ISIS/DAESH and the Dabiq Prophecy

My buddy Ryan asked me for my take on an opinion piece at CNN by Peter Bergen entitled Why does ISIS keep making enemies?. I read the article. Here are some comments on specific items.

"Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy"

Bergen obviously isn't an actual strategist, because sometimes that's absolutely a sound strategy. For example: in World War II, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States declared war on Japan *AND* Germany. In the case of ISIS/DAESH, they gain legitimacy amongst the same sort of al Qaeda, Taliban, Boko Haram type folks who think that that laundry list of other sects and religions are kufr and the Saudi types aren't Wahabist enough.

"The mistake some make when viewing ISIS is to see it as a rational actor. Instead, as the magazine documents, its ideology is that of an apocalyptic cult that believes that we are living in the end times and that ISIS' actions are hastening the moment when this will happen."

ISIS/DAESH *IS* a rational actor. That's the entire argument Bergen is making. He's literally talking past himself. The whole point of a rational actor is that they have a predictable philosophy, and that their actions follow corresponding patterns, and that's exactly the argument that Bergen is making. This is just as intellectually lazy as claiming that the Iranians are a bunch of millennarian lunatics who can't be reasoned with. It's ridiculous to assume that because your adversary's values and logic is different than your own, that they don't have values or logic at all.

"In other words, ISIS wants a Western ground force to invade Syria, as that will confirm the prophecy about Dabiq."

This is the first time I've EVER heard of this Dabiq thing. I didn't even think that Mohammed ever left the Arabian peninsula, but I could be wrong about that. This whole thing is possible, I guess, but I feel like ISIS/DAESH might have done a better job of getting that message out if Peter Bergen's the only one who's figured it out.

"We live in an increasingly secularized world, so it's sometimes difficult to take seriously the deeply held religious beliefs of others. For many of us the idea that the end of times will come with a battle between 'Rome' and Islam at the obscure Syrian town of Dabiq is as absurd as the belief that the Mayans had that their human sacrifices could influence future events."

This was a very silly thing for Peter Bergen to make, and a very silly comparison for him to make.

"But for ISIS, the Dabiq prophecy is deadly serious. Members of ISIS believe that they are the vanguard fighting a religious war, which Allah has determined will be won by the forces of true Islam."

*shrug* Could be, but if Dabiq was actually the Islamic Megiddo, I sort of feel like I'd have heard about it by now.

"'Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn't actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combated, has already led the United States to underestimate it.' Amen to that."

This is something that I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years. To a great degree, I feel like Western nations have failed to really understand Islamic culture and use that culture to defeat terrorism. I'm currently working to dramatically shorten a long article about the DoD's General Order 1(X), which restricts American troops' conduct in the CENTCOM AOR, and which is a case study in how not to study Islamic law. Western states have been very focused on introducing the concept of pluralism (a distinction, rather than a "separation", between religion and state), and that's a great thing and a lot of Muslims respond to it. However, it's a novel concept for many Muslims, as the Islamic tradition inexorably unites mosque and state. Westerners love to complain about sharia, and that's all well and good, but it would be nice if Western powers would actually put together some groups of people to study and understand the Quran, the Sunnan, the Ahadith, and the various commentaries on Islamic jurisprudence, and use that corpus of law to build better narratives to counter the allegedly apostate interpretation of sharia that those terrorist groups subscribe to. I don't think that's actually Bergen's point, but it ought to be.