Former Unrecognized Countries

"The US State Department's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism has found that going by the number of terror attacks and the number of killings of innocent citizens every year from 2012 until now, the big-five terror group consists of the IS, Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and the Communist Party of India (Maoist)."

"Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders and our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations."

"The Russians have sometimes said one thing and done another... We know from long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to take territory, hold territory, and govern territory and prevent a reemergence of a terrorist group... The bane of Iraq has been sectarianism... There are three components to Iraq... We vastly prefer a multi-sectarian Iraqi state to any form of disintegration because we know where that leads. Sectarianism leads to the kind of thing that ISIL represents. But, for that to work in Iraq? The Sunnis have to be represented, and they have to be part of the fight to take back their own territory. So, we are working with them a lot... The Russians have been way off track since the very beginning. They have not done what they said they were going to do and they are not doing what is in their interest to do in terms of fighting ISIL."

"There is a 360-degree, not 180-degree, difference between the Islam we (Turkey) defend and what Daesh has on its mind."

"Today, we get a rare show of religious intolerance in the form of the Islamic State. Even more than the Taliban, al-Qaida and Boko Haram, the new-fangled Caliphate represents our worst nightmare of Islam. Ever since TV brought its images of sensational events and acts of war into our very homes, we have not yet been treated to such explicit intolerance of a type we thought relegated to the past. While murder remains a fact of life, the formal beheading of (Yezidi and Assyrian) Infidels and of (Shiite) Heretics has become exceptional, a throw-back to the witches’ trials and religious wars of centuries ago. While exploitation remains a world problem, the actual taking of slaves to auction them off at the slave-market is eerily premodern. To be sure, for Indians it is not such an otherworldly fantasy. Their republic was born in 1947 in massacres unleashed by the militants and supporters of the Pakistan movement, finally killing a million or so and putting many millions to flight, most of them Hindus (including Sikhs). Many of you will remember the East Bengal genocide of 1971, where officially 3 million, according to scholars at least a million, were killed, most of them Hindus. In sheer magnitude, this death toll completely dwarfs anything that the Taliban or the Islamic State have done so far.... The grim advantage that the Islamic State now enjoys, however, is the omnipresence of internet reporting, which they themselves promote with their youtube videos of beheadings and other atrocities. Uniquely in-your-face. Another sensational novelty is the official re-institution of slavery. Numerous victims of earlier rounds of violence have effectively been exploited as slaves, particularly as sex slaves (remember Pakistani General Tikka Khan in the Bangladesh war of 1971 justifying his soldiers’ rape campaign openly: “If we cannot hold East Bengal, we will make sure that the next generation of Bengalis consists of bastards”); but a formal institution of slavery, complete with slave markets and the official fixing of auction prices, that is truly a return to the premodern age. This we hadn’t seen in our lifetimes."

"The Islamic State is not a state and I would predict fairly confidently that they are not going to establish a viable one and it is certainly not an attractive state... It is not a state in which millions of people are dying to live in a place which beheads people regularly and forces women into these highly constrained roles... It's true that liberalism is not doing well in that part of the world... But I do not think that radical Islam represents a long-term civilizational alternative to the kind of regimes that exist in Europe and North America and Asia."

"In early July 2014, while doing some research for an article, he had unearthed an old copy of an Egyptian magazine, Al Lata’if al-Musawwara, which had published the report of the Indian delegation returning from the Arabian Peninsula in 1926, the one that had demanded that the Al-Sauds hand over control of the two holy cities, after the warriors of Abdulaziz had conquered the Hejaz province. There were black-and-white pictures from Mecca and Medina, of wrecked shrines and cratered walls, of ancient sites in a heap of rubble at the Jannat al-Baqi cemetery—all this destruction the calling card of ibn Abdelwahhab’s descendants and the foundation on which the Saudi kingdom was built. Back then, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, borders were disappearing, and the British were looking for a strong man to control these desert lands. According to Naji, it was just like now, in 2014, in Iraq but also Syria, where the popular revolution had splintered beyond recognition and any common vision for a democratic, pluralistic future had been bombed into deep retreat. A new mutation of an old demon was making headlines as hordes of men in black, waving black flags, erased modern borders and conquered land, not on horses or camels as in 1926, but in pickup trucks and armored personnel carriers. They leveled shrines, smashed statues, and blew up Shia mosques. They were not establishing a kingdom but reverting to the times of the prophet and claiming they were establishing a caliphate. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was born, with Raqqa in Syria as its capital. The group would often be referred to by its Arabic acronym, Daesh, and Ahmed’s article about the founding of Saudi Arabia was headlined THE DAESH OF 1926. He was one of the first to draw the parallel between Saudi Wahhabism and Daesh, better known in the West as ISIS. Ahmed’s travel ban would last longer than Daesh’s hold on territory, and though there were many differences between the kingdom and the caliphate, the parallels would be drawn by many, and they would stick, much to the frustration of Saudi Arabia."

"From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, clerics were incensed by Iran’s daring. So incensed that, for the first time, clerics preaching in the Holy Mosque in Mecca called on Sunni Muslims to help their Syrian brothers, by all means, including arms. As elite members of the Quds force and Hezbollah fighters fanned out across Syria, al-Nusra set up a shari’a court in Raqqa. They attacked other rebel groups. They assassinated FSA commanders. They berated women who didn’t veil. On the outskirts of Raqqa, men with black flags gathered, then streamed into the city in convoys of white pickup trucks. Throughout the summer, more men arrived, most of them Iraqis. They eliminated rivals from the FSA and other rebel groups. Slowly but ruthlessly, Baghdadi’s men seized control of Raqqa, even taking over most of al-Nusra. In April 2013, Baghdadi announced that a new organization was formed: the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. By the time Yassin made it to Raqqa that summer—an arduous, nineteen-day journey through empty desert land and under the scorching sun to evade the authorities—he found a black flag planted at the entrance of the city, signaling conquered territory. Most of the men in black with guns and long beards were foreigners: Iraqis but also Tunisians, Saudis, Egyptians, even Europeans. They walked around like they owned the city. Yassin wanted to go for a stroll, smell the gardens, hear the nearby river. Instead, he had to hide indoors, coming out only briefly at night. He had become a stranger in his hometown, a potential target on the very streets where he had roamed freely as a teenager. Worse, he had arrived to devastating news: his two brothers had been kidnapped by ISIS. One was a local council member, and as ISIS took control, it detained men who resisted its agenda, men like Yassin’s brothers. By the summer of 2013, ISIS had taken up a large building in Raqqa as headquarters. Yassin stayed in touch with Samira, who had remained in Douma. They had initially planned for her to join him once he established a safe route, but the situation Yassin found in Raqqa did not permit that. They spoke often over Skype video calls as she updated him about how life was getting harder in areas that were free of government forces but now under siege—Assad was starving them into capitulation."

"The two groups [ISIL and al-Nusra] share a nihilistic worldview, a loathing for modernity, and for the West. They subscribe to the same perverted interpretations of Islam. Other common traits include a penchant for suicide attacks, and sophisticated exploitation of the internet and social media. Like ISIL, several Al Qaeda franchises are interested in taking and holding territory; AQAP has been much less successful at it. The main differences between Al Qaeda and ISIL are largely political—and personal. Over the past decade, Al Qaeda has twice embraced ISIL (and its previous manifestations) as brothers-in-arms."

"Every day that you could read about an Israeli rocket gone astray or Israeli soldiers beating up an innocent teenager, you could have read about ISIS in Iraq crucifying people on the side of the road, Christians and Muslims. Where is the outrage in the Muslim world and on the Left over these crimes? Where are the demonstrations, 10,000 or 100,000 deep, in the capitals of Europe against ISIS? If Israel kills a dozen Palestinians by accident, the entire Muslim world is inflamed. God forbid you burn a Koran, or write a novel vaguely critical of the faith. And yet Muslims can destroy their own societies... What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even Hamas, want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent and educated and secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet, judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts us all in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular pluralistic world because they are desperate to get to paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel; it's just that some of us haven't realized it yet."

"The Islamic State was drafted by Sayyid Qutb, taught by Abdullah Azzam, globalized by Osama bin Laden, transferred to reality by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and implemented by al-Baghdadis: Abu Omar and Abu Bakr."

"The Islamic State added a focus on sectarianism to a layer of radical views. In particular, it linked itself to the Salafi-jihadi movement that evolved out of the Afghan jihad."

"Whether Sunni or Shia, Salafi or Sufi, conservative or liberal, Muslims – and Muslim leaders – have almost unanimously condemned and denounced ISIL not merely as un-Islamic but actively anti-Islamic."

"Consider the various statements of Muslim groups such as the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, representing 57 countries (Isis has "nothing to do with Islam"); the Islamic Society of North America (Isis's actions are "in no way representative of what Islam actually teaches"); al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious seat of learning in the Sunni Muslim world (Isis is acting "under the guise of this holy religion ... in an attempt to export their false Islam"); and even Saudi Arabia's Salafist Grand Mufti, Abdul Aziz al ash-Sheikh (Isis is "the number-one enemy of Islam")."

"For their guiding principles, the leaders of the Islamic State ... are open and clear about their almost exclusive commitment to the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam. The group circulates images of Wahhabi religious textbooks from Saudi Arabia in the schools it controls. Videos from the group's territory have shown Wahhabi texts plastered on the sides of an official missionary van."

"If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you... God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience... so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge. This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries."

"References to the End Times fill Islamic State propaganda. It's a big selling point with foreign fight-ers, who want to travel to the lands where the final battles of the apocalypse will take place. The civil wars raging in those countries today [Iraq and Syria] lend credibility to the prophecies. The Islamic State has stoked the apocalyptic fire. ... For Bin Laden's generation, the apocalypse wasn't a great re-cruiting pitch. Governments in the Middle East two decades ago were more stable, and sectarianism was more subdued. It was better to recruit by calling to arms against corruption and tyranny than against the Antichrist. Today, though, the apocalyptic recruiting pitch makes more sense than before."

"David Cameron today urged MPs to back airstrikes against ISIS to wipe out the "women-raping, Muslim-murdering, medieval monsters" hijacking Islam for their "warped ends"."

"We face a fundamental threat to our security. Isil have brutally murdered British hostages, they have inspired the worst terrorist attack against British people since 7/7 on the beaches of Tunisia, and they have plotted atrocity after atrocity on the streets here at home. Since November last year our security services have foiled no less than seven different plots against our people. So this threat is very real and the question is this: Do we work with our allies to degrade and destroy this threat and do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands from where they are plotting to kill British people, or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?"

"This evil death cult is neither a true representation of Islam not is it a state."

"First of all, the sources of the Islamic State (IS) ideology and other al-Qaeda affiliate groups are the Wahabbi that has been supported by the royal family in Saudi Arabia..."

"Not only ISIS and Al-Nusra, every affiliated to Al-Qaeda organization within Syria, all of them are terrorists...we want to get rid of terrorists we want to defeat those terrorists while United States wants to manage those groups, in order to topple the government in Syria...Of course, ISIS has been set up in Iraq in 2006 while United States was in Iraq, not Syria in Iraq, so it was growing under supervision of the American authority in Iraq and they didn't do anything to fight ISIS in Iraq at that time...It's been expanding under supervision of American airplanes and they could have seen the ISIS using the oil field and exporting oil to Turkey and they didn't try to attack any convoy of ISIS, how could they be against ISIS?...How the Russian could have seen this since the first day and started to attack those convoys. Actually, Russian intervention unmasked the American intention regarding ISIS and the other terrorist groups, of course."

"The world’s Muslims have a critical role in global understanding. Our faith, like yours, commands mercy, peace and tolerance. It upholds, as yours does, the equal human dignity of every person — men and women, neighbours and strangers. Those outlaws of Islam who deny these truths are vastly outnumbered by the ocean of believers — 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. In fact, these terrorists have made the world’s muslims their greatest target. We will not allow them to hijack our faith."

"Daesh hates being referred to by this term, and what they don’t like has an instinctive ­appeal to me. … I absolutely refuse to refer to it by the title that it claims for itself (Islamic State), because I think this is a perversion of religion and a travesty of governance. … I’ve never used that term and I would strongly counsel people against ever using the presumptuous title that they have given themselves."

"According to the parameters of this world [...] we lost, but not according to the parameters of the next world."

"Upon conquering the region of Sinjar in Wilāyat Nīnawā, the Islamic State faced a population of Yazidis, a pagan minority existent for ages in regions of Iraq and Shām. Their continual existence to this day is a matter that Muslims should question as they will be asked about it on Judgement Day."

"Do not think the war that we are waging is the Islamic State’s war alone. Rather, it is the Muslims’ war altogether. It is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief."