The Islamic State’s Visions of Political Community and Statehood and Their Articulation Vis-à-Vis Nationalism

Abstract

This article explores the Islamic State (IS)’s discursive construction of ideal forms of political community and statehood, i.e. the umma and caliphate, and their articulation in relation to the dominant forms of political community and statehood in the modern world, i.e. the nation and nation-state. Studying a large corpus of data from IS primary sources in multiple languages and mediums, I propose that IS’s discourse espouses a vision of umma-caliphalism that entails a thorough process of, what I call, de-nationization. On the material level, de-nationization results in dismantling the nation-state and its apparatus of sovereignty. At the symbolic level, de-nationization mandates derecognizing the political community of the nation and treating it as no more than a form of ethnic cultural unit, or ethnie, whereby ethnic symbols are not allowed to become the basis of political mobilization and demands. This expansionist umma-caliphalist vision centered on highly exclusionary notions of communal membership and solidarity is important to making sense of IS’s violent tendencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

2 Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, A Theory of ISIS: Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order (London: Pluto Press, 2018).

3 William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015); Masaki Nagata, “The Radical Nation-State and Contemporary Extremism,” Middle East Law and Governance 11, no. 3 (2019): 319–45; David J. Wasserstein, Black Banners of ISIS: The Roots of the New Caliphate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017).

4 Nadia Kaneva and Andrea Stanton, “An Alternative Vision of Statehood: Islamic State’s Ideological Challenge to the Nation-State,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020): 1–19; Ben Caló, David Malet, Luke Howie, and Pete Lentini. “Islamic Caliphate or Nation State? Investigating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s Imagined Community,” Nations and Nationalism 26 no. 3 (2020): 727–42.

5 Amaryllis Maria Georges, “ISIS Rhetoric for the Creation of the Ummah,” in Religion and Theology: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice (IGI Global, 2020), 429–49; James Piscatori and Amin Saikal, Islam Beyond Borders: The Umma in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

6 Ibid.

7 Kaneva and Stanton, “An Alternative”; Caló et al., “Islamic Caliphate”; Masaki Nagata (2019); Piscatori and Saikal, “Islam Beyond”; L. Carl Brown, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Souran Mardini, “Fundamental Religio-Political Concepts in the Sources of Islam” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1984). https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/12813523.pdf

8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006); Karl W. Deutsch, Political Community at the International Level: Problems of Definition and Measurement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); Igor Filibi, Noe Cirnago, and Justin O. Frosini, eds., Democracy With(out) Nations? Old and New Foundations for Political Communities in a Changing World (Universidad del País Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, 2011); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1988); Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Civil Society (J. Harris, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

9 Martin Loughlin, “In Defense of Staatslehre,” Der Staat 48 no. 1 (2009): 5.

10 See, for example, Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four News Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); Loughlin, “In Defense”.

11 Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2004), 33.

12 Kamaran Palani, Kurdistan’s De Facto Statehood: A New Explanatory Framework (London: Routledge, 2022); Kenneth McRoberts, Catalonia: The Struggle over Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

13 Anderson, Imagined; Filibi et al., Democracy.

14 Muhittin Ataman, “Islamic Perspective on Ethnicity and Nationalism: Diversity or Uniformity?,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23, no. 1 (2003): 89–102; Mark Juergensmeyer, “Religious Terrorism as Performance Violence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, ed. Mark Juergensmeyer, Margo Kitts, and Michael Jerryson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–15; Nathan C. Mikami, “Among the Believers are men: The Role of Religious-Nationalist Identity and Religious Literacy in Islamic State Recruitment Efforts in the West” (PhD diss., Washington State University, 2019), https://rex.libraries.wsu.edu/esploro/outputs/doctoral/AMONG-THE-BELIEVERS-ARE-MEN-THE/99900581419201842; Robert A. Saunders, “The Ummah as Nation: A Reappraisal in the Wake of the ‘Cartoon Affair’,” Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 2: 303–21; Kaneva and Stanton, “An Alternative”; Caló et al., “Islamic Caliphate”.

15 Anderson, Imagined; Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London: Sage, 1991); Loughlin, “In Defense”; Kaneva and Stanton, “An Alternative”; Gellner, Nations; Kahn, Political Theology; Nagata, “The Radical”; Xavier Márquez, “Models of Political Community: The Nation State and Other Stories,” in Democracy With(out) Nations? Old and New Foundations for Political Communities in a Changing World, ed. Igor Filibi, Noe Cirnago, and Justin O. Frosini (Universidad del País Vasco-Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, 2011); Smith, The Ethnic.

16 For Turkish items, I relied on their Arabic subtitles provided by IS production houses.

17 Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl, and Ruth Wodak, “The Discursive Construction of National Identities,” Discourse and Society 10, no. 2 (1999), 149–73; Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean (London: Sage, 2015); Ruth Wodak, “The Semiotics of Racism: A Critical Discourse-Historical Analysis,” in Discourse, of Course: An Overview of Research in Discourse Studies, ed. Jan Renkema (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009), 311–26.

18 De Cillia et al., “The Discursive”; Wodak, The Politics; Wodak, The Semiotics.

19 Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse (Edward Arnold, 1995); Wodak, The Politics; Wodak, The Semiotics.

20 Wodak, The Politics.

21 De Cillia et al., The Discursive, 160.

22 De Cillia et al., The Discursive, 161.

23 Caló et al., “Islamic”; Kaneva and Stanton, “An Alternative”; Nagata, “The Radical”; Piscatori and Saikal, Islam Beyond.

24 “Be Patient for Indeed the Promise of Allah Is True,” Rumiyah, no. 9 (May 2017): 26–35; “Imamah Is from the Millah of Ibrahim,” Dabiq, no. 1 (July 2014): 20–9.

25 “From Hijrah to Khilāfa,” Dabiq, 1 (July 2014): 34–41; “Interview with the Amir of the Khilāfah Soldiers in Bangal Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif,” Dabiq 14 (April 2016): 58–66; “IS Spokesman Muhammad al-Adnani: This Is the Promise of Allah,” al-Furqan Media, June 2014, https://jihadology.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/shaykh-abc5ab-mue1b8a5ammad-al-e28098adnc481nc4ab-al-shc481mc4ab-22this-is-the-promise-of-god22.mp3; Maher, Salafi-Jihadism; Joana Cook and Shiraz Maher, eds., The Rule Is for None but Allah: Islamist Approaches to Governance (Hurst Publishers, 2022).

26 Abul-Hassan al-Mawardi, Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic Government, trans. Asadullah Yate (London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 1996); Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

27 “Establishing the Islamic State: Between Prophetic Methodology and the Paths of Deviants, Part 1,” Rumiyah 7 (March 2017): 6–9; “The Position of Imamah in the Religion,” Rumiyah 13 (September 2017): 14–20.

28 “IS Spokesman”, 2014.

29 “From Hijrah”, 2014; “Interview with the Amir”, 2016; “IS Spokesman”, 2014; “The End of Sykes-Picot,” Al-Hayat Media Center, June, 2014, https://jihadology.net/2014/06/29/al-%e1%b8%a5ayat-media-center-presents-a-new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-of-iraq-and-al-sham-the-end-of-sykes-picot/

30 “Foreword,” Dabiq, no. 8 (March 2015): 6.

31 “Inside the Caliphate 1,” Al-Hayat Media Center, July 2017. https://jihadology.net/2017/07/28/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-inside-the-caliphate/

32 “Be Patient,” 2017: 27.

33 “And what is after impotence except surrender,” Al-Naba’, no. 170: 3.

34 “Be Patient,” 2017: 28.

35 “Turkey and the Fire of Nationalism,” Al-Hayat Media Center, November 2015, https://jihadology.net/2015/11/21/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-turkey-and-the-fire-of-nationalism/

36 “Khilafah Declared,” Dabiq, no. 1 (July 2014): 7.

37 “Foreword,” 2015: 4.

38 “Turkey and the Fire,” 2015.

39 “From the “Pages of History: The Flags of Jahiliyya,” Dabiq, no. 9 (May 2015): 22.

40 “The End of Sykes-Picot,” 2014.

41 “Khilafah Declared,” 2014: 9.

42 Anderson, Imagined; Gellner, Nations; Smith, The Ethnic.

43 Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28, no. 1 (2002): 168; Márquez, Models of Political.

44 Anderson, Imagined; Lamont and Molnár, “The Study of”; De Cillia et al., “The Discursive”; Wodak, The Semiotics.

45 “Be Patient”, 27.

46 “Imamah Is From”, 24.

47 “The Commander of the Faithful to the Jews, Crusaders and Apostates: So Wait; Indeed We, Along with You, Are Waiting,” Al-Naba’ 11 (December 2015): 3; “Inside the Caliphate 1,” Al-Hayat Media Center, July 2017, https://jihadology.net/2017/07/28/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-inside-the-caliphate/

48 “Turkey and the Fire of Nationalism,” Al-Hayat Media Center, November 2015, https://jihadology.net/2015/11/21/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-turkey-and-the-fire-of-nationalism/

49 “For God Not for the Homeland,” Al-Naba’ 5 (November 2015): 8.

50 Ibid., 8.

51 “The Murtadd Taliban Movement: On the Footsteps of the Iraqi and Shami Sahawat,” Rumiyah 10 (June 2017): 42–3; “The Ruling on the Belligerent Christians,” Rumiyah 9 (May 2017): 4–11; “Wala’ and Bara’ Versus American Racism,” Dabiq 11 (September 2015): 18–21.

52 “Wala’ and Bara’”, 2015.

53 “The Allies of al-Qa’idah in Sham,” Dabiq 8 (March 2015): 7–11; “For God Not”, 2015.

54 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimah: An Introduction to History, ed. N. J. Dawood, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

55 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimah; Manzooruddin Ahmed, “Umma: The Idea of A Universal Community,” Islamic Studies 14, no. 1 (1975): 27–54.

56 Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, Nasyonalisme Eslami (Islamic Nationalism), trans. O. Asad (Qalam Library, 2017).

57 Jahiliyya is a highly loaded term that semantically means ignorance and refers to the pre-Islamic age in Arabia where polytheism was the norm. Islamist thinker and ideologist Sayyid Qutb defined jahiliyya as the “defiance of divine guidance” where one man is lord over others. See: Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, ed. A. B. al-Mehri (Maktaba Booksellers and Publishers, 2006), 79.

58 “For God”, 8; Qawmi nationalism or qawmiyya refers to ethnic-based nationalism, and watani nationalism or wataniyya refers to state-based nationalism. Ideologically, both qawmi and watani national identities emphasized the supremacy of Arab identity, language, and culture in their multi-ethnic, multilingual, and multicultural territories. While watani nationalists are mainly committed to the extant post-WWI nation states, qawmi nationalists advocate a vision of pan-Arabism that would unify all Arab-majority states within an Arab super state. For more on this see, Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

59 “Partisanship of Jahiliyya,” Rumiyah 5 (January 2017): 11; “We Disbelieve in You,” Al-Naba’ 173 (March 2019): 3; “Foreword,” Dabiq 8 (March 2015): 3–6.

60 “Wala’ and Bara’”, 20; Mohamedou, A Theory of.

61 “Foreword,” 2015, 3; Mohamedou, A Theory of.

62 “Irja’: The Most Dangerous Bid’ah,” Dabiq 8 (March 2015): 39–56; “Be Patient”, 2017; Maher, Salafi-Jihadism.

63 “The Rafidah: From ibn Saba’ to the Dajjal,” Dabiq 13 (January 2016): 34; “Foreword,” 2015; “Kill the Imams of Kufr in the West,” Dabiq 14 (April 2016): 12; “Our Battle with the Rafidhis: So There Will Be No Sedition,” Al-Naba’ 28 (April 2016): 3; Partisanship of Jahiliyya,” Rumiyah 5 (January 2017): 11; “The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men: IS Waging War against the Khilāfah Apostasy,” Dabiq 10 (July 2015): 55. IS’s complex conception of the ideal form of umma membership should not be construed as meaning that the group physically eliminates any Sunni who does not fall under its narrow conception of communal membership and solidarity. While it was merciless toward those captured in combat against it, IS generally attempted to accommodate large sections of Sunni Muslims within the ranks of its umma and re-proselytize them into its exclusionary form of religious belief and practice.

64 Ahm Ershad Uddin, “The Fanatical ISIS through the Lens of Islamic Law 1,” International Journal of Islamic Thought 12 (2017): 1–14; Michael Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab: Makers of the Muslim World, (London: Oneworld Publications, 2014); Namira Nahouza, Wahhabism and the Rise of the new Salafists: Theology, Power and Sunni Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018); Maher, Salafi-Jihadism; “Shia as Internal Others: A Salafi Rejection of the ‘Rejecters’,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 28, no. 4 (2017): 409–30.

65 Frederick M. Denny, “Ummah in the Constitution of Medina,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 36, no. 1 (1977): 39–47; Piscatori and Saikal, Islam Beyond.

66 Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, Composite Nationalism and Islam, trans. Mohammad Anwar Hussain and Hasan Imam (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors); Rafiya Nisar, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani and Composite Nationalism, Insight Islamicus 12 (2012).

67 David H. Warren, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (London: Routledge, 2021), 32; Usaama A al-Azmi, “Abdulla¯h bin Bayyah and the Arab Revolutions: Counter-revolutionary Neo-traditionalism’s Ideological Struggle against Islamism,” Muslim World 109, no. 3 (2019).

68 Hugh Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea (New York: Basic Books, 2016).

69 Jens Bartelson, Sovereignty as Symbolic Form (London: Routledge, 2014), 2.

70 See, for example, Anderson, Imagined; Bartelson, Sovereignty; Loughlin, “In Defense”; J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, “The State and the Nation: Changing Norms and the Rules of Sovereignty in International Relations,” International Organization 48, no. 1 (1994): 107–30.

71 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Kahn, Political Theology.

72 Asma Kounsar, “The Concept of Tawhid in Islam: In the Light of Perspectives of Prominent Muslim Scholars,” Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization (JITC) 6, no. 2 (2016): 94–110; Maher Salafi-Jihadism; “The Rule of the Sharia Not the Rule of Jahiliyya,” Rumiyah 13 (September 2017): 6–8; “Tawhid of Allah in His Rule,” Rumiyah 3 (November 2016): 27.

73 “Tawhid of”, 2016.

74 Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, Jihad in Islam (Islamic Publications, 1976); Qutb, Milestones.

75 Qutb, Milestones.

76 Qutb’s ideas played an important role in the birth of the Salafi-Jihadi movement through its fusion with Wahhabism as many Qutbists fled from the oppression of Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s government in Egypt to Saudi Arabia, see Marc Lynch, “Islam Divided Between Salafi-jihad and the Ikhwan,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 467–87.

77 “A Fatwa for Khurasan,” Dabiq 10 (July 2015): 18–24; “Establishing the”, 2017; Wael B. Hallaq, Sharī’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); “The Position of”, 2017.

78 “Imamah Is From”, 2014; “The structure of the Caliphate,” Al-Furqan Media, July 2016, https://jihadology.net/2016/07/06/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-the-structure-of-the-caliphate/

79 “The Position of”, 16.

80 “Be patient,” 2017; “Foreword,” Dabiq 15 (July 2016): 4–7; “The Rule of,” 2017.

81 See, for example, Bartelson, Sovereignty; Kahn, Political Theology.

82 “Legislation Is Only for Allah,” Wilaya ar-Raqqah, October 2015, https://jihadology.net/2015/10/30/new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-legislation-is-not-but-for-god-wilayat-al-raqqah/

83 “Be Patient”, 2017.

84 For instance, scholars such as Ataman, “Islamic Perspective”; Juergensmeyer, Religious Terrorism; Mikami, “Among the Believers”.

85 “Foreword,” 2015.

86 “A Fatwa for,” 2015; “Foreword,” 2015; Shadi Hamid and William McCants, Rethinking Political Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); “The Allies of,” 2015.

87 From the “Pages of History: The Flags of Jahiliyya,” Dabiq 9 (May 2015): 21.

88 “A Fatwa for,” 2015; “Foreword,” 2015.

89 Warren, “Rivals in the Gulf”, 32; Bettina Gräf, “The Concept of Wasat.iyya in the Work of Yusuf al-Qarad.āwī,” in Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yūsuf Al-Qarad.āwi ¯ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 213–38.

90 Warren, “Rivals in the Gulf”, 33.

91 Peter J. Taylor, “The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern World-System,” Progress in Human Geography 18, no. 2 (1994): 151.

92 John Gerard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47, no. 1 (1993): 139–74; Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Taylor, “The State”.

93 Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory,” International Political Sociology 3, no. 4 (2009): 353–77.

94 Anderson, Imagined; Smith, The Ethnic.

95 “Foreword,” Rumiyah 12 (August 2017): 5.

96 “Foreword,” 2015, 4.

97 “A Fatwa for,” 2015, 19.

98 “Foreword,” 2015, 3.

99 Michael D. Berdine, Redrawing the Middle East: Sir Mark Sykes, Imperialism and the Sykes-Picot Agreement (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018).

100 “Wala’ and bara’,” 2015; “Be Patient,” 2017; “Why Do We Fight? The Most Important Goals of Jihad in the Path of God,” Al-Naba’ 25 (April 2016): 12–3; “The Kurds… and the Autumn of Nations,” Al-Naba’ 19 (February 2016): 3; “The Murtadd Taliban,” 2017; Islam Is the Religion of the Sword Not Pacifism,” Dabiq 7 (February 2015): 20–4.

101 “Be Patient,” 2017, 28.

102 Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, trans. James Howarth (London: Verso, 2005), 194.

103 Paul Brykczynski, “Radical Islam and the Nation: The Relationship between Religion and Nationalism in the Political Thought of Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb,” History of Intellectual Culture 5 (2005): 9; P. J. Vatikiotis, Islam and the State (London: Routledge, 2017); “Hasan al-Banna,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden, ed. Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 56–78.

104 Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 6.

105 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995).

106 “The Revival of Jihad in Bengal: With the Spread of the Light of the Khilāfah,” Dabiq 12 (November 2015): 41.

107 “For God MNot,” 2015, 8; “Kurds between,” 2016; Message to Our People in Kurdistan,” Al-Hayat Media Center, March 2015, https://jihadology.net/2015/03/23/al-%E1%B8%A5ayat-media-center-presents-a-new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-message-to-our-people-in-kurdistan/; “The Religion of Islam,” Rumiyah 1 (September 2016): 4–8; “Turkey and”, 2015.

108 I use de-nationization here rather than terms like denationalization because the latter is mainly used in regard to moving ownership of an industry from public to private hands; or stripping one of citizenship; or forms of citizenship and belonging which are transnational or postnational as a result of processes of globalization. But the emphasis in de-nationization is on unraveling the nation and transforming it into another form of political community. On denationalization see, Linda Bosniak, “Citizenship Denationalized,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 7, no. 2 (2000): 447–509; Saskia Sassen, “Towards Post-National and Denationalized Citizenship,” in Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. Engin F. Isin and Bryan S. Turner (London: Sage, 2002), 277–92.

109 “Breaking of the Borders,” Al-I’tisam Media, June 2014, https://jihadology.net/2014/06/29/al-iti%e1%b9%a3am-media-presents-a-new-video-message-from-the-islamic-state-of-iraq-and-al-sham-breaking-of-the-border/

110 “Breaking of,” 2014; “Turkey and” 2015.

111 “Khutbah and Jum’ah Prayer in the Grand Mosque of Musul,” Al-Furqan Media, July 2014, https://jihadology.net/2014/07/05/al-furqan-media-presents-a-new-video-message-from-the-islamic-states-abu-bakr-al-%E1%B8%A5ussayni-al-qurayshi-al-baghdadi-khu%E1%B9%ADbah-and-jumah-prayer-in-the-grand-mosque-of-mu/

112 “The End of,” 2014.

113 “The Structure of,” 2016.

114 “The Birth of Two New Wilayat,” Dabiq 4 (October 2014): 18.

115 “The Structure of,” 2016.

116 Arseny Saparov, “The Alteration of Place Names and Construction of National Identity in Soviet Armenia,” Cahiers du monde russe. Russie-Empire russe-Union soviétique et États indépendants 44, no. 1 (2003): 179–98; Harold R. Isaacs, “Basic Group Identity: The Idols of the Tribe,” Reprinted from Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (1974): 15–41.

117 Duri A. A., Gottschalk H. L., Colin G. S., Lambton A. K. S., and Bazmee Ansari A. S.,. “Dīwān,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Banquis, C. E. Bowworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs Bowworth, 2nd ed.; Khilafah, “Declared,” Dabiq 1 (July 2014): 6–11; “The structure of,” 2016.

118 IS considers the Abbasid caliphate (775-1258 CE) as the last rightful caliphate and does not regard the Ottomans as a caliphate. See, “The Law of,” 2015: 59; “The Structure of,” 2016.

119 Pinar Dinc, “The Kurdish Movement and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria: An Alternative to the (Nation-)State Model?,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 22, no. 1 (2020): 47–67; Damian Gerber and Shannon Brincat, “When Öcalan Met Bookchin: The Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Political Theory of Democratic Confederalism,” Geopolitics 26, no. 4 (2018): 973–97; Milena Sterio, “Self-Determination and Secession under International Law: The Cases of Kurdistan and Catalonia,” American Society of International Law 22, no. 1 (2018).

120 Harriet Allsopp and Wladimir van Wilgenburg, The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019); David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Abbas Vali, Kurds and the State in Iran: The Making of Kurdish Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014).

121 Mohammed A. Salih, “How Islamic State Is Trying to Lure the Kurds to Its Ranks” Al-Monitor (2016), https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2016/08/islamic-state-propaganda-video-kurds-iraq.html

122 “Kurds between,” 2016; “Message to Our,” 2015.

123 “Kurds between,” 2016; Jonathan Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019).

124 Allsopp and van Wilgenburg, The Kurds of; McDowall, A Modern History; Romano, The Kurdish.

125 Kawa Abdulkareem Sherwani, “The Discourse of Kurdish Traditional Textiles,” Industria Textila 72, no. 6 (2021): 623–31.

126 McDowall, A Modern History; Romano, The Kurdish. A Kurdistan province exists in Iran but as an administrative, not political, unit.

127 “For God Not,” 2015: 8.

128 Brass, Ethnicity and; Smith, The Ethnic.

129 Smith, The Ethnic, 13.

130 Ibid, 32.

131 Brass, Ethnicity and.

132 Gellner, Nations.

133 Anderson, Imagined; Smith, The Ethnic; Sterio, “Self-Determination and”.

134 Allsopp and van Wilgenburg, The Kurds of; “The structure of,” 2016.

135 Ataman, “Islamic Perspective”; Sami Hanna and George H. Gardner, eds., Arab Socialism [Al-Ishtirakīyah al-’Arabīyah]: A Documentary Survey (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1969).

136 Nagata, “The Radical”; Cyrus Schayegh, The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2017).

137 Schayegh, The Middle East; Nazan Cicek, “The Role of Mass Education in Nation-Building in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1870–1930,” in Mass Education and the Limits of State Building, c. 1870-1930, ed. Laurence Brockliss and Nicola Sheldon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010).

138 Kaneva and Stanton, “An Alternative”; Saunders, “The Umma”; Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, “Challenging the Liberal Nation-State? Postnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Collective Claims Making of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany,” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 3 (1999): 652–96; Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994).

139 “Iraq: ISIS Abducting, Killing, Expelling Minorities: Armed Group Targeting Christian Nuns, Turkmen, Shabaks, Yazidis,” Human Rights Watch, July 2014, https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/19/iraq-isis-abducting-killing-expelling-minorities#

140 Mathilde Becker Aarseth, Mosul under ISIS: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in the Caliphate (London: I. B. Tauris, 2021); Mara Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” Brookings July, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Brookings-Analysis-Paper_Mara-Revkin_Web.pdf; Mohammed A. Salih and Marwan M. Kraidy, “Islamic State and Women: A Biopolitical Analysis,” International Journal of Communication 14 (2020): 1933–50.