{"id":209624,"date":"2015-12-17T17:43:17","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T17:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-islamic-state-finds-rushing-headlong-to-the-apocalypse-easier-than-state-building\/"},"modified":"2015-12-17T17:43:17","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T17:43:17","slug":"the-islamic-state-finds-rushing-headlong-to-the-apocalypse-easier-than-state-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-islamic-state-finds-rushing-headlong-to-the-apocalypse-easier-than-state-building\/","title":{"rendered":"The Islamic State Finds Rushing Headlong to the Apocalypse Easier Than State-Building"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Onerous<\/p>\n

Onerous economic conditions in the Islamic State help fuel the refugee crisis.
Pictured: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann \/ Flickr Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Since the attacks in Paris that were either ordained or sanctioned by the Islamic State, it\u2019s only natural to wonder what happened to its state-building project and its vision of itself as a caliphate? The Islamic State is behaving more like a terrorist organization than a state. That\u2019s not to say that states don\u2019t mount terrorist attacks, but they usually do it via proxy forces and don\u2019t take credit for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

In one of the most outstanding articles about the Islamic State that I\u2019ve read yet (and I read a lot) titled <\/span>Is There a Method to ISIS\u2019s Madness?<\/span><\/a> in the <\/span>Atlantic,<\/span><\/i> Shadi Hamid writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u2026 the group focused its energy on developing fairly elaborate institutional structures in the territory it controlled within Iraq and Syria. ISIS wasn\u2019t simply making things up as it went along. It may have been mad, but there was a method to the madness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 But why, then, attack France\u2013one of the more militarily aggressive Western powers\u2013and potentially provoke a massive retaliatory response that would threaten the very \u201ccaliphate\u201d it had spent so much time building? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But, maintains Hamid, the Islamic State \u201chas always had international ambitions; it was more a question of when, not if.\u201d Also, it is \u201cfond of its apocalyptic fantasies, which featured prominently in the group\u2019s propaganda.\u201d Its \u201cstate-building and messianism coexisted in uneasy tension.\u201d Hamid asks:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Can an individual\u2013or, for that matter, an entire organization\u2013be, at once, both cautious and in the throes of reckless abandon?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, is the Islamic State rational or not? Hamid:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2026 rationality may take on a different meaning for those who believe not just in the imminence of the end times (which is fairly common in the Middle East), but also that the day of reckoning can be hastened.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Regarding that \u201cday of reckoning,\u201d at the <\/span>Guardian<\/span><\/i> Giles Fraser<\/span><\/a> wrote in October:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u2026 according to one reading of Islamic tradition (hadith), the place where this final malahim (apocalypse) will happen is \u2014 of all places \u2014 Dabiq. This is where the Muslim and Christian armies will finally face each other and the Crusaders will be destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, as, in part, the refugee situation attests, Islamic State occupation has seen an exodus from its areas in Syria and Iraq. Residents flee not only the harshness of its punishment and the lack of liberty, but the pervasive taxes that, at root, tend to be the last straw that drives citizens to either leave or revolt. According to another <\/span>Atlantic<\/span><\/i> article<\/span><\/a> in October:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In addition to closing businesses and preventing people from making a living, ISIS has imposed heavy taxes on those living under its rule, locals and activists say. \u201cOnly the air people breathe is not taxed,\u201d says [one man], adding that the cost of utilities like water and electricity has soared under ISIS rule.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apparently bungling its attempts to build a state, the Islamic State may be, either consciously or unconsciously, accelerating its caliphate stage and leapfrogging ahead, via its retaliation-invoking terrorist attacks, to the Apocalypse \u2013 a battle it obviously can\u2019t win.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I have written before: death wish \u2013 thy name is jihadism. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Onerous economic conditions in the Islamic State help fuel the refugee crisis.Pictured: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann \/ Flickr Commons) Since the attacks in Paris that were either ordained or sanctioned by the Islamic State, it\u2019s only natural to wonder what happened to its state-building project and its vision of itself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}