MUST READ: The War of the Cross

When ISIS changed its name in June from “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL, or the Arabic acronym ISIS) to simply “the Islamic State”, this was a shift of enormous theological and eschatological significance.

The Caliphate and the Caliph

The Islamic State, or Caliphate (khilafa in Arabic) as the group has proclaimed, denotes the early Islamic state under Muhammad’s first successors, the Caliphs. It is considered by Muslims to be the God-ordained ideal form of Islamic government under which a pious head of state rules the whole Muslim community (umma) under Islamic law (sharia). This is viewed as the golden age of Islam, to be re-created whenever possible. The term is sometimes extended to all Islamic states with caliphs at their heads (the last being the Ottoman Caliphate abolished in 1924). It symbolises the unity of the Muslim umma, even when this does not match reality. All contemporary Islamist movements are dedicated to restoring the Caliphate.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, declared himself Caliph on 29 June 2014, claiming therefore to be the leader of all Muslims on earth. He says he is a sayyid, that is, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, thereby fulfilling one of the original Sunni requirements for the Caliph to be from Muhammad’s tribe.

Religious Motives and Theological Justification

Much of Islamic theology is derived not from the Quran but from traditions (hadith) recording the words and deeds of Muhammad (his sunna), which are seen as a pattern for all Muslims to follow.

A helpful letter by British imams and Muslim leaders appeared in The Independent newspaper yesterday, in which they urged ISIS to release British aid worker Alan Henning and expressed horror and revulsion at the recent murder of another British aid worker, David Haines. They wrote that “the senseless kidnapping, murder and now the despicable threats to Mr Henning at the hands of so-called "Muslims" cannot be justified anywhere in the Quran and the Sunnah (Prophetic traditions).” The Islamic State, however, can quote selected Islamic source texts from the Quran and hadith or sunna to justify what it is doing.

As we have seen, the Islamic State’s main immediate purpose is to establish a radical Islamist Sunni Caliphate across the Middle East. After that its stated targets are Rome and Spain. Rome is apparently used as a symbolic centre of Christianity, while Spain has been “unfinished business” for Muslims ever since they finally lost control of it in the late 15th century. As one hadith says:

Allah's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah. – Sahih al-Bukhari (Vol. 1, Book 8, No. 387)

Another hadith states:

the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah (Sahih Muslim Book 1, No. 30)

The Islamic State takes these hadiths as meaning that it should wage jihad until everyone on earth makes the Islamic declaration of faith, the shahada: “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Read more