Editor's note: By any measurable standard, Egypt is more vulnerable to violence and insurgency today than it had been before the Arab Spring. Since the overthrow of former President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, Egypt has seen shocking levels of repression. In Shadi Hamid's August 6 piece in Foreign Policy, Hamid makes the argument that the end result of the Egyptian coup turned out to be a gift to the Islamic State group.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power on a classic strongman platform. He was no liberal or democrat — and didn’t claim to be — but promised stability and security at a time when most Egyptians had grown exhausted from the uncertainties of the Arab Spring.

Increasingly, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration seems to accept this premise. In the span of the past week, the United States has delivered eight F-16s to Egypt, relaunched the U.S.-Egypt “strategic dialogue,” and said it would resume “Bright Star,” the joint military exercise suspended after the military coup of July 3, 2013.

Sisi’s raison d’être of security and stability, however, has been undermined with each passing month. By any measurable standard, Egypt is more vulnerable to violence and insurgency today than it had been before. On July 1, as many as 64 soldiers were killed in coordinated attacks by Egypt’s Islamic State affiliate, which calls itself the Province of Sinai. It was the worst death toll in decades, and came just days after the country’s chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was assassinated.

If this is what a “stability-first” approach looks like, Egypt’s future is dark indeed. Of course, it shouldn’t be surprising that the country is growing less secure: Since the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi on July 3, 2013, Egypt has seen shocking levels of repression. On Aug. 14, 2013, it witnessed the worst mass killing in its modern history, with at least 800 killed in mere hours when security forces violently dispersed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo. WikiThawra, a project of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, estimates that nearly 36,500 people were arrested or detained from the day of the coup through May 15, 2014 — one can only imagine how high that figure has grown a year later.

Since April 2015, meanwhile, at least 163 Egyptians have “disappeared.” As one prisoner recalled of his time at Azouli, a military jail which can’t be seen by civilians: “There is no documentation that says you are there. If you die at Azouli, no one would know.”

This repression, which targets not just Islamists but also secular and liberal opposition activists, makes the resort to violence and terror more likely among at least some Egyptians. There is a growing trend of academic literature pointing to the link between tyranny and terror: In a widely cited 2003 study, for example, academics Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova conclude, “The only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties.”

Not all repression is created equal, however. I have argued that low-to-moderate levels of repression do not necessarily have a radicalizing effect. What we are seeing in Egypt today, however, is not your run-of-the-mill authoritarianism but something deeper and more frightening. This is eradication, driven, no less, by popular and populist sentiment.

The end result is that the Egyptian coup turned out to be a gift to the Islamic State. You don’t have to take my word for this: The jihadi group itself clearly thinks it benefited from Morsi’s overthrow. In its first statement after the coup, Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, addressing the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainstream Islamists, says, “You have been exposed in Egypt.” He refers to “democracy” and the Brotherhood as “the two idols [which] have fallen.”

Of course, jihadis had long been making this argument, particularly after the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq took part in successive U.S.-backed governments after the 2003 Iraq war. Al Qaeda and its ilk gleefully described the Muslim Brotherhood as al-Ikhwan al-Muflisun, or the Bankrupt Brotherhood — a play on its Arabic name. But while al Qaeda may have achieved a measure of sympathy in the Middle East after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was never, and never could be, a real threat to the Brotherhood’s model of political change. It was proficient at staging terrorist attacks but proved unable to carry its successes into the realm of governance. More importantly, al Qaeda’s vision for state building, to the extent that it had one, failed to capture the attention of the world or the imagination of tens of thousands of would-be fighters and fellow travelers.

The same cannot be said about the Islamic State, whose seemingly irrational apocalyptic vision coexists with an unusually pronounced interest in governance. As Yale University’s Andrew March and Mara Revkin laid out in considerable detail, the group has, in fact, developed fairly elaborate institutional structures. In the ideological and theological realms, the Islamic State is not just Baathist brutality in Islamic garb: Rather, it has articulated a policy toward Christian minorities based on a 7th-century pact, an approach to Islamic economic jurisprudence, and even a theory of international relations.

The Islamic State’s unlikely successes in governance undermine a key premise of mainstream Islamists — that because of their gradualism, pragmatism, and “competence,” they, rather than extremists, are better suited to delivering on bread-and-butter issues. In fact, the opposite appeared to be true: Brotherhood-style gradualism and a willingness to work through the democratic process hadn’t worked. One senior Brotherhood official told me, as we sat in a café on the outskirts of Istanbul, “If I look at the list of mistakes the Brotherhood made, this is the biggest one: trying to fix the system from inside gradually.”

Even those who otherwise abhor the Islamic State’s ideology might find themselves susceptible to the argument that violence “worked,” while peaceful participation didn’t. It’s an argument that the Islamic State and its affiliates have repeatedly tried to drive home: In one recruitment video, a young Egyptian man — a judge in one of the Islamic State’s sharia courts — tells the camera that “[Islamist groups that participate in elections] do not possess the military power or the means to defend the gains they have achieved through elections. After they win, they are put in prison, they are killed in the squares, as if they’d never even won … as if they had never campaigned for their candidates.”

Needless to say, this particular pitch wouldn’t have been possible in 2013, when Morsi was still in power, or even in 2012, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was in charge. In short, the Egyptian coup — coupled with the subsequent massacres and never-ending crackdown — has given the arguments made by al Qaeda in the 2000s more power than ever before.

There’s no denying that violence surged following the coup. According to the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the month of the coup, July 2013, saw a massive uptick in violence, from 13 attacks the month before to 95 attacks. The number of attacks dipped in subsequent months — to 69 in August and 56 in September — but remained significantly higher than before the coup. The pre- and post-coup discrepancy becomes even more obvious when we zoom out further: From July 2013 to May 2015, there were a total of 1,223 attacks over 23 months, an average of 53.2 attacks per month. In the 23 months prior to June 2013, there were a mere 78 attacks, an average of 3.4 attacks per month.

If the coup had nothing or little to do with this, it would stand as one of the more remarkable coincidences in the recent history of Middle East politics. Of course, other variables may have contributed to this surge in violence. The flow of arms from Libya and the Islamic State’s growing international stature, for instance, would have played a destabilizing role no matter what happened with Egypt’s domestic politics. But neither of those developments can account for such a sharp increase in attacks over such a relatively short period of time. Civil conflict in Libya resulted in a more porous border and an increase in arms smuggling as early as 2012, while the Islamic State’s expansion didn’t register in a serious way in the broader region until the summer of 2014, when the group took over the Iraqi city of Mosul.

That leaves us with the coup and what it wrought — namely the Sisi regime’s increasingly repressive measures — as the key event that helped spark the wave of violence. How many people, who otherwise wouldn’t have taken up arms, took up arms because of the coup and the subsequent crackdown? Obviously, there is no way to know for sure. The strength of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the group that eventually pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and renamed itself Province of Sinai, is estimated to be in the thousands, so even a tiny increase of, say, 500 militants — representing 0.00055 percent of Egypt’s overall population — would have an outsized effect. Recruitment, however, takes time, so it is unlikely this would have mattered in the days immediately after the coup.

The more likely short-term explanation is that militants viewed the coup as an opportune moment to intensify their activities. They would have done so for two main reasons: First, the Egyptian military — an organization, like any other, with finite resources — was preoccupied with securing major urban centers and clamping down on the Brotherhood. Second, militants likely wagered that they could seize on the wave of Islamist anger and anti-military sentiment.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis exploited the “narrative” of the local Sinai population, which was already predisposed to distrust state institutions after years of economic neglect and heavy-handed security policies. Not surprisingly, then, residents were more likely to oppose the coup than most other Egyptians. The founders of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, many of whom hail from North Sinai, knew this as well as anyone. The jihadi group, before pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in November 2014, was almost entirely focused on police and military targets, and would generally couch such attacks as “revenge for the security forces’ suppression of Islamist dissidents.”

Electoral results from 2011 to 2014 offer additional insight into patterns of political support in the Sinai. South Sinai has generally been more pro-regime and less supportive of militant activity, due in part to its economic dependence on the tourism industry. North Sinai, however, is a different story: In each of the four major electoral contests during the transition period, voters there supported Islamist positions and candidates at a significantly higher percentage than the national average. For example, in the 2012 presidential election, 61.5 percent of North Sinai voters cast their ballots for Morsi, compared to 51.7 percent nationally.

While the coup and its brutal aftermath contributed to a sustained increase in monthly attacks — as well as an increase in the lethality of attacks — we still see considerable variation in militant activity. From November 2013 to July 2014, for example, there is a dip, with the monthly average falling to about 22 attacks per month. Yet, even at this lower point, the average number of attacks is still more than 640 percent above the monthly pre-coup average. Starting in January 2015, militant activity jumps up sharply again to 107 attacks, from only nine in December. Again, there are any number of factors that could have played a role in this new surge in violence, but there is only one factor that changes dramatically during this period and that can account for such an unusual uptick in attacks: the military’s hasty creation of a “security zone” along the border with Gaza.

On Oct. 24, 2014, at least 33 Egyptian soldiers were killed, in what was, until then, the deadliest attack on security personnel since the coup. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed responsibility. In response, Egyptian authorities moved to establish a buffer zone, forcing up to 10,000 residents to evacuate their homes, some with only 48 hours notice. The Egyptians military’s narrow security lens and harsh tactics have, in effect, further alienated local residents and helped fuel the insurgency. Shortly after the army began “relocating” villages, the number of attacks increased once again, but this time to previously unheard-of levels. The first five months of 2015 saw an average of 114.6 attacks, with an all-time high of 138 attacks in May.

This is not to say that the creation of a buffer zone transformed people into ideological hard-liners in a matter of weeks, but, rather, that groups like the Islamic State seek to exploit local grievances and depend on local sympathy to stage successful attacks. Zack Gold, a researcher who specializes on the Sinai, wrote that due to the army’s scorched-earth tactics, “whole swaths of North Sinai civilization no longer exist.” One resident of the border town of Rafah, after learning his home would be destroyed, said: “I won’t lie. I’m more afraid of the army than the jihadis. When you’re oppressed, anyone who fights your oppression gets your sympathy.” Another Sinai resident, according to journalist Mohannad Sabry, said that after 90 percent of his village was destroyed in a security campaign, around 40 people took up arms, where through 2013, he knew of only five Ansar Beit al-Maqdis members in the village.

It might be hard to imagine why the Egyptian army would appear so intent on alienating the very citizens whose help it needs to defeat the insurgency. Yet, this appears to be Sisi’s approach to conflict resolution across the country — more state power, more control, and more repression. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Because authoritarian regimes are forged and sustained by force, they are perhaps the worst candidates to develop a nuanced, holistic counterinsurgency strategy.

Then again, Egypt starts from a different set of assumptions than the United States does. At the most basic level, the Egyptian government fails the first test of counterterrorism, which requires correctly identifying who the actual terrorists are. It continues to act as if the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood are interchangeable — something that no Western intelligence agency takes seriously. As a result, Egypt has made itself a burden. The Egyptian regime is not — and, more importantly, cannot be — a reliable counterterrorism partner. This is no accident of circumstance. Hoping and claiming to fight terrorism, Egypt, however unwittingly, is fueling an insurgency.

Editors’ Note: In Southeast Asia, democratization went hand in hand with Islamization, writes Shadi Hamid. So where many assume that democracy can’t exist with Islamism, it is more likely the opposite. The Aspen Institute originally published this post.

In both theory and practice, Islam has proven to be resistant to secularization, even (or particularly) in countries like Turkey and Tunisia where attempts to privatize Islam have been most vigorous. If Islam is exceptional in its relationship to politics — as I argue it is in my new book Islamic Exceptionalism — then what exactly does that mean in practice?

As Western small-l or “classical” liberals, we don’t have to like or approve of Islam’s prominent place in politics, but we do have to accept life as it is actually lived and religion as it is actually practiced in the Middle East and beyond. What form, though, should that “acceptance” take?

If Islam is exceptional in its relationship to politics ... then what exactly does that mean in practice?

First, where the two are in tension, it means prioritizing democracy over liberalism. In other words, there’s no real way to force people to be liberal or secular if that’s not who they are or what they want to be. To do so would suggest a patronizing and paternalistic approach to the Middle East — one that President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials, and not just those on the right, have repeatedly expressed. If our own liberalism as Americans is context-bound (we grew up in a liberal democratic society), then of course Egyptians, Jordanians or Pakistanis will similarly be products of their own contexts.

One should be suspicious of “models” of any kind, since models, such as Turkey’s, tend to disappoint. That said, there are good examples outside of the Middle East that deserve a closer look. Indonesia and to a lesser extent Malaysia are often held up as models of democracy, pluralism, and tolerance. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, these two countries feature significantly more shariah ordinances than, say, Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco.

In one article, the Indonesia scholar Robin Bush documents some of the shariah by-laws implemented in the country’s more conservative regions. They include requiring civil servants and students to wear “Muslim clothing,” requiring women to wear the headscarf to receive local government services, and requiring demonstrations of Quranic reading ability to be admitted to university or to receive a marriage license. But there’s a catch. According to a study by the Jakarta-based Wahid Institute, most of these regulations have come from officials of ostensibly secular parties like Golkar. How is this possible? The implementation of shariah is part of a mainstream discourse that cuts across ideological and party lines. That suggests that Islamism is not necessarily about Islamists but is about a broader population that is open to Islam playing a central role in law and governance.

Islamists need secularists and secularists need Islamists. But in Indonesia and Malaysia, there was a stronger “middle.”

In sum, it wasn’t that religion was less of a “problem” in Indonesia and Malaysia; it’s that the solutions were more readily available. Islam might have still been exceptional, but the political system was more interested in accommodating this reality than in suppressing it. There wasn’t an entrenched secular elite in the same way there was in many Arab countries. Meanwhile, Islamist parties were not as strong, so polarization wasn’t as deep and destabilizing. Islamism wasn’t the province of one party, but of most. In a sense, Islamists need secularists and secularists need Islamists. But in Indonesia and Malaysia, there was a stronger “middle,” and that middle had settled around a relatively uncontroversial conservative consensus.

In Southeast Asia, then, democratization went hand in hand with Islamization. To put it more simply, where many assume that democracy can’t exist with Islamism, it is more likely the opposite. What distinguishes Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as their electorates, isn’t some readiness to embrace the gradual privatization of religion. The difference is that their brand of Islamic politics garners much less attention in the West, in part because they aren’t seen as strategically vital and, perhaps more importantly, because the passage of Islamic legislation is simply less controversial domestically. There has been a coming to terms with Islam’s role in public life, where in much of the Middle East, there hasn’t — at least not yet.

Media coverage of the Islamic State frequently refers to the group’s violent and seemingly archaic justice system without considering the institutional structures that enable this violence, or the broader function that it serves in the group’s ambitious state-building project. Legal institutions make it easier for the group to capture and retain territory by legitimizing its claim to sovereignty, justifying the expropriation of the property and land of enemies, and building goodwill with civilians by ensuring accountability.

The Islamic State’s legal system purports to strictly apply the divinely revealed body of Islamic law known as Sharia, which it regards as the only legitimate basis for governance. Although its legal system is frequently characterized as medieval, it has instrumentally supplemented the original text of the Quran with the modern rules and regulations that are needed to govern a 21st century state and punish modern day offenses—for example, traffic violations. It has the same three features that are present in any modern legal system: police, courts, and prisons.

In a region that has long been plagued by corruption, the Islamic State has attempted to ingratiate itself with civilians by claiming that its legal system is comparatively more legitimate and effective than the available alternatives. However, two emerging vulnerabilities—the system’s susceptibility to corruption and propensity for extra-legal violence—are increasingly undermining the Islamic State’s ability to obtain the trust and cooperation of civilians. Counterinsurgency efforts should be designed to undermine the legitimacy of its institutions. Long-term solutions in the region must involve a fundamental reorganization of political and legal institutions in ways that promote legitimacy and rule of law.

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• The legal foundations of the Islamic State

Media coverage of the Islamic State has focused on the group’s grotesque use of violence and archaic governance style. Less attention has been paid, however, to the institutions that make those practices possible—institutions that lend the group legitimacy, at least in the eyes of supporters, as a sovereign state. In her new Brookings Analysis Paper, “The legal foundations of the Islamic State,” Mara Revkin argues that legal institutions play a critical role in the Islamic State’s state-building project. Those structures help the group take and keep territory, as well as provide a measure of accountability to the people living under its rule.

Lesser evil?

Revkin writes that “the Islamic State has attempted to ingratiate itself with civilians by claiming that its legal system is comparatively more legitimate and effective than the available alternatives.” The Syrian and Iraqi governments, Revkin explains, are often perceived as being highly corrupt and ineffective. The Islamic State is able to gain civilians’ favor by arguing that its political and legal institutions are more legitimate than those of the Syrian and Iraqi governments or rival armed groups. She adds: “some Syrians and Iraqis seem to prefer the legal system of the Islamic State to the available alternatives not because they agree with its ideology, but simply because they regard it as the lesser evil.” 

The Syrian and Iraqi governments...are often perceived as being highly corrupt and ineffective.

Revkin writes that for the Islamic State, shariah law is “the only legitimate basis for governance.” In cases where shariah fails to address modern-day problems, she explains, religiously legitimate authorities appointed by the Islamic State—such as military commanders, police officers, and the caliph himself—can issue legal decisions as long as they do not conflict with the divine rules of shariah or harm the welfare of the greater Muslim community. Alongside this is a system of rules and regulations to “govern civilians, discipline its own officials and combatants, and control territory” in areas of rights and duties, behavior, property, trade, and warfare. 

Making the state possible

Legal institutions help the Islamic State advance three main state-building objectives, in Revkin’s view: 

1. First, they support the Islamic State’s territorial expansion by “legitimizing [its] claims to sovereignty, justifying the expropriation of the property and land of enemies, and building goodwill with civilians.” 
2. Legal institutions also allow the Islamic State to enforce compliance and accountability of its own members and maintain internal control and discipline. Revkin describes various types of punishments the Islamic State uses to discipline its own members—these punishments are important, she writes, because “no government can establish itself as legitimate and sovereign without policing the behavior of the people who are responsible for implementing its policies.”
3. Finally, Revkin explores the legal institutions surrounding the Islamic State’s tax policies, which are “critical to financing the Islamic State’s governance and military operations.” Courts and judges, she explains, are crucial to “administering and legitimizing” taxation and justifying “economic activities that might otherwise resemble theft.” 

Weaknesses in the system

Although the Islamic State claims to have legitimate governing authority, based on a defined legal system, that system faces vulnerabilities. Revkin writes, for instance, that reports of corruption and extra-legal violence are “threatening the organization’s long-term sustainability and undermining its ability to win the trust and cooperation of civilians.”

Amid recent signs that the group is losing strength, Revkin argues that it’s struggling to maintain its own moral standards. To further weaken the Islamic State, she recommends working to undermine those institutions. The trouble is, as Revkin points out: “the Islamic State came to power largely by exploiting the weakness and illegitimacy of existing institutions” in Iraq and Syria. Thus, a sustainable plan for ultimately destroying the organization must also involve strengthening political and legal institutions in those countries. 

Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, December 1, 2014

Intense turmoil in Syria and Iraq has created socio-political vacuums in which jihadi groups have been able to thrive. The Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) had proven to be the strongest and most dynamic of these groups, seizing large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. Shortly after routing Iraqi forces and conquering Mosul in June 2014, ISIS boldly announced the establishment of a caliphate and renamed itself the Islamic State (IS). How did IS become such a powerful force? What are its goals and characteristics? What are the best options for containing and defeating the group?

In a new Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, Charles Lister traces IS’s roots from Jordan to Afghanistan, and finally to Iraq and Syria. He describes its evolution from a small terrorist group into a bureaucratic organization that currently controls thousands of square miles and is attempting to govern millions of people. Lister assesses the group’s capabilities, explains its various tactics, and identifies its likely trajectory.

According to Lister, the key to undermining IS’s long-term sustainability is to address the socio-political failures of Syria and Iraq. Accordingly, he warns that effectively countering IS will be a long process that must be led by local actors. Specifically, Lister argues that local actors, regional states, and the international community should work to counter IS’s financial strength, neutralize its military mobility, target its leadership, and restrict its use of social media for recruitment and information operations.

Nearly two years after ousting President Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s military continues to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Much like during Egypt’s 1952-54 political transition, the recent interactions between the powerful armed state bureaucracy and the influential religious organization have had a major impact on the country’s political trajectory. In both instances, the military and Muslim Brotherhood initially cooperated before ultimately clashing violently. How has each entity determined what approach to take toward the other? What does a continued imbalance in civil-military relations mean for Egypt’s future?

In a new Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, Omar Ashour examines the legacies and patterns of cooperation and conflict between the leaderships of Egypt’s military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Relying on extensive field research, he analyzes how each entity has made its critical decisions regarding the other by applying various decision-making models. Ashour considers the impact of cost-benefit analysis, organizational dynamics, factional disputes, and psychological factors to gain a deep understanding of the leaders’ motives.

Read "Collusion to Crackdown: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt"

Ashour concludes that Egypt's prospects for social stability and economic recovery will remain bleak if the relationship between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood is not redefined within institutional, democratic rules of political competition. He argues that Egypt’s military should embrace a balanced civil-military relationship to realize broad, long-term benefits and avoid otherwise inevitable and costly clashes with segments of Egyptian society. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, Ashour recommends that it reevaluate its recent decisions and work to develop a sustained, solid, and cross-ideological civilian front that can pressure the military to leave politics and allow for democratization.

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International jihad has undergone a wholesale internal revolution in recent years. The dramatic emergence of the Islamic State (IS) and its proclamation of a Caliphate means that the world no longer faces one Sunni jihadi threat, but two, as IS and al-Qaida compete on the global stage. What is the relationship between the groups and how do their models differ? Is IS’s rapid organizational expansion sustainable? Can al-Qaida adapt and respond?

Read "Jihadi Rivalry: The Islamic State Challenges al-Qaida"

In a new Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, Charles Lister explores al-Qaida and IS’s respective evolutions and strategies. He argues that al-Qaida and its affiliates are now playing a long game by seeking to build alliances and develop deep roots within unstable and repressed societies. IS, on the other hand, looks to destabilize local dynamics so it can quickly seize control over territory.

Lister finds that the competition between IS and al-Qaida for jihadi supremacy will continue, and will likely include more terrorist attacks on the West. Accordingly, he calls for the continued targeting of al-Qaida leaders, the disruption of jihadi financial activities, and greater domestic intelligence and counter-radicalization efforts. Lister concludes, however, that state instability across the Muslim world must be addressed or jihadis will continue to thrive.

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With the rise of ISIS and a growing terrorist threat in the West, unprecedented attention has focused on Islam, which despite being the world’s fastest growing religion, is also one of the most misunderstood. In his new book “Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam is Reshaping the World” (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), Senior Fellow Shadi Hamid offers a novel and provocative argument on how Islam is, in fact, “exceptional” in how it relates to politics, with profound implications for how we understand the future of the Middle East. Hamid argues for a new understanding of how Islam and Islamism shape politics by examining different modes of reckoning with the problem of religion and state, including the terrifying—and alarmingly successful—example of ISIS.

On June 9, Shadi Hamid and Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy Leon Wieseltier discussed the unresolved questions of religion’s role in public life and whether Islam can—or should—be reformed or secularized.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #IslamicExceptionalism

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• Islamic exceptionalism: How the struggle over Islam is reshaping the world - Part 1
• Islamic exceptionalism: How the struggle over Islam is reshaping the world - Part 2

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• Islamic exceptionalism: How the struggle over Islam is reshaping the world

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• 20160609_islamic_exceptionalism_transcript

After a recent talk about my ISIS book, one of the audience members asked, “What can I read to help me not hate Islam?” I don’t think it’s a scholar’s job to persuade others to love or hate any culture. But the question was sincere, so I suggested some books that have helped me better understand Islam. I also put the question to Twitter. Below is some of what I and others came up with.

Two cautions before we dive in: First, the list is obviously not exhaustive and I’ve left out overly apologetic books—in my experience, they only increase the skeptical reader’s suspicion that she’s being suckered. Second, people on Twitter gave me great suggestions but I’ve only included those I’ve read and can vouch for:

Muhammad and the Quran: Two of the best books you’ll ever read about Muhammad and the Quran are also the shortest: The Koran: A Very Short Introduction and Muhammad, both by Michael Cook. He writes with great wit and deep scholarship.

Other scriptures: Most non-Muslims are unaware that Islamic scripture is more than the Quran. It includes a vast collection of words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by later authors. These scriptures are sort of like the Gospels, and Muslim scholars fight over their authenticity like Christian scholars debate about the accuracy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These extra Islamic scriptures contain most of the teachings that make modern people (Muslims included) uncomfortable about Islam. One of the world’s experts on these scriptures, Jonathan Brown, has written a terrific book about them, Misquoting Muhammad.

Rumi: The medieval mystic’s poems about life and death are beautiful and moving, no matter your belief system. I loved his poems so much as an undergrad that I went on to study Middle Eastern languages just so I could read his work in the original. I’m glad I first viewed Islam through the eyes of Rumi and not a group like ISIS. Neither is solely representative of Islam but both draw heavily on its scriptures and reach such different conclusions.

The Bible: Many people recommended reading the Bible to decrease hate of Islam. The nerd in me leapt to the least obvious conclusion, “Ah, good idea! Reading some of the rough stuff in the Hebrew Bible is a good way to put a kindred ancient religion like Islam in perspective.” But they meant something a little less complicated:

@will_mccants @jenanmoussa Read the bible and learn to love and not to hate. :-)

— Dirk Lont (@Denkkracht1) December 12, 2015

It’s a worthy perspective today no matter your faith.

Will McCants: As we wind down another year in the so-called Long War and begin another, it’s a good time to reflect on where we are in the fight against al-Qaida and its bête noire, the Islamic State. Both organizations have benefited from the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings but they have taken different paths. Will those paths converge again or will the two organizations continue to remain at odds? Who has the best strategy at the moment? And what political changes might happen in the coming year that will reconfigure their rivalry for leadership of the global jihad?

To answer these questions, I’ve asked some of the leading experts on the two organizations to weigh in over. The first is Barak Mendelsohn, an associate professor of political science at Haverford College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). He is author of the brand new The al-Qaeda Franchise: The Expansion of al-Qaeda and Its Consequences.

Barak Mendelsohn: Al-Qaida attacked the U.S. homeland on 9/11, unprepared for what would follow. There was a strong disconnect between al-Qaida’s meager capabilities and its strategic objectives of crippling the United States and of bringing about change in the Middle East. To bridge that gap, Osama bin Laden conveniently and unrealistically assumed that the attack on the United States would lead the Muslim masses and all other armed Islamist forces to join his cause. The collapse of the Taliban regime and the decimation of al-Qaida’s ranks quickly proved him wrong.

Yet over fourteen years later al-Qaida is still around. Despite its unrealistic political vision and considerable setbacks—above all the rise of the Islamic State that upstaged al-Qaida and threatened its survival—it has branches in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa.

Down, but not out

Two factors explain al-Qaida’s resilience: changes in the environment due to the Arab revolutions and the group’s ability to take advantage of new opportunities by learning from past mistakes. The Arab awakening initially undercut al-Qaida’s original claims that change in Muslim countries cannot come peacefully or without first weakening the United States. Yet, the violence of regimes against their people in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere created new opportunities for al-Qaida to demonstrate its relevance. Furthermore, involved citizens determined to shape their own future presented al-Qaida with a new opportunity to recruit. 

But favorable conditions would be insufficient to explain al-Qaida’s resilience without changes in the way al-Qaida operates. Learning from its bitter experience in Iraq, al-Qaida opted to act with some moderation. It embedded itself among rebel movements in Syria and Yemen, thus showing it could be a constructive actor, attentive to the needs of the people and willing to cooperate with a wide array of groups. As part of a broader movement, al-Qaida’s affiliates in these countries also gained a measure of protection from external enemies reluctant to alienate the group’s new allies. 

[E]ven after showing some moderation, al-Qaida’s project is still too extreme for the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

At present, the greatest threat to al-Qaida is not the United States or the Arab regimes; it’s the group’s former affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State. ISIS is pressuring al-Qaida’s affiliates to defect—while it has failed so far to shift their allegiance, it has deepened cracks within the branches and persuaded small groups of al-Qaida members to change sides. Even if al-Qaida manages to survive the Islamic State’s challenge, in the long term it still faces a fundamental problem that is unlikely to change: even after showing some moderation, al-Qaida’s project is still too extreme for the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

Up, but not forever

With the United States seeking retrenchment and Middle Eastern regimes weakening, the Islamic State came to prominence under more convenient conditions and pursued a different strategy. Instead of wasting its energy on fighting the United States first, ISIS opted to establish a caliphate on the ruins of disintegrating Middle Eastern states. It has thrived on the chaos of the Arab rebellions. But in contrast to al-Qaida, it went beyond offering protection to oppressed Sunni Muslims by promoting a positive message of hope and pride. It does not merely empower Muslims to fend off attacks on their lives, property, and honor; the Islamic State offers its enthusiastic followers an historic chance to build a utopian order and restore the early Islamic empire or caliphate.

ISIS opted to establish a caliphate on the ruins of disintegrating Middle Eastern states. It has thrived on the chaos of the Arab rebellions.

The Islamic State’s leaders gambled that their impressive warfighting skills, the weakness of their opponents, and the reluctance of the United States to fight another war in the Middle East would allow the group to conquer and then govern territory. The gamble paid off. Not only did ISIS succeed in controlling vast territory, including the cities of Raqqa and Mosul; the slow response to its rise allowed the Islamic State’s propaganda machine to construct a narrative of invincibility and inevitability, which has, in turn, increased its appeal to new recruits and facilitated further expansion.

And yet, the Islamic State’s prospects of success are low. Its miscalculations are threatening to undo much of its success. It prematurely and unnecessarily provoked an American intervention that, through a combination of bombings from the air and skilled Kurdish proxies on the ground, is limiting the Islamic State’s ability to expand and even reversing some of the group’s gains. 

ISIS could settle for consolidating its caliphate in the territories it currently controls, but its hubris and messianic zeal do not allow for such limited goals. It is committed to pursuing military expansion alongside its state-building project. This rigid commitment to two incompatible objectives is perhaps the Islamic State’s biggest weakness. 

[T]he slow response to its rise allowed the Islamic State’s propaganda machine to construct a narrative of invincibility and inevitability.

Rather than pursue an economic plan that would guarantee the caliphate’s survival, the Islamic State has linked its economic viability to its military expansion. At present, ISIS relies on taxing its population and oil sales to support its flailing economy. But these financial resources cannot sustain a state, particularly one bent on simultaneously fighting multiple enemies on numerous fronts. Ironically, rather than taming its aspirations, the Islamic State sees conquest as the way to promote its state-building goals. Its plan for growing the economy is based on the extraction of resources through military expansion. While this plan worked well at first—when the Islamic State faced weak enemies—it is not a viable solution any longer, as the self-declared caliphate can no longer expand fast enough to meet its needs. Consequently, this strategy is undermining ISIS rather than strengthening it. 

Unfortunately, even if the Islamic State is bound to fail over the long run, it has had enough time to wreak havoc on other states in the neighborhood. And while its ability to govern is likely to continue diminishing, the terror attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Sinai suggest that the Islamic State will remain capable of causing much pain for a long time.

Will McCants: As we begin another year in the so-called Long War, it’s a good time to reflect on where we are in the fight against al-Qaida and its bête noire, the Islamic State. Both organizations have benefited from the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings but they have taken different paths. Will those paths converge again or will the two organizations continue to remain at odds? Who has the best strategy at the moment? And what political changes might happen in the coming year that will reconfigure their rivalry for leadership of the global jihad?

To answer these questions, I’ve asked some of the leading experts on the two organizations to weigh in. First was Barak Mendelsohn, who contrasts al-Qaida’s resilience and emphasis on Sunni oppression with the Islamic State’s focus on building a utopian order and restoring the caliphate.

Next is Clint Watts, a Fox fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He offers ways to avoid the flawed assumptions that have led to mistaken counterterrorism forecasts in recent years. 

Clint Watts: Two years ago today, counterterrorism forecasts focused on a “resurgent” al-Qaida. Debates over whether al-Qaida was again winning the war on terror ensued just a week before the Islamic State invaded Mosul. While Washington’s al-Qaida debates steamed away in 2013, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaida suffered unprecedented internal setbacks from a disobedient, rogue affiliate formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI). With terror predictions two years ago so far off the mark, should we even attempt to anticipate what the next two years of al-Qaida and ISIS will bring?

Rather than prognosticate about how more than a dozen extremist groups operating on four continents might commit violence in the future, analysts might instead examine flawed assumptions that resulted in the strategic surprise known as the Islamic State. Here are insights from last decade’s jihadi shifts we should consider when making forecasts on al-Qaida and the Islamic State’s future in the coming decade. 

Loyalty is fleeting, self-interest is forever. Analysts that missed the Islamic State’s rise assumed that those who pledged allegiance to al-Qaida would remain loyal indefinitely. But loyalties change despite the oaths that bind them. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State’s leaders used technicalities to slip their commitments to al-Qaida. Boko Haram has rapidly gone from al-Qaida wannabe to Islamic State devotee. 

In short, jihadi pledges of loyalty should not be seen as binding or enduring, but instead temporary. When a group’s fortunes wane or leaders change, allegiance will rapidly shift to whatever strain of jihad proves most advantageous to the group or its leader. Prestige, money, manpower—these drive pledges of allegiance, not ideology. 

Al-Qaida and the Islamic State do not think solely about destroying the United States and its Western allies. Although global jihadi groups always call for attacks on the West, they don’t always deliver. Either they can’t or they have other priorities, like attacking closer to home. So jihadi propaganda alone does not tell us much about how the group is going to behave in the future. 

Zawahiri, for example, has publicly called on al-Qaida’s affiliates to carry out attacks on the West. But privately, he has instructed his affiliate in Syria to hold off. And for most of its history, the Islamic State focused on attacking the near enemy in the Middle East rather than the far enemy overseas, despite repeatedly vowing to hit the United States. Both groups will take advantage of any easy opportunity to strike the United States. However, continuing to frame future forecasts through an America-centric lens will yield analysis that’s off the mark and of questionable utility.

[J]ihadi propaganda alone does not tell us much about how the group is going to behave in the future.

Al-Qaida and the Islamic State don’t control all of the actions of their affiliates. News headlines lead casual readers to believe al-Qaida and the Islamic State command and control vast networks operating under a unified strategic plan. But a year ago, the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris caught al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) completely by surprise—despite one of the attackers attributing the assault to the group. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's (AQIM) recent spate of attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso were likely conducted independently of al-Qaida’s central leadership. While the Islamic State has clearly mobilized its network and inspired others to execute a broad range of international attacks, the group’s central leadership in Iraq and Syria closely manages only a small subset of these plots. 

At no time since the birth of al-Qaida have jihadi affiliates and networks operated with such independence. Since Osama bin Laden’s death, al-Qaida affiliates in Yemen, the Sahel, Somalia, and Syria all aggressively sought to form states—a strategy bin Laden advised against. Target selections and the rapid pace of plots by militants in both networks suggest local dynamics rather than a cohesive, global grand strategy drive today’s jihad. Accurately anticipating the competition and cooperation of such a wide array of terrorist affiliates with overlapping allegiances to both groups will require examination by teams of analysts with a range of expertise rather than single pundits. 

At no time since the birth of al-Qaida have jihadi affiliates and networks operated with such independence.

Both groups and their affiliates will be increasingly enticed to align with state sponsors and other non-jihadi, non-state actors. The more money al-Qaida and the Islamic State have, the more leverage they have over their affiliates. But when the money dries up—as it did in al-Qaida’s case and will in the Islamic State’s—the affiliates will look elsewhere to sustain themselves. Distant affiliates will seek new suitors or create new enterprises. 

Inevitably, some of the affiliates will look to states that are willing to fund them in proxy wars against their mutual adversaries. Iran, despite fighting the Islamic State in Syria, might be enticed to support Islamic State terrorism inside Saudi Arabia’s borders. Saudi Arabia could easily use AQAP as an ally against the Iranian backed Houthi in Yemen. African nations may find it easier to pay off jihadi groups threatening their countries than face persistent destabilizing attacks in their cities. When money becomes scarce, the affiliates of al-Qaida and the Islamic State will have fewer qualms about taking money from their ideological enemies if they share common short-term interests. 

If you want to predict the future direction of the Islamic State and al-Qaida, avoid the flawed assumptions noted above. Instead, I offer these three notes: 

1. First, look to regional terrorism forecasts illuminating local nuances routinely overlooked in big global assessments of al-Qaida and the Islamic State. Depending on the region, either the Islamic State or al-Qaida may reign supreme and their ascendance will be driven more by local than global forces. 
2. Second, watch the migration of surviving foreign fighters from the Islamic State’s decline in Iraq and Syria. Their refuge will be our future trouble spot. 
3. Third, don’t try to anticipate too far into the future. Since bin Laden’s death, the terrorist landscape has become more diffuse, a half dozen affiliates have risen and fallen, and the Arab Spring went from great hope for democracies to protracted quagmires across the Middle East. 

Today’s terrorism picture remains complex, volatile, and muddled. There’s no reason to believe tomorrow’s will be anything different.

Will McCants: As we continue onwards in the so-called Long War, it’s a good time to reflect on where we are in the fight against al-Qaida and its bête noire, the Islamic State. Both organizations have benefited from the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings but they have taken different paths. Will those paths converge again or will the two organizations continue to remain at odds? Who has the best strategy at the moment? And what political changes might happen in the coming year that will reconfigure their rivalry for leadership of the global jihad?

To answer these questions, I’ve asked some of the leading experts on the two organizations to weigh in. First was Barak Mendelsohn, who analyzed the factors that explain the resilience and weaknesses of both groups. Then Clint Watts offered ways to avoid the flawed assumptions that have led to mistaken counterterrorism forecasts in recent years. 

Next up is Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, to examine the respective courses each group has charted to date and whether that's likely to change. 

Charles Lister: The world of international jihad has had a turbulent few years, and only now is the dust beginning to settle. The emergence of the Islamic State as an independent transnational jihadi rival to al-Qaida sparked a competitive dynamic. That has heightened the threat of attacks in the West and intensified the need for both movements to demonstrate their value on local battlefields. Having spent trillions of dollars pushing back al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan and al-Qaida in Iraq, the jihadi threat we face today far eclipses that seen in 2000 and 2001.

As has been the case for some time, al-Qaida is no longer a grand transnational movement, but rather a loose network of semi-independent armed groups dispersed around the world. Although al-Qaida’s central leadership appears to be increasingly cut off from the world, frequently taking many weeks to respond publicly to significant events, its word remains strong within its affiliates. For example, a secret letter from al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to his Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front in early 2015 promptly caused the group to cease plotting attacks abroad.

Seeking rapid and visible results, ISIS worries little about taking the time to win popular acceptance and instead controls territory through force.

While the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2010 challenged al-Qaida’s insistence that only violent jihad can secure political change, the subsequent repression and resulting instability provided an opportunity. What followed was a period of extraordinary strategic review. Beginning with Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen (in 2010 and 2011) and then with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar al-Din, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in Mali (2012), al-Qaida began developing a new strategy focused on slowly nurturing unstable and vulnerable societies into hosts for an al-Qaida Islamic state. Although a premature imposition of harsh Shariah norms caused projects in Yemen and Mali to fail, al-Qaida’s activities in Syria and Yemen today look to have perfected the new “long game” approach.

In Syria and Yemen, al-Qaida has taken advantage of weak states suffering from acute socio-political instability in order to embed itself within popular revolutionary movements. Through a consciously managed process of “controlled pragmatism,” al-Qaida has successfully integrated its fighters into broader dynamics that, with additional manipulation, look all but intractable. Through a temporary renunciation of Islamic hudud (fixed punishments in the Quran and Hadith) and an overt insistence on multilateral populist action, al-Qaida has begun socializing entire communities into accepting its role within their revolutionary societies. With durable roots in these operational zones—“safe bases,” as Zawahiri calls them—al-Qaida hopes one day to proclaim durable Islamic emirates as individual components of an eventual caliphate.

Breadth versus depth

The Islamic State (or ISIS), on the other hand, has emerged as al-Qaida’s obstreperous and brutally rebellious younger sibling. Seeking rapid and visible results, ISIS worries little about taking the time to win popular acceptance and instead controls territory through force and psychological intimidation. As a militarily capable and administratively accomplished organization, ISIS has acquired a strong stranglehold over parts of Iraq and Syria—like Raqqa, Deir el-Zour, and Mosul—but its roots are shallow at best elsewhere in both countries. With effective and representative local partners, the U.S.-led coalition can and will eventually take back much of ISIS’s territory, but evidence thus far suggests progress will be slow.

Meanwhile, ISIS has developed invaluable strategic depth elsewhere in the world, through its acquisition of affiliates—or additional “states” for its Caliphate—in Yemen, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Russia. Although it will struggle to expand much beyond its current geographical reach, the growing importance of ISIS in Libya, Egypt, and Afghanistan-Pakistan in particular will allow the movement to survive pressures it faces in Syria and Iraq. 

As that pressure heightens, ISIS will seek to delegate some level of power to its international affiliates, while actively encouraging retaliatory attacks—both centrally directed and more broadly inspired—against high-profile Western targets. Instability breeds opportunity for groups like ISIS, so we should also expect it to exploit the fact that refugee flows from Syria towards Europe in 2016 look set to dramatically eclipse those seen in 2015.

Instability breeds opportunity for groups like ISIS.

Charting a new course?

That the world now faces threats from two major transnational jihadist movements employing discernibly different strategies makes today’s counterterrorism challenge much more difficult. The dramatic expansion of ISIS and its captivation of the world’s media attention has encouraged a U.S.-led obsession with an organization that has minimal roots into conflict-ridden societies. Meanwhile the West has become distracted from its long-time enemy al-Qaida, which has now grown deep roots in places like Syria and Yemen. Al-Qaida has not disappeared, and neither has it been defeated. We continue this policy imbalance at our peril.

In recent discussions with Islamist sources in Syria, I’ve heard that al-Qaida may be further adapting its long-game strategy. The Nusra Front has been engaged in six weeks of on/off secret talks with at least eight moderate Islamist rebel groups, after proposing a grand merger with any interested party in early January. Although talks briefly came to a close in mid-January over the troublesome issue of the Nusra Front’s allegiance to al-Qaida, the group’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani now placed those ties as an issue on the table for negotiation. 

Al-Qaida has not disappeared, and neither has it been defeated.

The fact that this sensitive subject is now reportedly open for discussion is a significant indicator of how far the Nusra Front is willing to stretch its jihadist mores for the sake of integration in Syrian revolutionary dynamics. However, the al-Nusra Front's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is a long-time Al-Qaeda loyalist and doesn't fit the profile of someone willing to break a religious oath purely for the sake of an opportunistic power play. It is therefore interesting that this secret debate inside Syria comes amid whispers within Salafi-jihadi and pro-al-Qaida circles that Zawahiri is considering “releasing” his affiliates from their loyalty pledges in order to transform al-Qaida into an organic network of locally-inspired movements—led by and loosely tied together by an overarching strategic idea.

Whether al-Qaida and its affiliates ultimately evolve along this path or not, the threat they pose to local, regional, and international security is clear. When compounded by ISIS’s determination to continue expanding and to conduct more frequent and more deadly attacks abroad, jihadist militancy looks well-placed to pose an ever present danger for many years to come.