recruit and ‘re-introduce’ Islam to his audience of America-based Muslims but he moves a step ahead and attacks the United States as another major, logical future enemy at a second or third stage of jihad with the victory in Afghanistan in sight for the Mujahideen. ‘Azzam’s khutba provides a usual mix of citations from the Qur’an and sunna, bound to his contemporary tales of the fighting Mujahidin as well as the suffering Muslim population in Afghanistan. While he also includes stories and details of individual Mujahidin who fought and died, who attained the “shahada on the path of God” (i.e. died as ‘martyrs’) and witnessed divine blessings during their service for God, ‘Azzam repeatedly addresses the need to “establish an Islamic state” that can only be realized by jihad, combat (qital) with the potential to enter Paradise (janna) while struggling for this divine aim. ‘Azzam, who was a highly industrious writer and who frequently gave sermons, introduced stories from the Afghan jihad and tales of the shuhada’, killed Mujahideen who as a result attained the shahada for the sake of religion, and has made such stories from the frontlines of jihad popular, accessible and perhaps somewhat mainstream.[5] One of his documents, the 251 page long writing entitled “The Craving for the Women of Paradise” (al-hur)[6], can be considered as a template for contemporary jihadist publications (writings and videos) regarding the shuhada’, glorifying jihad and providing the theological and historical necessity to do so.

For jihadis, the age old question of fard al-‘ayn and fard al-kifayya, pondering whether or not combat is confined to Afghanistan and Palestine at this stage (mid 1980s);

Addressing the theological-operational element of nafir;

And the questions of Muslim unity and disbeliever aggression, etc. all of these elements matter for jihadism and since the Syrian revolution turned extremely bloody and was hijacked by seasoned jihadist fighters and clerics, these elements are of essential value to understand the mess in the Middle East (and attacks/operations elsewhere; besides Europe there are The Philippines, Indonesia, various attacks in Russia, Maldives etc.).

This is just one example of the tradition of Sunni extremist content – online &offline – that forms the basis of materials published by the “Islamic State” as of 2017. Including, materials that are available online and are also handed out within ISIS territories, as has been documented since 2013 by the very media cycle of ISIS.

This ecosystem contains the answers to questions posed by those who only read the daily updates. For example, the archive of the Jihadist movement contains the rationale stretching back to fighting with the Soviets in Afghanistan for when female suicide bombers are permitted and when they are not, it is no mystery when research takes in the archive of Arabic documents.

The documents and videos produced by Islamic State project what they consider to be a real Sunni Muslim, on the path of God who acts in accordance with divine rule and regulations which the early Muslims had under the leadership of Prophet Muhammad. Any release by IS – as much as by AQ – seeks to inform, educate and convince the consumer that the jihadis are the only “true” Muslims, following the correct “prophetic methodology” This ideational content echoes an earlier prediction about an internet-enabled ideological struggle over the definition of reality. In this vision, warfare would be “conducted on an entirely new battleground; it is a struggle not over territory or boundaries but over the very definitions of these terms”^[7] where IS seeks to maintain hegemony over concepts such as the “prophetic methodology” and other theological concepts expressed by key words.

The battle for these definitions occur in the physical landscape and equally on the digital platforms that comprise the information ecosystem.

Neglecting the evidence that jihadi networks online are both agile and unified around coherent theological “narratives”, risks breeding a sense of complacency, which allows the Islamic State (and other jihadi groups) to develop physical and digital locations to which they can retreat and regroup. This is a real risk if the current shift in distribution strategy adopted by the Islamic State is viewed as decline, rather than a reconfiguration and refocusing of effort. Yet acknowledging that the “decline” is based on faulty research, which neither takes the vast amount of Telegram communication into consideration or Arabic language materials (or Arabic words used in non-Arabic propaganda releases).

Islamic State communicates its strategy to supporters predominantly in Arabic and oftentimes uses citations of legitimate mainly Arabic language scriptures, the Holy Qur’an and Hadith (deeds and sayings of Prophet Muhammad) as well as scholarly religious (historical and contemporary) writings.^[8] These citations of historical as well as contemporary Islamic scholars are frequent in writings and are woven into the audio-visual productions of jihadis.^[9] This cannon of material which jihadis have to hand justifies, from their perspective, their acts and seeks to provide a clear identity; of what being a “Sunni Muslim” means to them.

[1] Nico Prucha: Die Stimme des Dschihad – al-Qa’idas erstes Online Magazin, Dr. Kovac: Hamburg, 2010.

[2] Hegghammer, T. (2008) Abdullah Azzam, der Iman des Dschihad in Kepel, G. / Milelli, J. (2008) Al-Qaida – Texte des Terrors (München, Zürich: Piper), pp. 148-157. Hegghammer describes ‘Azzam’s academic development, his “religious studies in Damascus (1963-1966)”, his “Palestinian Jihad (1967-1970)”, his “promotion at the al-Azhar” University, Cairo, (1971-1973) and his “years in Amman (1973-1980)”. He become a professor in Jidda and was able to acquire a position in the Saudi funded new international Islamic University in Islamabad.

[3] He was killed on Friday, 24.11.1989 at about seven o’clock in the morning, on his way to a mosque in Peshawar to preach the Friday sermon. Muhammad was 20 and his brother 15 years old (Hegghammer). Various conspiracy theories exist, who killed ‘Azzam (Hegghammer, pp. 163-164). Ranging from bin Laden who had him removed to gain control over the Arab fighters, to al-Zawahiri, who wanted the Egyptians in charge and who wanted to attack the regimes in the Middle East while ‘Azzam vowed for the Mujahideen to remain in Afghanistan to found a true Islamic state. Or was it a personal revenge, committed by an Afghan splinter group or was it the ISI?

[4] The double-agent Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, aka Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who on 30 December 2009 killed several CIA and Jordanian GID agents in Khost, Afghanistan, by undertaking a suicide-operation claimed in one of “last interviews” also to have revenged ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam. According to al-Balawi, the GID is responsible for his murder. Prucha, N. (2010) Notes on the Jihadists’ Motivation for Suicide-Operations, Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, 4 (1), pp. 65.

[5] ‘Azzam, ‘A. (1987) Ilhaq bi-l-qafila, http://tawhed.ws/r?i=6nxrvref (25.10.2010). “Join the Caravan” is a classical work of the jihad literature.

[6] ‘Azzam, ‘A. ‘Ushshaq al-Hur, http://tawhed.ws/dl?i=pwtico4g (02.10.2010). “The ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam folder” can be accessed here: http://tawhed.ws/a?a=a82qriko.

[7] Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, Harpercollins Publishers (reprint): New York, 1995.

[8] Among the tens of thousands of writings are prominent items such as “An Abbreviated Biography of the Prophet – Peace and Blessings upon him” by ISIS media foundation Maktabat al-Himma (2015, 335 pages) or the 1106 page long theological tractate by Khalid bin ‘Ali al-Mardi on shirk – ascribing or the establishment of “partners” placed beside God, which is a frequent theological sanctioning used to execute “apostates” and Shiites within ISIS videos.

[9] Linguistic problems are nothing new in the study of terrorism. See for example: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/15/why-we-cant-just-read-english-newspapers-to-understand-terrorism-big-data/

Part 3: Controlling territory – applying theology as absolute public and private governance

Unlike AQ, IS controls swathes of territory in the Sunni Arab heartlands, primary in Iraq and Syria; despite loss thereof after its power peak. The theology which was largely theoretical in the case of AQ is now applied in full by IS – making the “state” a real and attractive alternative where the imaginative “real-Islam” promoted by AQ has now become a reality with IS and embodied by the “caliphate upon the prophetic methodology”. Sunni extremism – as much as any religious form of extremism or orthodoxy – is driven by an absolute belief in God whereas the application of absolute formalized religious rule is the desired final objective (and the only solution to minimize the threat of living in a state of sin, which would send you to hellfire). For over three decades, jihadists in their own words, both in writing and on film, have been yearning for the creation of an Islamic State and, ultimately, the return of the Caliphate. The power of the self-designated “Islamic State” nurtures on this desire, and the extremist tradition of calling for this restoration of power, as a driving force and an identity marker.

The application of theological concepts written since the 1980s gives IS the power to claim to have restored the “abode of Islam” (dar al-Islam) and clearly demarcate who is a Sunni Muslim and part of the Sunni community – and who is not. Apostates or traitors, who thus are excommunicated (takfir) and executed as alleged spies^[1] or “wizards” who conduct black magic^[2], homosexuals who are dealt with as “the people of Lot” and pushed from rooftops to death^[3] signify a clearly implemented theology IS openly advocates online – and enforces offline.

“Islam” has been restored and is now embodied by the “state”. In their own words, responding in September 2015 to the refugee crises, IS presents itself as the only legitimate zone where Sunni Muslims can exercise their duties to God accordingly as,

“the whole world, from east to west, became dar al-kufr, the “abode of the disbelievers”. Therefore God set in motion the establishment of the Islamic State. This state consists of numerous elements that make it dar al-Islam. Therefore, the rule of shari’a law returned as well as the implementation of physical punishment (al-hudud),^[4] cutting off the hands of thieves, punishing adultery by stoning to death and beheading wizards. The establishment of the Islamic State as a reaction to those who commit injustice, governed by “commanding right and forbidding wrong”^[5] while driving a jihad against the disbelievers – thus the might of the Islamic community has been restored. Muslims living in the state openly manifest the rituals of their religion^[6], not fearing anything apart from God – therefore the state of Islam is the abode of Islam in this era. It is obligatory for every Muslim to support and protect it, to openly display dissociation and enmity to the enemies of the Islamic State.”^[7]

For IS this means there is only one Islamic state in the world and it is every Muslims’ obligation to support this project. The element of applied theology, however, is often expressed in IS videos where the filmed executions or applied punishments are backed by writings. An execution video released on October 18, 2015 from the IS-province (wilaya)^[8] Nineveh shows a mujahid armed with a sword mounted on a horse chasing towards a prisoner kneeling on the desert ground. The executioner arrives in a setting deliberately re-enacting the early Muslims on a raid, being a murabit, a horseman ready for war while spiritually tuned to defend his territory and being willing to enter paradise.^[9]

A 13-page-document released about a year later by the Ashhad Media foundation took a screenshot of the October 2015 video to project visual coherence^[10] to those who have seen the movie: this is a theological booklet justifying and explaining “the ruling on those who support the rafida [derogatory for Shiites] against the Ahl al-Sunna”, written by Abu ‘Ali al-‘Iraqi.

Al-‘Iraqi alludes to what is generally applied in such IS execution videos – the Sunni jihadist argumentation concerning who has pledged loyalty to God and who has violated this pledge. It engulfs the concept of “dissociation” (al-bara’) from disbelievers and the absolute loyalty (wala’) to God that was made popular by AQ ideologues, including writings by Osama bin Laden.^[11] In the video, several men are beheaded for their betrayal of the ahl al-Sunna (as embodied by IS) as they are accused of having conducted espionage against Shiite militias and the Iraqi government, considered a Iranian-Shiite proxy by IS. As the “caliphate” has been re-established, the obligatory pledge of allegiance (bay’a) to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi means per definition that all loyalty is to God, via al-Baghdadi, as the human representative (khilaf) in the “state” (dawla).

As second sample of applied theology spread via Telegram are the hundreds of IS videos showing the amputations of hands.

On the left, a cover of a 20-page- book gives the readers a detailed analysis on the permission to exercise physical punishments against transgressors.^[12] The arguments are exclusively referring to historical scholars, selected passages from Qur’an and Sunna as well as precedents from historical role models.

On the right side are two screenshots from the video “the ruling of the creator (God) upon the thief”, released by the IS province Nineveh in mid-2015.^[13] They show, prior to the act of amputating the two thieves hands in public, religious references appearing as texts to sanction and fully validate this act of punishment according to sharia law. This is a highly appealing message that IS wants to exploit in its videos: the “Islamic State” is based on religious scripture and thus is the only true community of Sunni Muslims, and: IS is acting on behalf of God.

^[1] For example: Tahalafuhum wa-irhabana, wilayat Nineveh, July 20, 2016 shows the execution of alleged Kurdish spies by French foreign fighters who avenge killed civilians resulting from airstrikes and praise the lone wolf attack in Nice. The attack on Bastille Day by a lone wolf driving a truck into crowds on the Promenade des Anglais resulted in the death of 86 people.

^[2] La yuflih al-sahir haythu ati, wilayat Barqa, December 5, 2016

^[3] ‘Am ‘ala l-fath, wilayat Nineveh, June 11, 2015.

^[4] i.e. the amputation of hand and/or feet as punishment for crimes. This form of jurisdiction is also documented by IS videos to showcase being a functioning state: iqama hadd ‘ala sariqayn, wilayat gharb Ifriqiyya, November 2, 2015.

^[5] IS has released several documents and videos, sanctioning and showing the destruction of, for example, Shiite mosques, churches, Yazidi shrines, graveyards, or the total obliteration of pre-Islamic statues as well as museums housing these artifacts. “Commanding good and forbidding evil” is the theological legitimacy for the Islamic police, who apart from safeguarding the Sunni integrity by systematically removing sites of veneration that violate the Sunni extremist theology also police communities and, for example, ensure the illicit trade and consumption of tobacco is persecuted. For details: Nico Prucha, Reformatting Space: The Self-Proclaimed “Islamic State’s” Strategy of Destroying Cultural Heritage and Committing Genocide, European Union National Institutes for Culture, http://washington-dc.eunic-online.eu/?q=content/reformatting-space-0, November 2015.

^[6] Which had been previously banned or could only be taken care of in secrecy under secular Arab regimes to avoid being arrested for possible Islamist oppositional work.

^[7] Suhayl al-Najdi, Luju’ al-Muslimin ila ard al-salibiyyin wa-l iqama fiha, Mu’assassat al-Wafa’, September 2015.

^[8] Wa-in ‘uddatum ‘uddna, 2, wilaya Nineveh, October 18, 2015.

^[9] The comprising theological concept of ribat is discussed in: Nico Prucha, Jihadists’ Use of Quran’s ribat concept,” Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, August 2009.

^[10] Abu ‘Ali al-Iraqi, hukm a’an al-rafida ‘ala ahl al-Sunna, Mu’assassat Ashhad li-l ‘ilami, October 9, 2016.

^[11] Osama bin Laden, tawjihat al-minhajiyya, Minbar al-Tawhed wa-l Jihad, 2006.

^[12] Abu Bakr Khalid bin Muhammad al-Shami, Daf’u iham al-tadarruj bi l-tadbiq, Mu’assassat al-Wafa’, 2016.

^[13] Hukm al-khaliq bi haqq al-sariq, wilaya Nineveh, June 4, 2015.

Part 2: “Upon the prophetic methodology” and the media universe

IS publishes a rich blend of propaganda on a daily basis, ranging from text documents to professionally produced videos. Any release by IS – as much as the intention of AQ media – seeks to inform, educate and convince the consumer that the jihadists are the only “true” Muslims, following the correct “prophetic methodology.” For jihadists, the heavy use of the media is part of their war for the “hearts and minds” – and the quest for authority, to be acknowledged as the only sincere representatives of ‘true’ Sunni Islam.

Among the major successes IS was able to reclaim for itself was the tearing down of the border between Syria and Iraq. While AQ has been theorizing about liberating and re-uniting Islamic territory for years without end, it was the “Islamic State” in 2014 that was physically able to implement what AQ claimed to fight for. The texts, published in classical print magazines of the 1980s and 1990s and later on the Internet have been enriched by Sunni extremist videos – with the same modus operandi (from off-line media to digital since the early 2000s). Anyone who knows the Sunni extremist literature, can read the videos in full, understanding all embedded codes, visual language, the habitus of the propagated Sunni Muslim identity etc.

IS turned the tables. By applying a great deal of Sunni extremist literature upon real territory, a population and having the space to document what was unprecedented (such as the execution of alleged homosexuals by plunging to death from roof tops), IS was able to establish a repository of videos in mainly Arabic but also other languages, where theology has been applied – and where the lesser initiated can become followers even without reading the massive amount of Sunni extremist materials available online. The videos bridge the language gap and serve as a pull factor into the mindset of Sunni extremism: those who do not speak Arabic and have questions about the Sunni Muslim identity offered by IS can find answers themselves by tuning into – for example – English language explanations of shirk (loosely translated as “polytheism” for now) by foreign fighters from Cambodia[1], or get a picture of the importance of the tearing down of the border between Syria and Iraq by a foreign fighter from Chile.

Without reading the Arabic core documents, however, theological nuances that echo into contemporary IS motifs and mindset is missing. This is where non-Arabic language translations and tabloid-styled magazines come into play and provide further explanations – yet serving as a further opening for the non-Arabic able consumers to dig deeper into the electronic treasure trove of Sunni extremist books and videos of the past 35+ years, including dedicated English, German, French, Russian, Bahasa etc. materials (including said books and videos). And these are the very documents that make up the Sunni extremist mindset and that lead IS to the application thereof where they can derive the theological framework for their non-combat actions or governing rules (from destroying museums to systematic destruction of Shiite mosques or enslaving Yazidis). Liberating territory defined as “Islamic” and enforcing shari’a rule carried out by the extremists, who would then establish special police units to assure any violation of religious commandments will be punished. This, naturally, targets the local population in an attempt to “reformat” or replace local Islamic customs and give religion the space it did not have before. Most of these theological concepts, parameters and nuances can be referred to the “prophetic methodology” – if we follow the extremists in their words. Thus the “caliphate upon the prophetic methodology” as a slogan represents in sum what jihadists and their sympathizers struggle for. This too, is not new if you recall AQAP slogans of the 2000s such as “akhriju l-mushrikin min jazirat al-‘Arab” and the deployment of the first bi-weekly electronic magazine “sawt al-jihad”.[2] These materials serve as a legacy for IS to establish itself in the 2000s and to unfold in 2013/4 onwards. In turn the legacy of IS and the massive quantity of contemporary materials will be the legacy for future Sunni extremist groups that are operationally sometimes but theologically always connected. With the demise of parts of IS-held territory, the coherent audio-visual narratives – nearly all of the over 2,000 videos are in full-HD, 16:9 – remain and serve as inspiration to restore rule by the “prophetic methodology” for future generations. This is where the nostalgia will kick in with all the jihadist legacy expressed by the texts, videos, nashid, poetry, even humor.[3]

IS was able to enforce theological authoritative texts and religious decrees using a solid basis by “AQ scholars” and consequently document the output by audio-visual means, which then on top had been consistently released on social media. At first massively on Twitter[4] before moving on to Telegram.[5] And of course there is the strategy to spray IS materials on all levels of the Internet. Telegram has replaced Twitter as the core and is the first line of dissemination from which onwards specific content gets pushed out. On Telegram not all content is being disseminated outside the core IS-groups into the ‘open net’, (might do an extra post on this sometime).

Hence, nothing of what IS does is new – however, the scale and pace of enforcing these theological parameters physically (and filming and disseminating this online) is new, with the exception of execution of alleged spies, hostages or “apostates” (as had been outlined by – of the many – Abu Yahya al-Libi, 2009). This is partly why the ‘narratives’ of IS are highly coherent and attractive. AQ often referred to ‘aqida (creed) and minhaj/manhaj (methodology) when outlining what defines a Sunni Muslim. This ranges from proper prayer conduct to destroying graves of holy men (awliya’) whenever possible. AQ was only able in a limited way to enforce this “prophetic methodology” when in control of pockets of territory in Iraq and especially in Yemen and partly in Mali and when AQAP 1.0 was active in Saudi Arabia targeting the “mushrikin”. The claim to re-enact the lives of early Muslims under the command of prophet Muhammad, acting on said “prophetic methodology” and applying divine laws as opposed to man-made laws is a core element of Sunni extremist theology and hence part of the wider mindset tied into the “Muslim identity” – by the standards of the extremists. Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (2004) romanticized about this as one of the objectives for any mujahid in his 1600 page long book “Global Islamic Resistance Call” (pages 42, 92). Al-Suri referenced a popular hadith, predicting “the return of the caliphate upon the prophetic methodology.” Ayman al-Zawahiri in his “fourth open interview” (2007), conducted online and published by al-Sahab – back in the day that communication took place within vBulletin community forums –, demanded that Sunni jihadist organizations in Iraq ally with “the Islamic State in Iraq” to liberate territory and consequently re-establish the “abode of Islam” (dar al-Islam) by introducing the “prophetic methodology”. End of July 2014, the al-Furqan Media Foundation (which was founded over a decade ago) released a video entitled ‘ala minhaj al-nubuwwa.

Claiming “prophetic conduct” means claiming infallibility. Dozens of IS videos in the past years show the enforcement of shari’a law regulations and applied theology – not only the hard power side such as the execution of spies, the amputation of hands, but also the collection of taxes, the enforcing of health regulations at food markets or state provided dental care. A great deal of this is carried out by the al-Hisba, the religious police, which not only enforces proper Islamic clothing but is also often seen in videos where contraband such as alcohol and tobacco are burned or items related to shirk) are destroyed.

From Theory to Practice & the On-/Off-Line Relationship

Religious references to the ahl al-Sunna wa-l jama’a are often made^[6], meaning the Sunni Muslims who act according to the prophetic tradition (Sunna), emulating prophet Muhammad and his companions. Sunni extremists claim to be in the closest proximity to God by re-enacting the example and guidance, as set by the Sunna of prophet Muhammad and his companions (sahaba). IS has taken this concept to a new level by popularizing their slogan “upon the prophetic methodology” (‘ala minhaj al-nubuwwa). This means that they justify every action, ranging from the destruction of Shiite mosques to the execution of non-Sunni Muslims, with reference to certain, selectively chosen parts of divine scripture and the prophetic tradition.

Jihadist media operatives document all of these actions, who then produce professional, full high definition 16:9 videos. These videos are released on social media platforms that, in turn push contents onto the mobile devices and desktop computers of users.

The billboard above reads: “the messenger – peace be upon him said: “between a man and shirk and disbelief stands the abolishing of [ritual] prayer.”

As IS applies a great deal of theological documents and theories penned by generations of AQ theologians, argumentatively, AQ remains most important and has regained an active role by offshoot groups and individuals who subscribe to this monopoly of truth. The theological parameters and interpretations of Islamic sources give out a highly coherent set of ‘narratives’. While the role model of the ‘proper’ Sunni Muslim according to these principals of faith (‘aqida) and religious methodology (manhaj/minhaj) is embodied by the jihadists who claim purity and absolute proximity to god. The doctrine of Sunni extremism provides a clear identity of what it should mean to be a ‘true’ monotheistic Muslim (muwahhid) and how to profess the divine laws of God (shari’a) as based on the authoritarian interpretations and guidelines freely available on the Internet – giving answers to real life grievances in zones of conflict across diverse Islamic countries. Fighters and clerics likewise and sometimes in rotating roles relate the written ideology into actions and fierce emotional sermons conveyed by the extremist’s most powerful platform: Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more; jihadi forums and dedicated websites. These role models, the corpus of texts, and most important the jihadi-affiliated and hijacked iconography most prominently represented and identifiable by the black banner with the imprinted shahada,[7] has successfully manifested within majority Sunni Islamic societies, and has even more so gained visibility within the Arab public space amid the chaos and aftermath of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’.[8] Perhaps even more so in times of upheaval and (re-) spawning of militant groups throughout the countries affected by the ‘Arab Spring’, first and foremost Syria, the emphasis of jihadist media advisors, strategists and contributors is set to emphasize their own role and importance:

“We are indeed convinced that the battlefields of the media jihad are of the most important streams of jihad and a elementary front thereof in this raging war with our enemies. Therefore, we [media workers] commit ourselves just as any jihadi brigade, working correspondingly with our brothers in the fields of war, directly encountering the enemies.”[9]

The media in principal is used on a tactical level, not only to incite and recruit individuals worldwide, but to create theological denominators and operational paradigms with policy guidelines for various jihadist groups. While “jihad” is first and foremost agreed to as being implemented by militant and violent means in general, or in short linked to “combat” (qital), the media thereof follows the rationale of propagating Islam (da’wa) and the proper religious methodology (manhaj/minhaj). This propagation thus is part of the overall objective to “establish the rightly guided caliphate” while uniting various Sunni fighting groups and individuals under this particular propagated manhaj.[10]

With the Islamic State having endured for years as the “established rightly guided caliphate”, stretching across Syria and Iraq as its core area, and the day-to-day application of the “prophetic methodology”, the legacy it already leaves behind for future jihad theaters is part of the many challenges to overcome modern-day global terrorism.

[1] Markaz al-Hayyat li’-l ‘ilam, Stories from the Land of the Living – the Story of Abu Khaled the Cambodian from Australia,

[2] Nico Prucha, Die Stimme des Dschihad “Sawt al-gihad”: al-Qa’idas erstes Online-Magazin Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2010

[3] See the statements by Thomas Hegghammer: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/23/the-culture-that-makes-a-jihadi-thomas-hegghammer-interview-poetry-militancy

[4] Ali Fisher and Nico Prucha: The Call-Up: The Roots of a Resilient and Persistent Jihadist Presence on Twitter, Global Ecco, CTX vo.4 no.3, August 2014, https://globalecco.org/nl/the-call-up-the-roots-of-a-resilient-and-persistent-jihadist-presence-on-twitter

[5] Nico Prucha: IS and the Jihadist information Highway – Projecting Influence and Religious Identity via Telegram, Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 10, no. 6 (2016), http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/556

^[6] For example the major IS video release “The Clanging of the Swords, part 4”, published in May 2014. The video shows IS in the early stages of conquest and consolidating territory in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. Ali Fisher, Nico Prucha, Is this the most successful release of a jihadist video ever?, Jihadica, May 2014, http://www.jihadica.com/is-this-the-most-successful-release-of-a-jihadist-video-ever/

[7] The black flag comprises a centric grey circle imprinted with (from down upwards) “Muhammad – rasul – allah”, a reference to the Islamic creed “There is no God (allah) but God and Muhammad is the messenger (rasul) of God.” The symbolic is amplified as this exact layout and wording had been the seal of the prophet (khatim al-nabawiyya) whereas the contemporary jihadists further seek to position a monopoly of truth by signing documents and by placing the flag as an expression of divine will and power. The use of the Prophetic seal, placed not only on the flag but also to sign ‘official Islamic State’ documents and rulings, is served as a nonnegotiable authority, backed by the interpretation and application of Qur’an and Sunna – speaking in the name of God and His messenger, Muhammad, furthering the belief of being in a direct lineage to divinity and expressing the entitlement of the soldiers of God (jund allah).

[8] The manifestation of pro-AQ styled jihadist groups, exercising violence or ‘soft-power’ such as restoring basic infrastructure and handing out supplies to the Sunni population is evident by the trans-national appearance of the Ansar al-Shari’a network. The Ansar al-Shari’a groups propagate openly jihadist iconography and a similar rhetoric based on the fundamental teachings of AQ. The Libyan branch based in Bengazi and Derna as well as the chapter in Tunisia had been declared by the U.S. State Department as “foreign terrorist organizations” and “global terrorist entities” following the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, September 11, 2012. Thomas Joscelyn, State Department designates 3 Ansar al Sharia organizations, leaders, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/01/state_department_des_2.php, January 10, 2013.

[9] Mu’assasat al-Ma’sada al-I’lamiyya / Fursan al-Balagh al-I’lam (eds.), Bayan nusrat al-ansar li-ikhwanihim al-Mujahidin al-abrar, https://shamikh1.info/vb/showthread.php?t=212520, October 10, 2013. This statement is signed by the most influential contemporary jihadi media key figures.

[10] Mu’assasat al-Ma’sada al-I’lamiyya / Fursan al-Balagh al-I’lam (eds.), Bayyan nusrat al-ansar li-ikhwanihim al-Mujahidin al-abrar, 3-5.