Its previous name, “Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria” (ISIS) or “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL), is in Arabic al-dawla al Islamiyya fil Iraq wal-sham, known by its Arabic acronym daesh.⁷ In June 2014 it changed its name to Islamic State and declared the re-establishment of the global Islamic caliphate with its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph. It demanded that all Muslims proclaim their allegiance (bay‘a) to him.⁸

Its military success in Iraq and Syria since 2013, and its setting up of a territorial Islamic state as the caliphate have spread its influence among Sunni Muslims worldwide, radicalizing many and exacerbating the Sunni/Shia divide.⁹

Attempts to understand and counter Islamic State have been hampered by a lack of understanding of the group’s ideology and in particular of the theology which infuses this ideology. It is important to understand how the group’s ideology has been inspired by Islamic radical thought. Perhaps even more important is a clear assessment of how Islamic State’s ideology relates to ideologies present in the Muslim mainstream and to key historical and theological traditions within Islam. Through news reports on the conflict in Syria and Iraq, for example, Western observers have become familiar with the IS black flag, though few in the West fully grasp the significance of the symbolism it employs, or the sense of mission with which it empowers IS fighters.

Images of the flag reveal the words La ‘ilaha ‘illallah - “There is no God but God” - in white, and in Arabic script, on a plain black background. The name of Allah in itself renders the flag a powerful and sacred object, but at its center is a white circle within which is written: “God Messenger Mohammed.” According to experts on radical Islamism the circle and the words are a copy of “the Seal of Mohammed”, which the prophet himself is believed to have used to authenticate letters he wrote to foreign leaders.¹⁰ Magnus Ranstorp, the Research Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College points out that “Al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (active in Yemen and Saudi Arabia), and the al-Shabab group in Somalia have all used the same flag”. He says, “The most important thing is the color. This…was the Prophet Mohammed’s war banner…This flag…harks back to where they came from and where they are going. It is not just the color of jihad and of the caliphate, but it represents the coming of what some believers see as the final battle and the day of resurrection.” He adds, “there’s a kind of Islamic end-of-days element in the flag, pitting the forces of Islam against the Christian West.”¹¹ Essentially, then, the flag signals that the IS forces are on what they understand as a sacred mission - to destroy the current world order and to put a caliphate in its place.

There also needs to be a far greater appreciation of the sophistication of Islamic State’s level of organization, of the resources the group has at its disposal and of its strengths in communicating its ideology through a highly effective information strategy.

This paper seeks to shed light on the core ideology, organizational structure and strategy of Islamic State. While Islamic State is likely both to claim victories and suffer defeats over the coming months and even years, these core elements are unlikely to radically change.

Islamic State has shown a degree of flexibility, particularly in the alliances it forms with those who can help it and the changes it has made to organizational structure. However, its ideology has not changed significantly in the years it has been active. The group’s tactical flexibility has allowed it to be fluid and to seize on the opportunities which have presented themselves in an ever changing and very volatile environment.

The development of the Islamic State can be divided into five eras:¹³

1. Emergence, 2002-2004 - the group first emerged in 2002 as jamaat al-tawhid wal-jihad¹⁴ under the leadership of Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Salafi/Jihadi who had fought in Afghanistan before moving to Iraq in 2001. Al-Zarqawi was more influenced by takfiri ideology than the AI-Qaeda leadership, and was responsible for the group’s extreme anti-Shiism and its focus on restoring the caliphate.

The group sought to exploit the conditions created by the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq which eliminated the state-bearing structures of the Baath Party and the Iraqi Army, creating a vacuum that enabled the emergence of violent Islamist insurgencies, both Sunni and Shia.¹⁵

2. Merger with AI-Qaeda in Iraq, 2004-2006 - in 2004 al-Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama Bin-Laden, uniting al-tawhid wal-jihad with the Al-Qaeda Iraqi franchise as AI-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under his leadership. AQI engaged in brutal provocative attacks on Shia citizens, mosques and shrines in the hope of igniting a civil war.¹⁶

3. Period of weakness, 2006-2010 - The brutality of AQI, even against Sunnis, triggered co-operation between Sunni tribal leaders¹⁷ and the American military surge. In June 2006 al-Zarqawi was killed by a US air strike, initiating a period of decline for AQI. In January 2006, AQI had joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the Mujahidin Shura Council (MSC), which in October 2006 proclaimed itself as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), with AQI as its leading organization under a new leader, the Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri and an overall leader, the Iraqi Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi.¹⁸ Between 2007 and 2010, ISI lost most of its manpower in attacks by the combined Iraqi, US and Sunni Awakening forces. Several of its leaders were killed,¹⁹ including Al-Masri and Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became the new leader.²⁰

During this time a number of imprisoned ISI leaders came into contact with former high ranking Baathist military officers and officials in US-run prison camps.²¹ The result was a powerful fusion of Salafi/Jihadi ideology with professional military and counterintelligence strategies and urban warfare tactics, as well as bureaucratic know how needed to run a state.²²

4. Resurgence, 2010-2014 - the secret of the group’s resurgence lies in its alliance with the former Baathist officers and officials who contributed their skills.²³ Salafi/Jihadis and radicalized Baathists united under its ideological banner to form an effective leadership core.²⁴

In 2009 Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initiated increasingly sectarian policies which marginalized Iraq’s Sunnis.²⁵ Exploiting Sunni resentment and the deepening Sunni-Shia rift, al-Baghdadi developed a powerful support base among alienated Sunnis, blending his group into local communities and giving it a leading role in Sunni resistance. At the same time, the Baath officers turned ISI into a professional fighting force.²⁶ ISI continued to conduct high-profile attacks while expanding its territorial base.²⁷ It used untrained foreign volunteers as suicide bombers utilizing both suicide vests and vehicles packed with explosives.²⁸

The Syrian civil war that began in March 2011 created an opportunity for ISI intervention. Al-Baghdadi sent a small number of fighters to Syria to build an organization and establish secure bases. In January 2012 this Syrian branch was officially founded as the Al-Nusra Front, which soon established itself as the main rebel group in Idlib, Deir al-Zor and Aleppo.²⁹

In March 2013 ISI overran the provincial city of Raqqa on the Euphrates and made it its capital. ISI appointed a new city council and organized a variety of civil organizations to supply needed services. Hundreds of known opponents were brutally eliminated, creating fear and subservience.³⁰

In April 2013, fearing Al-Nusra was getting too independent, al-Baghdadi announced the merger of ISI with Al-Nusra Front under the name of Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).³¹ However, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of Al-Nusra, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of AI-Qaeda, rejected the merger. After an eight-month power struggle, AI-Qaeda cut all ties with ISIS on 3 February 2014, while Al-Nusra publicly pledged allegiance to AI-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.³² This created a rift between the two largest and most efficient Salafi/Jihadi organizations, as ISIS fought Al-Nusra and other rebel groups to establish itself in Syria. Although initially pushed out of several regions of northern Syria in 2014, an influx of ISIS fighters from Iraq helped it defend Raqqa and reconquer several lost territories.³³ In Iraq in January 2014 it took over Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.³⁴

5. As the Islamic State (IS), 2014 onwards - In June 2014, ISIS conducted a lightning drive through northern and western Iraq, seizing Mosul and Tikrit as well as large areas of Ninewah, Salah al-Din and Ta’mim provinces. It captured several strategic border crossings with Syria as well as some hydroelectric dams and oil refineries. It also gained large quantities of sophisticated weapons.³⁵ ISIS forces then began a move towards Baghdad while also threatening the autonomous Kurdish regions in Iraq and Syria.³⁶ ISIS now controlled a contiguous territory that included a third of Iraq and a quarter of Syria, with a population of some eight million people.³⁷

Following these victories, on the 28^th June 2014, the Shura Council of ISIS declared the establishment of the caliphate, renaming itself as Islamic State (IS), with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph to whom all Muslims owe allegiance.³⁸ A proclamation, “This is the Promise”, was issued detailing the ideology and goals of the caliphate and calling on all Muslims in the world to support the new caliph.³⁹

Inspired by the IS military success and its declaration of the caliphate, thousands of foreign Muslims flocked to Syria and Iraq to join its forces.⁴⁰ In August 2014, IS initiated a push towards the Kurdish regions along the Iraq/Syria border, capturing Sinjar, the center of the minority Yazidi community. It was the brutal treatment of the Yazidi population in Sin-jar,⁴¹ which faced the threat of genocide, that finally moved the US and western governments to launch a relief operation to Mount Sinjar and initiate air assaults on IS forces in Iraq.⁴²

As a result, IS has suffered some setbacks, as at Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish frontier, where Kurdish forces supported by US airstrikes managed to roll back the IS siege of the town by late January 2015.⁴³ Iraqi government forces, strengthened by Shia militias and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, have retaken some territories such as Sinjar and Tikrit, easing IS pressure on Baghdad.⁴⁴ However, IS is proving to be very resilient and has simultaneously opened six new fronts in Iraq’s Anbar Province in the first months of 2015.⁴⁵ Its forces also appeared in and around Damascus and the Syrian southwest in April 2015. It would seem that it is still able to secretly prepare for opening new fronts before appearing suddenly in full force.⁴⁶

While Islamic State identity is shaped by its ideology (which will be discussed in the next section), its rise to power was largely facilitated by geopolitical factors. Indeed, the Islamic State could perhaps be described as being in the right place at the right time - ready to exploit the opportunity that arose.

Some of these issues are underlying factors which have been impacting upon the Middle East for decades or even centuries. The most important of these factors are matters of social and economic stratification; demographics and young populations; political oppression; tribal, ethnic and sectarian conflict; and scarcity of some resources. These factors have all contributed to making the Middle East a very volatile region, which is prone to explosive conflict. The events of the series of uprisings against dictators across North Africa and the Middle East, which became known as the Arab Spring, largely resulted from the strain of these underlying tensions.

The Middle East is also a strongly contested region, with a host of regional and international powers trying to intervene in its affairs and being drawn in for different reasons. The importance of the Middle East as an energy supplier and its location bordering Europe, Asia and Africa, has made it strategically important. The various interventions by Western powers have undoubtedly been influenced by these strategic concerns, even if they have often been counterproductive. Other powers have attempted to influence the Middle East, either to try to preserve their declining influence (as is the case with Russia) or to try to establish a foothold (as is the case with China). These influences have contributed to volatility in the Middle East.

Particularly crucial has been the vacuum created by regime change in Iraq and Libya, where there was not enough planning in relation to how these countries should be run after the dictators had been removed. Indeed, the initial rise of Islamic State was empowered by exploiting the conditions caused by the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Though the role played by regional forces in the Middle East has been hugely significant, perhaps the most important development there has been the rise in prominence of sectarian conflict, particularly the ongoing struggle for dominance between the Sunnis (led by Saudi Arabia) and the Shia (led by Iran). The battle for dominance in this struggle has been shaped by this, and many forces are effectively proxies in this overarching conflict. In Syria and Iraq, Iran has directly tried to influence the fighting. It has sent forces into both Syria and Iraq, and has supported Hizbullah as it fights IS in Syria. The Saudis and Qataris have tried to counter Iranian influence largely by supporting Sunni Islamist militias in Syria and directly intervened in Yemen against a Shia uprising there.

Undoubtedly, IS benefited from the growing importance of the Sunni-Shia sectarian struggle. Firstly, IS has to some extent been covertly supported, or at the very least tolerated, from within Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states who saw Sunni radical groups as a tool to gain influence in Iraq and Syria. This early support empowered IS’s initial expansion. Secondly, it was able to exploit the growing antipathy towards the Shia, especially in Iraq. Sunnis in Iraq have largely rejected the Shia dominated Iraqi government, which they felt was persecuting them. IS was able to draw recruits from these Sunnis who were determined to rebel against the Shia.

Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a renewed focus on the Middle East, with a policy which has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman”. Turkey has generally sought to support the Sunni block in the Middle East. However, it also has a policy of trying to restrict the Kurds as much as possible, due to concerns about its own huge Kurdish minority and the groups which have fought for them to have greater autonomy within Turkey, especially the PKK. The fact that Turkey borders both Iraq and Syria has also meant it has to take an interest in the conflict. Turkey is a key transit point for fighters into Syria and for smuggling oil and other commodities out of Syria where they are bought by Turkish buyers, with the profits going to Islamic State and other Islamist groups. Turkey has been criticized for its willingness to support radical groups in Syria, with one Western official claiming that some links between Turkey and IS were “undeniable”.⁴⁷ Though the Syrian-Turkish border is hard to police, it is likely that Turkey could have done considerably more to clamp down on these activities if it had wished to do so.

In June-July 2015, it seemed that Turkey had decided to be more proactive in confronting IS, as it carried out a wave of arrests of suspected supporters of the group. While Turkey probably wants to control Sunni radicalism in Syria and Iraq as much possible and to expand its influence in these countries, it is also worried about the conflict spilling over into Turkey itself. Indeed, suicide bomb attacks have taken place that the government has blamed on IS.⁴⁸ In July 2015 Turkey carried out airstrikes against suspected IS targets in retaliation for terrorist attacks within Turkey. They also carried out airstrikes against positions of the Kurdish PKK in Iraq. Due to these various concerns, Turkey seems to be taking a very careful policy of maintaining the fragile balance of power in Syria and trying to manipulate it as much as it can to suit Turkey’s interests. Like most Sunni powers in the region, Turkey is not really focussed on destroying radical Sunni groups, rather on controlling them so that they can use them for their own ends. For this reason, Turkey adopts a seemingly contradictory policy of combining attacks on Sunni radical groups while maintaining covert cooperation with them.

The fact that Sunni powers are not willing to commit completely to attacking IS and other radical groups in the region, means that these groups will continue to have breathing space and continue to be a threat.

The emergence of IS was also facilitated by changes in the global jihadi network. While Al-Qaeda (AQ) remains a powerful network, which still has a global reach beyond that of IS’s, over recent years there are signs that the group is becoming exhausted. In particular AQ has failed to carry out the massive attention seeking operations which had characterized its rise to prominence. Out of necessity the group had begun to become less centralized, as security services disrupted its communications and financial network. In 2005 Marc Sageman commented upon how jihadi networks were changing: “The global Salafi jihad has now become a fuzzy idea-based network, self-organizing from below, and inspired by posting on the Internet.”⁴⁹ In the following years this process of decentralization accelerated and led to a vacuum in which there was not a clear leader for the global jihadi movement. IS clearly now sees itself as stepping in to fill this vacuum and taking the mantle from AQ.

In May 2013, a bitter dispute between AQ and IS led to AQ leader al-Zawahiri declaring that, “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is to be dissolved, while Islamic State in Iraq is to continue its work” and that al-Baghdadi was to be allowed to continue as Emir for one year, after which his position would be reviewed. This effectively led to IS completely rejecting AQ’s authority, and the two being in open conflict with each other.⁵⁰

While AQ and IS do have similar ideologies, IS has brought an even greater sense of fanaticism and urgency and a renewed focus on the “jihad of the near” (fighting to topple corrupt governments in Muslim lands), rather than the “jihad of the far” (fighting America and her allies). IS has been able to draw radical Muslims to its cause and is likely to eclipse AQ as the undisputed leader of the global jihadi movement.

Hassan Mneimneh characterized the rise of IS as motivated by numerous social and political factors, but crucially legitimized and empowered by Islamist ideology:

Islamism is a term given to a host of ideologies, which seek to revive Islam by returning to an idealized form of the religion and trying to establish states dominated by sharia. These ideologies argue that there can be no separation between religion (din) and state (dawlah). They aim for Islam to achieve political dominance everywhere and see the state as the best tool for implementing sharia. They argue that the Quran and sharia contain the recipe for a complete social and political system (nizam).

Islamist ideologies have both so called “gradualist” forms, which try to Islamize society through forming social and political movements, and more aggressive and radical forms, of which IS is of course an example. To understand these ideologies, we need to examine the history of how they formed and how IS’s ideology emerged from them.

All Islamist movements believe that the cause of the humiliating Muslim decline in recent centuries is the Muslim world’s deviation from true Islam while not fully applying sharia to governance. The contemporary weakness of the Islamic umma or community is contrasted with the “Islamic Golden Age” under Muhammad and the exemplary first rashidun caliphs (this is the collective term for the first four caliphs or religious and military rulers who came after Muhammad), which needs to be restored.⁵² Islamists want to revive Muslim glory by purifying Islam from later accretions and by returning to the sources (the Quran and the collection of records of what Muhammad is claimed to have done and said, known as the hadith, using Muhammad’s example as a model), as well as to the model of the first Muslim state implementing sharia and practicing expansionist jihad.⁵³

A recurring theme in the history of Islamic thought is the search for revival, which has led to the formation of various reform movements. These movements for reform and revival had their roots in earlier puritanical movements such as the Kharijis (7^th century, Middle East), the Almoravids (11^th century, North Africa and Spain) and the Almohads (11^th and 12^th centuries, North Africa and Spain). Many of these movements held that violence could be directed against civilians as well as against the state’s armed forces, despite the fact that mainstream teaching tended to forbid attacks on noncombatants

Modern Islamists have revived some Khariji doctrines, especially the doctrine of takfir,