Beyond the frontline: watching ISIS

[tequila]

A very interesting article.

Best read in counterpoint with this article by JM Berger:

Enough about Islam: Why religion is not the most useful way to understand ISIS

Argues that ISIS is more usefully analyzed as a Sunni Muslim identity group:

And to be sure, religion matters to ISIS. A lot. But the concept of an exclusive identity matters far more, to the point that ISIS will engage in virtually unlimited theological gymnastics to justify it.

For identity-based extremist groups, one function of extreme religious observance is to serve as an identity marker, a signal to establish who is part of the in-group and who is part of the out-group.

Religion is therefore of primal importance in the narrative created by an extremist group’s adherents, but a group’s extremism does not naturally proceed from its claimed religious basis.