ISIS: A Self-Nullifying Ideology (by Marc Dorpema)

ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is a phenomenon: transcendentally fanatic and desperately violent, it numbers somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000 fighter, and has spread rapidly through West Asia, with strongholds in the cities of Raqqah, Mosul and Fallujah. A 2015 study by the Economist titled 'Spreading its tentacles'moreover reveals that the Islamic State's ever-increasing sphere of influence now also encapsulates the northern African countries of Algeria, Libya and Egypt, and that it possesses affiliated groups, most notably Boko Haram, in Nigeria. But disturbing as this explosive proliferation undoubtedly seems, the Islamic State is nothing more than a nine days' wonder.

To understand the Islamic State's imminent downfall, it is necessary to first grasp the nature of its success. More than a vent for the charged frustration of a poorly educated youth without a more secure anchor in life, the Islamic State has a propaganda tool of unprecedented professionalism amongst terrorist organisations: Dabiq, the first issue of which was published in July 2014, is, writes David Denby for the New Yorker, 'a slickly produced mix of graphics and text […] written in a mode of exalted and redundant pedantry.' But Dabiq presents us with more than sesquipedalian rhetoric and high-resolution bloodshed. Its main function is that of a vessel for ideological justification: it is essentially a string of Qur'anic citations and calls-to-arms. This however is not the only appeal of the Islamic State.

In a region plagued by poverty and low levels of education, the Islamic State provides the most basic socio-economic need: a livelihood. According to Patrick Cockburn for the Independent, new local recruits receive a salary of $350 per month, while foreign fighters 'get a much higher salary – starting at $800'. Tempting, particularly in light of the miserly $200 pay offered by the Iraqi army, according to a 2003 New York Times report by Marc Lacey. A December 2015 piece in the Financial Times moreover suggests that the monthly revenue created by the Islamic State lies at a staggering $80 million.

And yet, despite all these imposing numbers and despite the Islamic State's mushrooming power and its terrorist attacks that have spread as far as Paris it is senseless, and even dangerous, to worry too much. The reasons for the Islamic State's senselessness are simple, and inhere to the group's ideology.

First, the financial prowess that renders them an ostensible threat at the current time, with incursions into Libya and the imminent seizure of further oil wells, is a two-sided coin. For the Islamic State's dependency on oil is easily exploited, as the effects of the ever-intensifying bombings elucidate. Michael Gordon writing for the New York Times states that 'as many as 1,000 trucks have been observed', many of which have (contentiously) been destroyed – with palpable results: ISIS has already, the Huffington Post reported in January 2016, halved their fighters' salaries, after the surge in U.S. bombings in the final weeks of 2015. More difficult to curb is the profit the Islamic State makes from theft, extortion and taxation, and which, according to the New York Times's Sarah Almukhtar, accounted for over ten times the revenue created from oil sales in 2014. However, in 2016 the picture is a different one: the Economist reported that almost halfof the $80 million revenue is created from oil sales. The article, 'Degraded, not yet destroyed', moreover gives an estimate of the Islamic State's GDP: $6 billion – 70% of which flows into military spending. This immense financial capacity, then, is superficial: with oil-sales curbed, the alternatives look bleak. Stolen money is, after all, not a secure source of income, and extortion too only goes so far.

Second, the Islamic State's guiding ideology is anachronistic and self-destructive. Not only does the group's irredentism stretch its borders dangerously thin (making them logistically harder to defend), its expansionist ambitions are also conceptually untenable: 'We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.' This September 2014 message epitomises the incompatibility of the Islamic State with the progressive, liberal principles of globalisation. 'Rome', representing the Western world and its Enlightenment values, must be surmounted, and all its citizens (not only women) enslaved. But fascist states cannot be successful in our modern world, let alone religiously fascist ones. In attempting to overthrow the West and its values, the Islamic State 'conquered Dabiq's [the eponymous location of its propaganda magazine] strategically unimportant plains', writes Graeme Wood in his outstanding Atlantic piece 'What ISIS Really Wants'. The Islamic State greatly celebrated this victory, but in effect it was nothing more than an ideological one, and not even a multilateral one, as to the opposition forces Dabiq is of no particular value whatsoever. It is, to return to Wood quoting an Islamic State fighter's Twitter message, 'basically all farmland.' No oil, no banks, no military strongholds. Supposed Islamic State victories such as the one in Dabiq are infinitely more beneficial to the Allied forces: they exhaust the Islamic State's warriors and decrease their geographical concentrations.

Third, the Islamic State's tenets forbid alliances. Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State's now-unaffiliated parent organisation, might operate on a simply local level, but in contrast to the Islamic State they are willing to engage in political alliances. To al-Baghdadi and his followers however, this is blasphemous, as the Caliphate must subjugate every inch of the planet to cleanse it of infidels (a theme colourfully and frequently explored in Dabiq), before a Messianic state ripe for Judgement Day can be established.

This deeply apocalyptic facet of the Islamic State is the heart of its ideology, and simultaneously the core reason for its impossibility: it is self-nullifying. It is the yearning for death that crystallises in all its messages which renders the mere concept of the Islamic State infeasible. And this does not only physically manifest itself in the form of suicide bombers, but also in medieval punishments such as stoning and lynching. Globalisation, by definition a phenomenon encapsulating billions of people, is incompatible with the nationalist and fascist tenets of the Islamic State. The two concepts cannot co-exist – and globalisation unarguably has the upper hand.

The aspect that is most dangerous about the Islamic State's rise then, is the effect a superficial threat of this kind has on the amygdalae of the Western population: Marine Le Pen's rise in France, Geert Wilders' in the Netherlands – it is the transfer of too much power unto the state that is the true danger. Following November's Paris attacks, for instance, the French police has carried out innumerable heavy-handed searches, and a recent proposal to strip French citizenship over terrorism has caused uproar among libertarians. This nationalism, the diametrical opposite of our liberal societies' globalisation, is an atavism that takes a civilised community back many decades. The real danger is, in essence, a case of the proverbial idiot dragging the clever one down to the former's level, and proceeding to beat the latter with experience – only it will never get this far: after all, Europe has had sufficient experience in these idiotic, nationalistic games to not repeat its errors, one hopes.