The Islamic State and Global Jihad
Keywords:
Islamic state, apocalypse, terrorismAbstract
This paper aims at providing an explanation why the Islamic State made a strategic shift and started terrorist campaign against the West. The main thesis argues that an attack on Western countries is a retaliatory strike for international military intervention against the Islamic State. The Islamic State also believes it will play a key role in an impending apocalypse, and its terrorist activities against the West largely derive from that belief. The focus of the study is on the analysis of religious terrorism as a projection of violence aimed towards realization of political goals, ideological foundations of militant Islamism as a system of ideas and beliefs that foster violent activities, doctrine of the Islamic State as a codification of its beliefs and activity, and global terrorism as a type of asymmetric war against Western countries. The research has found that ISIS has created a proto-state based on Salafi-jihadi doctrine, managed to portray itself as a religiously legitimate actor among tens of thousands of extremists from all around the world. Deeply committed to the Prophetic methodology, ISIS’s leaders and jihadists initiated total jihad against their opponents, regarding the atrocities as a divine commandment to destroy their enemies. It used international military intervention as a sign of foretold battle against the West and launched indiscriminate terrorist campaign in Europe and North America. With territorial loses in Iraq and Syria, ISIS will focus on terrorist plots in both domestic and foreign theaters. It will try to claim victory over the West by hitting it with lethal terrorist attacks, with the goal of gaining followers and assuming al-Qaeda’s mantle.
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