How ISIS gets its Western recruits
Unlike other radical Islamist groups, Islamic State fighters are making their ‘utopian’ vision a reality on the ground
Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, a 20-year old man from Hamilton, is the most recent foreign fighter known to have left Canada to join ISIS. He was a practising Muslim all of his life, loved modelling and fashion, and was an avid professional dancer. Media interviews with his friends and family reveal that they were “stunned” when they found out what happened.
How did this happen? The discussion about his religion — Islam — is where we need to begin.
ISIS follows a highly conservative — some would say puritanical and xenophobic — interpretation of Islam known as Salafism (or Wahhabism as its opponents tend to label it). Salafis seek to purify Islam from what they perceive to be doctrinal and ritual corruptions. The movement stands in marked contrast to classical Sunni Islam, which the majority of Muslims around the world follow.
Sunnism typically has accepted the existence of numerous schools of thought, law and spiritual practice. The inspiration for ISIS, on the other hand, is found in the thought of early 20th-century writers such as Abul Ala Maududi, the Indian Islamic scholar and founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, and Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian radical Islamic thinker. Both Maududi and Qutb saw the creation of an Islamic State as a necessary prerequisite for the fulfilment of a Muslim’s faith.
The mainstream of Islamic tradition generally has rejected this vision of a pure Islamic state as theologically misguided and politically untenable. But for those who do accept it as plausible and even necessary, what ISIS is doing seems like the fulfilment of a dream. This state is presented as something of a utopia, and one that is quite opposite to the culture and practices of the West: God will be officially recognized and worshipped. His laws will be properly enforced, and the social justice that eludes us finally will be established.
For Western “foreign fighters” leaving their families and their lives behind, the choice is clear: They could live in a
The right claims ISIS embodies Islam. The left claims it has nothing to do with Islam. The truth is somewhere in between
corrupt society (as Maududi and Qutb viewed all societies not under the authority of an Islamic state), paying taxes to governments that perpetuate the suffering of the global Muslim community, or they can fight for the establishment of a state that will glorify God.
The reason ISIS has been a more successful recruiter than many other radical groups is because its fighters are actually demonstrating an ability to make their vision a reality, regardless of the human cost. ISIS has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq, and they have shown a willingness to use older forms of violence found in early Islamic texts such as beheading and crucifixion, giving the illusion of authenticity.
The executioner in ISIS videos is not beheading journalists simply for propaganda, though he undoubtedly appreciates the propaganda value of such acts. For him, it is first and foremost a religious act, in defence of humanity’s only hope for a genuinely just and harmonious Islamic state.
This is what many of us here in the West simply don’t understand. There has been a pendulum swing between the right, which often claims that ISIS is the very embodiment of Islam, and the left, which suggests that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. The truth is somewhere in the middle: ISIS is an extreme offshoot, a breakaway sect, which deviates in significant ways from mainstream Islam, but remains based on claims to Islamic authenticity.
ISIS is one part conservative Salafism, one-part Maududi and Qutb’s vision of an Islamic state, and one-part demonstrable military success. All three parts are integral to the group’s appeal to young Westerners.
Happily for us all, more mainstream, qualified Islamic scholars have begun the task of convincing Muslims that it is a poisonous mix. Although political/military action is an understandable short-term response to ISIS, the group is a theological movement first and foremost, and its longterm antidote will be similarly theological in nature.