The ISIS Apocalypse by William McCants

Author:William McCants [McCants, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2015-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Apocalypse Then and Now

The French scholar of Muslim apocalypticism, Jean-Pierre Filiu, has argued that most modern Sunni Muslims viewed apocalyptic thinking with suspicion before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It was something the Shi’a or the conspiracy-addled fringe obsessed over, not right-thinking Sunnis.1 Sure, the Sunni fringe wrote books about the fulfillment of Islamic prophecies. They mixed Muslim apocalyptic villains in with UFOs, the Bermuda triangle, Nostradamus, and the prognostications of evangelical Christians, all to reveal the hidden hand of the international Jew, the Antichrist, who cunningly shaped world events.2 But the books were commercial duds.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq and the stupendous violence that followed dramatically increased the Sunni public’s appetite for apocalyptic explanations of a world turned upside down. A spate of bestsellers put the United States at the center of the End-Times drama, a new “Rome” careering throughout the region in a murderous stampede to prevent violence on its own shores. The main antagonists of the End of Days, the Jews, were now merely supporting actors.3 Even conservative Sunni clerics who had previously tried to tamp down messianic fervor couldn’t help but conclude that “the triple union constituted by the Antichrist, the Jews, and the new Crusaders” had joined forces “to destroy the Muslims.”4

The Iraq war also changed apocalyptic discourse in the global jihadist movement. The languid apocalypticism of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri now had to contend with the urgent apocalypticism of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and his immediate successors. Iraq, the site of a prophesied bloodbath between true Muslims and false, was engulfed in a sectarian civil war. As Zarqawi saw it, the Shi’a had united with the Jews and Christians under the banner of the Antichrist to fight against the Sunnis. The Final Hour must be approaching, to be heralded by the rebirth of the caliphate, the Islamic empire that had disappeared and whose return was prophesied.

Because of the impending Final Hour, Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, had rushed to establish the Islamic State in 2006 and declare a commander of the faithful, the traditional title of the caliph, supreme religious and political ruler of the early Islamic empire. The Islamic State was meant to be a caliphate in all but name. Masri believed the caliphate had to be in place to fight for the Mahdi, the Muslim savior, who would appear any day. The actual person of the caliph was an afterthought, someone practically plucked off the street. The world wouldn’t be around long enough for it to matter.

Chastened by his failed predictions that first year, Masri’s messianic ardor cooled. At the same time, the person of the Islamic State’s first commander of the faithful, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, became more substantial. Iraqis in the Islamic State were unhappy with the power amassed by Masri, an Egyptian, and the other Arab foreign fighters. They gravitated toward Abu Umar, a fellow Iraqi, which enhanced his standing in the organization. As his stature grew, so did the power of his office.

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