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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 its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State (IS), a radical Sunni Islamist group operating in Iraq and Syria as well as elsewhere. In January 2014, a copy of an IS penal code surfaced describing the penalties it enforces in areas under its control, including multiple beheadings. Beheading videos have been frequently posted by IS members to social media. Several of the recorded beheadings were conducted by Mohammed Emwazi, whom the media referred to as "Jihadi John" before his identification. The beheadings received wide coverage around the world and attracted international condemnation. Political scientist Max Abrahms posited that IS may be using well-publicized beheadings as a means of differentiating itself from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and identifying itself with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda member who beheaded Daniel Pearl. The publicised beheadings represent a small proportion of a larger number of total people killed following capture by IS.
Dabiq was a Raqqa-based online magazine of the Islamic State, published via the deep web from July 2014 to July 2016. One of the many forms of Islamic State mass media, it partook in religious outreach to Muslims around the world, ultimately seeking to gain new recruits for the "caliphate" by encouraging Muslims to immigrate to Islamic State territory. In addition to Arabic, the magazine's content was written in a number of different languages, including English. Dabiq described itself as serving the purposes of tawhid, manhaj, hijrah, jihad, and jama'ah. It was named after the town of Dabiq, Syria, which is believed in Islamic eschatology to be the primary location where the Muslims will fight and bring about the fall of Christendom, preceding the Day of Judgement.
The Military of the Islamic State is the fighting force of the Islamic State (IS). The total force size at its peak was estimated from tens of thousands to over two hundred thousand. IS's armed forces grew quickly during its territorial expansion in 2014. The IS military, including groups incorporated into it in 2014, openly operates and controls territory in multiple cities in Libya and Nigeria. In October 2016, it conquered the city of Qandala in Puntland, Somalia. It conquered much of eastern Syria and western Iraq in 2014, territory it lost finally only in 2019. It also has had border clashes with and made incursions into Lebanon, Iran, and Jordan. IS-linked groups operate in Algeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and in West Africa. In January 2015, IS was also confirmed to have a military presence in Afghanistan and in Yemen.
The Islamic State (IS) had its core in Iraq and Syria from 2013 to 2017 and 2019 respectively, where the proto-state controlled significant swathes of urban, rural, and desert territory, mainly in the Mesopotamian region. Today the group controls scattered pockets of land in the area, as well as territory or insurgent cells in other areas, notably Afghanistan, West Africa, the Sahara, Somalia, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As of 2023, large swathes of Mali are under IS control, where they had had the most success recently.
Simon Cottee is an academic who works as a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent, and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. He previously worked at Bangor University and the University of the West Indies' Trinidad campus. He is the author of The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, which the publishers claim is "the first major study of apostasy from Islam in the Western secular context". In a review published in New Humanist, Alom Shaha wrote that the book "brings sensitivity and empathy to an intensely polarised debate". Nick Cohen, writing in The Spectator, argues that Cottee "shows how elements in the left and academia are happy to denounce Muslims who exercise their freedom to abandon their religion as 'native informers' who have gone over to the side of western imperialism". Cottee is also editor, with Thomas Cushman, of Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left. Cottee's published research also includes journal articles on topics including the murder of Theo van Gogh and the motivations of terrorists. He has argued that gang culture offers a way of understanding the appeal of ISIS . Cottee also argues that the group's propaganda videos have a "pornographic quality".
The Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS–K) is a regional branch of the Islamic State terrorist group active in South-Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan. ISIS–K, like its sister branches in other regions, seeks to destabilize and overthrow existing governments of the historic Khorasan region in order to establish an Islamic caliphate under its strict, fundamentalist Islamist rule.
The Islamic State – Yemen Province is a branch of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), active in Yemen. IS announced the group's formation on 13 November 2014.
Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti was a leading official of the Islamic State, serving as important military commander, recruiter and propagandist. Known for his command capabilities and popular among his subordinates, Abu Jandal was called "The Lion" among IS fighters and fought in several battles in Syria and Iraq. By late 2016, Abu Jandal had become IS' second highest-ranking commander in Syria and led the defense of its de facto capital Raqqa against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). He was killed by a US airstrike on 26 December 2016.
The Islamic State – Somalia Province or Abnaa ul-Calipha is an Islamic State–affiliated group that primarily operates in the mountainous areas of Puntland, and which has also claimed responsibility for several terrorist attacks throughout the rest of Somalia. Led by Sheikh Abdul Qadir Mumin, the group is estimated to have up to 300 active fighters. Since its formation, ISS probably managed to take control of a small, sparsely populated territory in northern Somalia's mountainous hinterland, though it was not acknowledged as official province ("Wilayat") by IS's central leadership until December 2017. Since then, it has sometimes been called Somalia Province by pro-IS media. ISS is also the declared enemy of al-Shabaab, which considers the Islamic State a significant threat to its own predominance among Jihadist factions in Somalia.
Mohammed Shafi Armar (1989/1991–2015), also known by his online pseudonym Yusuf al-Hindi, was an Indian Islamic militant, a former member of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), he became the chief of operations for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in India. He and his brother Sultan Armar founded the ISIS affiliates Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind and Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind encouraging the recruitment of Indian Muslims for jihad in Syria and Afghanistan. The Armar brothers had split from Indian Mujahideen and formed these affiliates after a rift developed between them and IM co-founders Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal.
The Mausoleum of Abdul-Qadir Gilani, also known as Al-Ḥaḍrat Al-Qādiriyyah or Mazār Ghous, is an Islamic religious complex dedicated to Abdul Qadir Gilani, the founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order, located in Baghdad, Iraq. Its surrounding square is named Kilani Square. The complex consists of the mosque, mausoleum, and the library known as Qadiriyya Library, which houses rare old works related to Islamic Studies. The son of the entombed scholar, Abdul Razzaq Gilani, is also buried there.
Liwa Dawud was an armed group in the Syrian Civil War headquartered in Samrin in the Idlib Governorate and originated as a subunit in Suqour al-Sham then later became an independent faction then joined the Jaysh al-Sham coalition until 2014 when the group along with its leader defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the course of the Inter-rebel conflict during the Syrian Civil War.
In the late hours of April 26, 2017, United States and Afghan special operations forces conducted an operation targeting an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP) compound in Achin District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The operation lasted into the early morning hours of the 27th and resulted in the deaths of two US Army Rangers from C and D Companies of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and the death of Abdul Haseeb Logari, the leader of ISIL-KP, alongside several leaders, and up to 35 other militants according to The Pentagon.
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.
Foreign fighters in the Syrian civil war have come to Syria and joined all four sides in the war. In addition to Sunni foreign fighters arriving to defend the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or join the Syrian rebels, Shia fighters from several countries have joined pro-government militias in Syria, and leftists have become foreign fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Tariq Abdul Haqq was a Trinidad and Tobago athlete and Islamic State militant. A boxer and martial artist, he won a silver medal in boxing at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. He trained as a lawyer before travelling to Syria with his wife and sister in 2014 to join the Islamic State.
Shane Crawford, also known as Abu Sa’d al-Trinidadi, was an Islamic State militant from Trinidad and Tobago. He was killed in 2017.
References
- 1 2 Graham-Harrison, Emma; Surtees, Joshua (2 February 2018). "Trinidad's jihadis: how tiny nation became Isis recruiting ground". The Guardian.
- ↑ "Trinidad's Islamic State Problem". Lawfare. 17 November 2019.
- ↑ Robles, Frances (21 February 2017). "Trying to Stanch Trinidad's Flow of Young Recruits to ISIS". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
- ↑ Badri-Maharaj, Sanjay (22 September 2022). "Black Flags of the Caribbean: How Trinidad Became an ISIS Hotspot , by Simon Cottee". New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 96 (3–4): 373–374. doi: 10.1163/22134360-09603019 . S2CID 252508625 – via brill.com.
- ↑ "Bloomsbury Collections - Black Flags of the Caribbean - How Trinidad Became an ISIS Hotspot". www.bloomsburycollections.com.
- ↑ https://kar.kent.ac.uk/72058/1/The%20Calypso%20Caliphate%20Revised%20Version.pdf
- ↑ "Anthony Joshua's amateur rival Tariq Abdul Haqq died for Islamic State after boxing career". Sky Sports.