The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (45 page)

Mehmet issued a
fatwa
(religious ruling) answering yes to this question:

           
When it occurs that enemies attack the Islamic world, when it has been established that they seize and pillage Islamic countries and capture Moslem persons
and when His Majesty the Padishah of Islam thereupon orders the jihad in the form of a general mobilization, has jihad then, according to the illustrious Koran verse: March out light and heavy [hearted], and strive with goods and persons [in the way of Allah; that will be better for you’ (K[oran] 9:41)], become incumbent upon all Moslems in all parts of the world, be they young or old, on foot or mounted, to hasten to partake in the jihad with their goods and money?
⁸²

The war lost, there was widespread discontent in the diminishing Ottoman domains against the sultanate/caliphate that had led the once-great Empire down the road to disaster. Amid the postwar atmosphere of imperial collapse, one Turkish woman reflected the sentiments of many when she asked, “Of what use was the Caliphate to us during the war? We proclaimed a holy war and what good did that do?”
⁸³

Kemal Atatürk, the founder of secular Turkey, agreed. The Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate on November 1, 1922, but seventeen days later chose the Ottoman Crown Prince, Abdulmecid II, to be the caliph—the first and only Ottoman caliph not to be also the sultan of the Empire. Atatürk viewed Abdulmecid with contempt, remarking: “The Caliph has no power or position except as a nominal figurehead”—by that time, simply a statement of fact.

On March 3, 1924, Atatürk abolished the caliphate altogether and sent Abdulmecid into exile. The last caliph boarded the Orient Express, bound for Switzerland. As the grand train sped through Hungary, past the site where his predecessor Suleyman the
Magnificent’s heart was said to have been buried after he died while on a jihad campaign, Abdulmecid murmured, “My ancestor came with a horse and flags. Now I come as an exile.”
⁸⁵

“Islam,” said Atatürk, “this theology of an immoral Arab, is a dead thing.”
⁸⁶

The caliphate certainly was—until June 29, 2014.

Chapter Eight

IS THE ISLAMIC STATE ISLAMIC?

(IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?)

I
t would be patently obvious to everyone that the Islamic State is Islamic—were it not for the fact that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, David Cameron, and virtually every other authority in the Western world insist that it’s not.

This is the primary reason why Western authorities unanimously refuse to call the Islamic State by the name it calls itself: the Islamic State.

They
Think
They’re Islamic

“ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion,” said Deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf in August 2014. “The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.”
¹
Really? As far as the Islamic State itself is concerned, there is no question that it is Islamic—in fact, it holds that any Muslim who doesn’t get on board
with the State’s claim to represent Islam is placing himself outside the fold of true Islam. In June 2014, a video circulated of a masked Islamic State commander telling a cheering crowd: “By Allah, we embarked on our Jihad only to support the religion of Allah. . . . Allah willing, we will establish a state ruled by the Quran and the Sunna. . . . All of you honorable Muslims are the soldiers of the Muslim State.” He promised that the Islamic State would establish “the Sharia of Allah, the Quran, and the Sunna” as the crowed repeatedly responded with cries of “Allahu akbar.”
²

But for virtually every authority in the Western world and many Muslim leaders as well, the Islamic State is a vicious perversion of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the Sharia of Allah—thus they insist that whatever the group is called, it must not be called “Islamic” or identified in any way with the religion of Islam.

A Caliphate by Any Other Name Would Smell as Rancid

Considerable confusion has arisen over what exactly to call the Islamic State. It calls itself just that—the Islamic State—but with “Islamic” so prominent in that name, Western officials eager to reassure their people that they have nothing to fear or be concerned about in Islam would rather be waterboarded than call it that.

And so they take refuge in acronyms. The most commonly used name for the group is ISIS, which stands for the name the group discarded in June 2014:
ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa sh-Shams
: the Islamic State of Iraq and
al-Shams.
Al-Shams is the Arabic term for the Levant, the Mediterranean region generally understood as
comprising Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Many assume that ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but al-Shams is a larger region than Syria alone.

In light of the meaning of
Shams,
some translators have rendered the group’s former name in English as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL—the acronym that Barack Obama and his administration prefer, for reasons unknown.

In September 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that he would henceforth be using the Arabic acronym for
ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa sh-Shams
: Daesh. “This is a terrorist group and not a state,” he explained. “I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats.’”
⁴

Apparently Secretary of State John Kerry thought this was a great idea, as he began referring to the group as “Daesh” in December 2014.
⁵
This may have been calculated to raise the group’s ire, since after dropping “in Iraq and al-Shams” from after “the Islamic State,” the group threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who referred to them as Daesh, the acronym for the longer name.
⁶
Now that they were claiming the world, to refer to them as pertaining only to Iraq and the Levant was an implicit denial of their claim to have restored the caliphate. Plus, as we have seen, “Daesh” sounds like the Arabic words for someone who “crushes something under foot” or “sows discord.”