The Purpose Of ISIS

In the past few years, the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, more commonly known as ISIS, has been slowly creeping into the minds of the public, whether it be on social media or on the news. The notorious terrorist group calls itself an Islamic Caliphate and, as time passes, gains greater control of the Middle East. Bombings, beheadings, and massacres have built up the Islamic State’s notorious reputation. With every public execution, growing numbers of people start to associate all Muslims with extremist groups such as ISIS. While the Islamic State bases its principles on core Islamic values, its harsh and unorthodox interpretation of the Qur’an as a political system rather than as theological basis for daily life not only misrepresents conventional

One could debate that ISIS does in fact reflect the Islamic faith because of its intent to establish Sharia law under an Islamic Caliphate. Not only does this ultimate goal of ISIS clearly originate from the Hadiths of Prophet Muhammad but also from the Islamic State’s political idea of switching to Islam and paying tribute to the Caliphate or perish (Abbas). As ISIS derives most of its political structure from the very core of Islam, the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic State must have ties to Islam. However, ISIS manipulates the wordings of the religious scripture by taking them out of context in order to provide a justification of their terrible deeds. B. Qureshi, a former Muslim, says that “ISIS uses religion as mask to hide their political agenda” (Salfi). This reveals that the Islamic State exploits the Qur’an as a sort of Trojan Horse, which allows them to spread their political ideas and goals to the masses. By using a religion to represent the face of their state, ISIS able to gain a following in a region where the majority happen to be struggling and wishing for salvation. For example, ISIS tries to convince Muslims that they live “in the times of Early Muslims,” a time in which “Islam had a trajectory of violence” through its main “propaganda magazine, Dabiq”(Salfi). Through

Islam, a faith of 1.6 billion people, should not be at fault for the behavior of extremist groups such as ISIS (Swanson). It is absurd to expect a religion with this many followers to take responsibility for the actions of a small minority of their radical brethren. If Christianity cannot be condemned for the acts of white supremacist groups such as the KKK or Buddhism for a few of their monks for killing others, then what right do people have to criticize the followers of the Islamic fate the death of many people at the hands of a relatively small groups such as ISIS. Most Muslims today practice a peaceful form of the religion, nothing like the variant ISIS preaches. For that reason, “the current generation of jihadists is more likely to be ‘Islamized radicals’ than ‘radical Islamists.’ The majority of these extremists happen started out as social outcasts. Because of this, they are more susceptible to the anarchic influences of ISIS. (Tharoor). As social outcasts do not possess the same mindset as the majority of people, they become more vulnerable to being manipulated and, thus, possess a greater likelihood to harm others. Since these people represent such a small percentage of the world's population, the blame cannot be placed on Islam for the actions of ISIS, a group made up of many of