O Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (EI) is a caliphate with terrorist activities that controls regions in Iraq and Syria and bases its ideology on interpretations radicals of certain principles of Islam. This caliphate – a state that is governed by a religious authority, the caliph – was created on June 29, 2014 and spreads terror over the population from the regions it controls, persecuting minorities and organizing terrorist attacks in other parts of the world, such as the recent attacks in the France.
Emergence of Islamic State
The emergence of the Islamic State is directly related to the instability generated by the war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. This scenario allowed groups jihadists freely installed and developed in that country. Among these groups is the al-Qaeda, who settled in Iraq in 2004 and was led by Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (died 2006). With the outbreak of the Iraqi civil war in 2006, the group broke with al-Qaeda and focused its attention on Iraq. From the Arab Spring and the wave of protests spread across Arab nations, the Islamic State saw the opportunity from settling in Syria and, with the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the group started to act both in that country and in Iraq.
Ideology
Currently led by the self-declared caliph AbuBakral-Baghdadi, the Islamic State imposes the sharia, Islamic law, in the dominated territories and persecutes religious minorities, in addition to fighting other Islamic groups. The ideological origin of this group is based on Wahhabism,al-Wahhab's doctrine that advocated a literal interpretation of the Koran and other sacred writings of Islam. Wahhabism is also the official ideology of Saudi Arabia, the richest and most powerful Arab nation today. Since Arabia established itself as an influential nation, it began to export its ideology and inspire countless groups Islamic fundamentalists who also advocate the literal interpretation of religious texts and the imposition of sharia. In Europe, this ideology finds space in Islamic communities that, in general, suffer from a lot of prejudice and difficulty in integrating.
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violence as a weapon
The violence of the Islamic State is used to impose fear and therefore respect on the regions they control. With strict sharia control, the group imposes heavy punishments on all those who do not follow the Koran, in addition to cruelly persecuting and killing any type of minority, such as Christians, Kurds, Yazidi, homosexuals etc. Since the creation of the caliphate in 2014, several executions in the dominated regions and terrorist attacks in some parts of the world were carried out by the Islamic State (many of these actions were reported by the media). Among the group's goals are global domination and the imposition of sharia. ISIS currently dominates important Iraqi and Syrian cities and has strategic bases elsewhere, such as Libya and Yemen.
Your followers can keep their jihad, or holy war, with the sale of barrels of oil, trafficking in goods and donations from supporters from around the world. In recent estimates, the Islamic State figured with about $2 billion in resources and a membership close to 50,000.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SILVA, Daniel Neves. "What is Islamic State?"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/o-que-e/historia/o-que-e-estado-islamico.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
