ISIS, Crabgrass, and Religious Imaginaries

Abstract

A review of seven recently published books on the rise of ISIS shows how it emerged after the Iraq War due to American policy, Iraqi Sunni alienation, the Syrian Assad regime's policies, and factional competition. But ISIS is unique in its use of social media for recruitment. Furthermore, the content of the ISIS message is religious, relying on Salafi teachings, apocalyptic imagery, and the legitimacy of a Caliphate. As with crabgrass, the most effective long-term anti-terrorism policy is prevention rather than eradication. But responding to the religiously inspired “imaginaries” of ISIS will require more inspired religious alternatives and savvier cyber-monitoring.

Notes

1 Why multiple labels? The current name of the group is The Islamic State (al-dowlah al-islamiyya). However, to de-legitimize their claim that they are the successor to the Caliphate as an Islamic state, National Public Radio insisted that correspondents insert “so-called” before “Islamic State.” Others prefer to use the acronym—Da’ish—for an earlier Arabic name of the group: dowlat al-islamiyaa fi iraq wa al-shams, or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, from which we also get ISIS. Da’ish sounds like an Arabic world for “being trampled on,” so some many in the region prefer this label for its negative connotations. ISIL, the term that was preferred by President Obama, refers to the Islamic State in the Levant (a wider translation for al-shams, including the eastern Mediterranean region rather than limiting the term to Syria). Nonetheless, both ISIS and the Islamic State are emerging as the most commonly used terms and will be used here interchangeably.

2 Fawaz Gerges is a professor at the London School of Economics and author of several books on al Qaeda. Griffin is an experienced journalist. William McCants has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, served as a U.S. State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism between 2009 and 2011, and is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Ali Soufan is a former FBI interrogator who helped unravel the 9/11 conspiracy after the fact and who later started a consulting practice based in New York City. Jessica Stern is currently a Research Professor at Boston University's Pardee School of International Studies and was a National Security Council staffer under President Bill Clinton. J. M. Berger is a former nonresident fellow at Brookings and currently an independent consultant studying jihadist use of social media. Joby Warrick is a journalist for The Washington Post and won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for Black Flags. Michael Weiss is a senior editor at The Daily Beast and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Hassan Hassan is a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC, and holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Nottingham.

3 Weiss and Hassan added this to a subsequent, updated edition, but McCants was first to cite this document.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Waalkes

Scott Waalkes is Professor of International Politics at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. He earned a B.A. in Political Science from Calvin College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Fullness of Time in a Flat World: Globalization and the Liturgical Year (Cascade Books, 2010), as well as several articles, book chapters, and book reviews in international studies.