The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by their Arabic acronym Daesh, are a transnational Salafi jihadist group. Their origins were in the Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004. The organization affiliated itself with Al-Qaeda, so IS was originally a branch of Al-Qaeda and fought alongside them during the Iraqi insurgency. IS eventually split, and gained global prominence in 2014, when their militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Notorious for their perpetration of war crimes and extensive human rights violations, IS have engaged in the persecution of Christians, Mandaeans, Shia Muslims, and Sufi Sunnis, and published videos of beheadings and executions of journalists and aid workers. By the end of 2015, they ruled an area with an estimated population of 12 million people, where they enforced their extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom. British citizens have fought as members of the group, and there has been political debate on how to punish them. On 26 September 2014, Parliament voted to begin Royal Air Force airstrikes against ISIL in northern Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, which began four days later, using Tornado GR4 jets. On 2 December 2015, the UK Parliament authorised an extension to the Royal Air Force airstrike campaign, joining the US-led international coalition against ISIL in Syria. Hours after the vote, Royal Air Force Tornado jets began bombing ISIL-controlled oilfields.
"The Beatles" was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named by their hostages after the English rock group The Beatles, who referred to the members as "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
The portrayal of ISIL in American media has largely been negative. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been linked in the American media to several atrocities throughout the Middle East. Most recently U.S. coverage has linked ISIL members to burning alive the Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and most recently, because the perpetrator of the June 2016 Orlando mass shooting- America's second deadliest- reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIL and its leader in a phone call to 911 operators just before the incident. The American public was introduced to ISIL with these actions. This contrasts with the renewed prominence of al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks in the media. That coverage focused on the United States' response to the attacks, while the coverage of ISIL started with the organization itself and evolved to cover America's potential strategy.
The Bethnal Green trio are Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three British girls who attended the Bethnal Green Academy in London before leaving home in February 2015 to join the Islamic State. According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, they were among an estimated 550 women and girls from Western countries who had travelled to join IS—part of what some have called "a jihadi, girl-power subculture", the so-called Brides of ISIL. As of 2024, one girl has been reported killed (Sultana), one girl has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied re-entry into the country (Begum) while the third's fate is unknown (Abase).
Nasrin As'ad Ibrahim, better known by the nom de guerreUmm Sayyaf, is the widow of Abu Sayyaf. She was captured in May 2015 by US Delta Force soldiers on the mission where they killed her husband, a suspected leader of the Islamic State.
The name of the Islamic State has been contentious since 2013. In Arabic, the group called itself al-Dawla al-ʾIslāmiyya fī al-ʿIrāq wa al-Shām, which it adopted in April 2013. The literal translation of its previous name resulted in confusion, resulting in both ISIS and ISIL, two acronyms based on different literal translations of the name into English. Apart from these, an Arabic-derived acronym, "Daesh",, is the common name for the group in the Muslim world. Finally, the group's current name caused controversy due to its English translation as Islamic State and as a result, both the previous acronyms are still widely used, or a qualifier is often added to the IS name, such as "Islamic State militant group", "Islamic State extremist group", "Islamic State terrorist group", "self-styled Islamic State" or "so-called Islamic State".
This article contains a timeline of events from January 2015 to December 2015 related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This article contains information about events committed by or on behalf of the Islamic State, as well as events performed by groups who oppose them.
Collaboration with the Islamic State refers to the cooperation and assistance given by governments, non-state actors, and private individuals to the Islamic State (IS) during the Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Civil War, and Libyan Civil War.
Sally-Anne Frances Jones was a British terrorist, Islamist, and UN-designated recruiter and propagandist for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), known variously as Umm Hussain al-Britani, Sakinah Hussein, and the White Widow. She is thought to have been killed in June 2017 by a US drone strike.
Linda Wenzel, identified in Germany as Linda W., is a German-born Al-Khansaa Brigade member for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who was captured by Iraqi troops during the Battle of Mosul, and was convicted of joining ISIL and entering Iraq illegally. She was nicknamed the Belle of Mosul.
Shamima Begum is a British-born woman who entered Syria to join the Islamic State at the age of 15. As of 2024, she is living in al-Roj detention camp in Syria.
Zehra Duman is an Australian-born Turkish woman who travelled to Daesh territory where she married a jihadi fighter. Born in Melbourne, Duman is reported to have been a friend of Tara Nettleton and Khaled Sharrouf, who travelled from Australia to Daesh territory, with their five children, in 2014. Duman's online recruiting activities have been the subject of scholarly attention.
Kimberly Gwen Polman is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, who travelled to ISIS occupied territory in 2015, and married an Islamic militant she had befriended online. In 2019, after she surrendered to forces allied to the United States, Polman told reporters she deeply regretted her actions.
Sharmeena Begum is a jihadi bride who left the United Kingdom to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in December 2014. Two months later, in February 2015, her school friends Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana joined her in occupied Syria. Begum is one of the youngest British teenagers to join ISIL.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
Daniela Greene, born in Czechoslovakia in 1980 and raised in Germany, became an American citizen after marrying a US Armed Services member. She earned her bachelor's degree in Oklahoma and a master's degree in history from Clemson University in 2008. In 2011, she joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a contract linguist with the help of her thesis supervisor, Alan Grubb. Greene was assigned to communicate with Denis Cuspert, an ISIL member, during a covert FBI investigation in 2014. However, she secretly used an additional Skype account to communicate with Cuspert and traveled to ISIL-occupied Syria, where they married and she became a ISIL bride.
The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.
Ireland (to 2011)
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (after 2011)