Islamic State Says Other Islamists Are Doing Jihad Wrong
The Islamic State (IS) published the 393rd edition of its newsletter, Al-Naba, on 1 June.
FORMAT AND FORTUNES
An interesting thing about Al-Naba 393 is that it only has eight pages.
When Al-Naba started in October 2015, fourteen months after the caliphate declaration, it had twelve pages.
From late December 2015 to late October 2017 (Al-Naba 11 to 103 inclusive), the newsletter had sixteen pages: as this was the height of IS’s fortunes, during the time of the caliphate and the massive wave of foreign attacks, there was more news, requiring more space.
From Al-Naba 104, published in early November 2017, two weeks after IS announced in Al-Naba that it was officially giving up the caliphate and returning to insurgency, up to Al-Naba 376 released on 2 February 2023, the format has been a twelve-page newsletter—with some very rare exceptions, such as Al-Naba 235 (May 2020), which had sixteen pages.
Then Al-Naba 377 had eight pages, as have five of the last six issues since late April 2023: 388-90 and 391-92. This would appear to be a reflection of the decline of IS’s operational tempo in the last few months: less activity, less to report, less pages.
THIS WEEK’S OPERATIONS
The headline on the front page of Al-Naba 393 is from the Sahel, celebrating IS “killing at least forty members of the Al-Qaeda militia in northern Burkina Faso”, plus killing two soldiers from Mali’s army and “two spies of the apostate militia after capturing them in two separate ambushes”. The other front-page report is also from Africa: IS claims to have killed four soldiers in Nigeria and two in Cameroon, wounding a number of others, in six separate attacks. Details for these two items are added on pages four and five.
Two other attacks from Africa are recorded in Al-Naba 393. IS claims that its jihadists in the “Central African Province” (Wilayat Wasat Ifriqiya) murdered “at least” twenty-one “unbelieving Christians” (al-nasara al-kafireen) and burned a number of their houses in “ongoing” attacks in the Beni area in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And in Mozambique, IS killed one soldier—they post a picture of the slain man with his identity documents—in the Macomia District in the far north of the country, while forcing other soldiers to flee and capturing weapons from them, including rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers (also shown in pictures).
IS claims that its “Khorasan Province (ISKP) used a pistol to assassinate a “Pakistani government spy” within Pakistan’s borders, in the Bilal Colony section of Peshawar.
The other five items in Al-Naba 393 are from the “Centre”, with two reports from Iraq—an IED ambush against government troops in Diyala and an attack on a barracks and support patrol south of Kirkuk—and three reports from eastern Syria, two in “Al-Baraka” (Hasaka) and one in “Al-Khayr” (Deir Ezzor), totally six attacks, all small-arms operations against the SDF/PKK.
AL-NABA 393 EDITORIAL
As ever, IS has its main editorial, the ideological message it wants to focus on this week, on page three of Al-Naba 393. The headline, “Limadha Nujihad?”, translates as, “Why Do We Strive?” or more loosely “Why Are We Fighting?”
IS begins by saying that “the deviant movements” (al-harakat al-munharifa)—meaning other Islamists—claim that “jihad for the sake of God” is only applicable when the right to Islamic da’wa (proselytism) is threatened, but when infidels allow Muslims to practice and propagate their faith, there is no justification for jihad. IS says that the idea that there are infidels who presently allow da’wa is “closer to fantasy than reality” because the only version of Islam they allow to spread is a “distorted deen (faith) that denies [the centrality of] al-wala wal-bara (loyalty [to believers] and disavowal [of non-Muslims]), and believes in coexistence with the unbelievers.”
This kind of tolerance is obviously an abomination to IS, since, according to Al-Naba, jihad was never a deterrent measure to protect preachers, but an integral component of “the one goal for which we were created, and for which we die: to serve God Almighty and reject everything that opposes Islam”, specifically “shirk” (idolatry, polytheism) and “kufr” (disbelief). Jihad is “obligatory” against “everyone who stands in our way [in striving] towards achieving this goal”.
After quoting the Qur’an and scholarly authorities to this effect, Al-Naba goes on to say that any “fighting that does not seek the supremacy of the shari’a over all else,” that does not seek to impose tawhid (monotheism) and suppress, subjugate, and destroy al-shirk, is not jihad. “Call it whatever you like—‘revolution’, ‘struggle’, ‘national [liberation]’, ‘legitimate resistance guaranteed by international law’—none of this comes under the name ‘jihad’ or even draws upon it”, Al-Naba argues.
As Al-Naba 393 summarises: “Jihad continues until the disbelievers cease their disbelief, either by accepting the deen of Islam or submitting to the rule of the Islamic State” and paying tribute (the jizya). Al-Naba adds that this is a war that goes on until Jesus (a Muslim Prophet, according to Islam) returns at the end of time to destroy the forces of evil and usher in a reign of universal justice.
Al-Naba concludes by lamenting that other Islamists (without naming them) have abandoned jihad as a permanent obligation and is especially angry that some of them use the biography of the Prophet Muhammad to argue their position. These other Islamists, says Al-Naba, point to the “Meccan period” when jihad was not yet obligatory for the umma (Muslim community). By the Tradition, the Meccan period lasted from 610 AD, when Muhammad began preaching, until 622, when the umma was expelled and made hijra (migration)—essentially an Exodus—to Medina.
It was in the Meccan period, Al-Naba notes, that jihad or holy war was regarded as a deterrent measure, but IS argues, citing various authorities, this outlook was for a “specific time” when Muslims were a small minority in a pagan city. The real message was to “be patient” until Muslims were strong enough, Al-Naba says, at which point using the sword “on the necks of the unbelievers” was the preferred option and waging a war “from that day until the establishment of God’s deen on [the whole] earth”. Lambasting those who are “stuck in the Meccan phase and insisting on remaining there forever”, the Naba editorial finishes with a call for Muslims to return to the true path of God, i.e. violent jihad.