Many have questioned, what makes
hundreds of people including women leave their families, friends, and hometowns
to join ISIS. Media is overloaded with news about ISIS' violence, horrible
actions, and unfairness to women. The name of such an extremist group became
wide worldwide due to their actions, propaganda, and recruitment of hundreds of
people. There is a positive relation between ISIS' violence and the people who
are fleeing from over twenty five countries to join ISIS in Syria.
My aim of this paper is not to show
ISIS' brutal actions, nor their politics or religious angles, but rather
investigates in the social life of this group. I do not try to defend this
group, or exaggerates in portraying the different aspects of it, or even to be
objective. However, I seek to look into the basic social life of ISIS women and even men to
the max.
The development of ISIS is related
to the Syrian civil war that started in 2011, as well as the unstable
circumstances in Iraq. First, the fall of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in
2006 created the situation which led to the establishment of the Islamic State
in Iraq. Six years later, the conflict in neighboring Syria paved the way for
the creation of what is known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS), or
the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL).
The aim of ISIS' establishment, at
least according to the group's own claims, is to create a religious authority
in as many countries as possible. This group, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is
using atrocious techniques
to expand its authority. One of the ways they have worked on to expand in
numbers, spread their ideology, and terrorize their enemies involves new media,
including Twitter. Significantly, ISIS uses social media not only to recruit
men but also women.
I want
to discuss how ISIS portrays themselves, then compare between their sayings and
other people's information I have gathered about them. Also, I look forward to
digging into the way citizens under ISIS ruling are living. On the other hand, I
will be using Evans-Pritchard's book, The
Sanusi of Cyrenaica to manifest my argument throughout my paper.
Evans-Pritchard was not able to
understand the Sanusi's lives without the act of living with them for around
twenty years, as well as making an anthropological analysis, and read their
history. In my paper, I wish I can get the chance to live with the people who
are ruled by ISIS as a spectator for the sake of understanding these people.
Mentioning that this passion started within pursuing my masters in media studies
since one became more aware of media's framing to news, and ISIS news
particularly. I became passionate about seeing how their political, social,
economic, and religious systems are structured, not for the sake of defending
them, however portray the life under their ruling in an objective way. Moreover, what triggered my passion as well
in wanting to know about them more is because media never succeeded in looking
at the social or religious aspects under ISIS ruling. As well as media does exaggerate in ISIS' actions, as I believe such an
extremist group is a very simple, basic, uncomplicated one. I have structured
this image about them through the few interviews I have made, as well as the
critical reading I did while reading news, previous studies, and articles. Yet,
I believe one cannot reach any suitable results unless one lives in the place
he or she is making their research on.
The Islamic State of Iraq and
Al-Sham known as "ISIS", recently started calling themselves Islamic
State "IS" since June 2014 till present. It started developing itself rapidly worldwide.
According to the U.S. government some media outlets, still use the term
"the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" or ISIL, but most people
in the Arab world use the term ISIS, as they substitute Levant with al-Sham
(meaning greater Syria).
The
Funding of ISIS:
It is not a hard question to ask
"who funds this group?". However, it is hard and vague to answer it.
There is a wide range of answers between scholars and researchers, where each
puts his or her own analysis, however, answers to a certain extent intersect.
To be able to answer this question, one must also know where the funding is
being spent.
ISIS' expenses are considered the
highest worldwide these days. According to Megeed's article What keeps ISIS
running: the funding and support of a terror organization (2015), their
expenses do not only include military equipments, but also training, safe
houses, surveillance equipments, roads, civilian bus services, food, technology
(including media centers), salaries, rent and medical expenses to its members,
and guarding against internal corruption.
Many political analysts see the funders of this group are from
Saudi Arabia and Qatar regardless their diverse differences in their political
views. According to Khalid (2015), says that no doubt part of the funding Saudi
and Qatar gave to the Syrian opposition army went naturally to this group.
However, this indirect funding is only a small percentage of the whole funding.
Moreover, according to the statistics published by the Western governments and media, ISIS is the richest
group in the world. This means that this group does not rely only on the Saudi
and Qatari funding.
To get a closer look at the funding,
Khalid (2015) and Mageed (2015) see that their main support comes from the
self-financing like paying ransom, spoils, energy (gas, electricity, oil, and
petrol) and taxes. Paying ransom is through the Europeans who paid tens of
millions of dollars in the return of their hostages and detainees. Spoils is
the main way for ISIS to guarantee their expansion in both Iraq and Syria. This
was through expropriation and stealing many properties and selling them. Energy
is considered the main funding for any country who owns it, thus, it is a
strategic goal by any group. As reported by the U.S Treasury Department in
2014, an estimate of their revenue from oil ranged from 1$ to 2$ million per
day. ISIS made sure from the first place to control the locations of oil plus
the oil fields in Iraq. Finally, they are imposing strict taxes on the
citizens, charging for services like electricity, telephones, and even imported
goods.
However, Mageed (2015) adds that one
cannot ignore the great donations from the Gulf, primarily Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Kuwait, and UAE. The donations as well as morally and financially support to
ISIS was mainly to fight against the regime of Assad. But there is no credible
evidence that the Saudi government is financially supporting ISIS. Moreover,
there are other countries like Turkey and the US who want to get rid of the
Syrian regime besides wanting to have power upon oil. Regardless researches
that show American's effort to destroy ISIS, it is their advantage to have such
a group, which explains the support they are putting but from under the table.
After reading several news websites,
researches, and newspapers, I concluded that the main funding of ISIS comes
from self-funding itself through oil. Their control on the largest oil wells in
Iraq and Syria made them able to have power upon it, as well as having 1 to 2
million dollars revenues per day from it.
Life
Under ISIS:
ISIS
has always been portrayed in media as the "terrorists", and their
actions are defined under the term "terrorism". Whenever talking or
mentioning this group, one either avoid talking about them - especially those
who lived under their rulings- or say that they frighten one. ISIS was able to
authenticate their rulings in the places
they controlled through spreading their image that they are very violent, as
they confirmed that with several actions in front of citizens' lives. This led
people take into consideration any behavior they do, watch their actions, and
avoid leaving their houses as much as possible. Through interviewing a person
who used to live in Minbij, Reef Halab, told me that such a group succeeded in
confirming their authority on their area. However, they are not bad as one
expects, "I hate them, however, we were feeling secure, safe, and even we
had a stable life...". Also, he added that the economical situation improved.
It is true their image is bad, but they apply Islam's laws carefully.
This
group is creating their own sphere, where they built a political, economical,
educational and religious systems to guarantee their continuation. The
political system is through having Ameer "Prince" responsible on each
area, and upon this Amir, a Qa'ed "leader" whom gives orders to
Ameer. An ameer is not allowed to take
any action except for the orders he takes from who is above him. Moreover, they
built a judiciary, and in this system whoever two citizens fight, they are not
allowed to leave court until both would have taken their rights. However, it is
different when a citizen and an ISIS member fight, as if ISIS member is the
mistaken, court still blames the citizen. Also, they were able to confirm the
idea of not allowing women leave their homes unless they are with Mahram
"her father, brother, uncle, or husband", as well as applying the
religious Islamic costume which is the black cloth that covers all the body
including the face.
On
the other hand, they played with the educational system, where they used to
monitor citizen's majors, due to not allowing two majors, chemistry and
philosophy. Chemistry was forbidden to be taught in schools and universities
due to being afraid people would do equations that leads to creating
complicated ones that leads to inventing explosions or rockets. And philosophy
was also forbidden because it leads to one not believe in the only God, Allah.
In my opinion, this is crazy! But, I have seen and heard about countries doing
much worse to people for the sake of their "national security".
As
for the religious system, they do allow women to work in Al-Hisba, which is
basically women making sure other women under ISIS ruling are applying Islam in
the "right way". Also, women were able to work in recitation and
memorizing Al-Quraan. However, they are not allowed to work in other jobs as
nurses for example or in business. On the other hand, ISIS men search houses
looking for girls through looking into their IDs to see if they are married or
not. If one is not married, they would propose and marry her.
Who is joining ISIS and why?
However, people who are joining ISIS are coming from around 90
countries around the world, and some researchers say that fighters come from
over than 80 countries. Some consider ISIS a small military organization, with
approximately 25,000 to 30,000 fighters in both Syria and Iraq (Lister, 2014).
Moreover, according to Obama administration, "it is estimated that around
12,000 to 15,000 foreign fighters have gone to Syria and Iraq as of September
23, 2014" (as cited in Byman & Shapiro, 2014, p. 9). But the second
question that comes on mind, is that why are these people joining ISIS?
According to some researchers, the
main reason for people from around the world joining ISIS is due to identity
crisis, and the second major reason according to Washington Post, is that the
people who are living under ISIS' regime are joining ISIS out of desperation
and lack of other options. According to Al-Raffie (2013), "Muslim Diaspora
in Europe finds identity crisis to be a key precipitant to the process. Muslims
in Europe feel detached from their religion and insecure". Thus, the
persuasive the ideology of Islamist representatives is, the more likely for
these people to be convinced of such propaganda Islamic extremist spread. On
the other hand, ISIS' fighters and families quality is much better than those
who live under the extremist group's control or what they call "caliphate".
People who live under this group's control notice the widening income gap
between ISIS fighters and average civilians, who pay huge amounts of taxes to
the caliphate's authorities to fund ISIS fighters' salaries.
Moreover, I have interviewed Jihadis
who have joined ISIS, and some are still seeking to travel to areas where ISIS
have control upon. In order to get a closer look at the reasons behind them
joining such a group, I created a fake Twitter account, and I faked wanting to
travel to the Islamic State. Thus, one of the militants is from Sri Lanka who
is still planning to leave his country
and told me through Twitter that the reason behind wanting to join ISIS is to
free the people, and wants to stop each
and every country who want a piece from Afghanistan, adding that joining the
Islamic State is an obligation. I asked him if there is a control for ISIS in
Afghanistan, and he gave me in details the areas they have control upon.
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