In his book “Utopia and Ideology,” Karl Menheim considered that history and utopia are two inseparable things. The search for utopia is a search for history, and the realization of utopia is the realization of history, and this is exactly what many radical organizations believed, some of which were secular and some of which were religious.

Our article is concerned with the second category, especially the extremist Islamist organizations, of which the terrorist organization “ISIS” still sits at the top. The period of my work on my master’s and doctoral thesis revealed to me that the members of ISIS firmly believe in an afterlife. These were their answers to the questions (questionnaire) that I prepared for this purpose. After that, I decided to pursue this topic to learn about its roots and the extent of its influence through what the organization was publishing. Through its means and media outlets, it presents it as an important part of its propaganda, and after this narrative became established, it became part of its combat doctrine.

We must not forget that this complex is an authentic component of the Islamic religion, and its influence has not ceased, whether on the Sunni or Shiite level, from the first days of the Prophet Muhammad’s call until our present era.

ISIS ideology

It was clearly visible through the slogans adopted by the organization, and the magazines, newspapers, and films it issued, that they are fighting with the certainty that “ISIS” is the promised group through which all the infidels from the “Army of the Cross” and “the Romans” will be defeated near Damascus in “Dabiq.” And “the depths.” After achieving the establishment of the “Rightly Guided Caliphate,” the banner will be handed over to the “Awaited Mahdi.” That is why ISIS was trying to approach this imaginary narrative picture as drawn by hadiths and narratives related to Islamic eschatology, and one of its most prominent ideas and slogans was the caliphate as it first began, bright, white, and mature, “on the method of the Prophet.”

On the other hand, the ideology of ISIS was the same as the ideology of Salafist jihadism. In this aspect, ISIS was based on the intellectual and militant history of the Salafist jihadist movement. But this ideology was subjected to re-melting under the fires of the “utopia” of the Caliphate. Despite the magnitude of this ideology, its entrenchment, and its historical precedence, the imaginary forces of the idea of ​​the Caliphate – the historical symbol of imperial or global Islam – were able to overcome the ideological forces.

These movements’ need for this discourse comes from a number of reasons. In addition to being a religiously imposed doctrine, they possess a magically influential discourse that is increasingly needed in times of crises and wars.

We know that the ideology of global jihadism, with all its historical weight extending from the camps in Afghanistan, Peshawar, Chechnya, and Bosnia, and the “Mujahideen Services Office” during the period of Abdullah Azzam 1941-1989 AD, and the “Global Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders 1998 AD,” underwent a complete re-melting of geography after 2003. Stretching between Iraq and Syria.

In this ancient historical laboratory, and under the raging fire of the Iraqi situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, this nihilistic organization was enriched. “ISIS”, from the time it was a basic embryo (relative to Al-Qaeda) until it became a global monster, is taken into account by major powers. Returning to Karl Menheim, he says that utopia can be an explosive force within the womb of the existing system in which it arose, working to transform it and demolish its borders, so that it can be liberated towards the future.

“ISIS” was not the only organization that transformed “utopia” into “dystopia.” The history of jihadist Salafism is full of a number of movements that took this religious doctrine as an ideological and organizational foundation and reached the same fate. Here we can remember Mustafa Shukri’s group from 1942 to 1978 AD. (Takfir wal-Hijrah) in Egypt, and Abdul Latif Musa’s group 1959-2009 (Jund Ansar Allah) in Palestine. The speech of one of the movements affiliated with the Jihadist Salafist movement is hardly devoid of any color of the Islamic eschatological spectrum.

“A religiously imposed doctrine”

These movements’ need for this discourse comes from a number of reasons. In addition to being a religiously imposed doctrine, they possess a magically influential discourse that is increasingly needed in times of crises and wars. The Islamic eschatological discourse combines a “YouTube” aspect, represented by the return of the “Caliphate on the Method of Prophethood” and the dream of a great imperial state, with a “Jihadist” combative aspect that benefits these movements in strengthening their organizational ties and sharpening the motivations of their fighters, as the groups that believe in this narrative believe that they are “the sect.” Al-Mansoura, which is fighting the “infidels” at the end of time, and through its hand, God will conquer Jerusalem.

That is why she is fighting in a fateful way written more than fourteen hundred years ago, and as a sign of the fulfillment of the narrative, integrating the past and the future. Fighting is her destiny, which she has not finished yet, and it is what gives symbolic value to her fighters.

With this combat doctrine, the eschatological movements engage in battles and wage their bloody wars under the motive of imagining the “great epic” with which they will conclude their “jihadist” journey and through which they will cross the gate of this world to the promised paradise.

As we saw during the years following 2014, the imaginary of eschatological war formed the most prominent part of ISIS’s ideological architecture, as well as its combat doctrine. This eschatological war will not be devoid of purifying or purifying dimensions. Dr. Muhammad Ali al-Kubaisi says in his book “Utopia and Heritage”: “The utopian discourse opens up to the purifying dimension, and this is an important characteristic of the utopian project in general… Al-Farabi moved from the pre-Islamic, immoral, immoral, and misguided cities to The virtuous city. Departure here is refutation and distinction at the same time. Refuting evils and pests, and distinguishing the good from the bad.”

Therefore, reading the history of the “ISIS” organization reveals to us that the doctrine of the eschatological caliphate, with its nihilistic face and its conceptual root based on the concept of “seditions and epics,” killing and wars, represents an important aspect of the reasons for its rapid rise, and also stands behind the organization’s achievement of the highest levels of brutality among armed terrorist organizations. Not to mention – as we mentioned earlier – that it is a pillar of his propaganda, and thus attracts young people to him from all over the world.

Therefore, in order to understand the “ISIS” organization, we must understand the relationships of overlap and intertwining – and then the conflict – between utopia and ideology, and I mean the utopia of the caliphate and its “virtuous” state, as depicted by texts within the Islamic eschatological narrative, where, like all other religions, it devoted a group of hadiths, novels, and stories to present its vision. The futurist of the world and her cosmic vision of herself and the world.

The Sunni Islamic heritage divided these hadiths and narrations according to the events into two main sections, the first under the name “events that occur before the emergence of the Mahdi,” and the second section is specific to the events related to the Mahdi or following his emergence.

We can look at one of the mechanisms of operation of this narrative, whereby any event, no matter how human or secular “from the world” within the eschatological narrative, turns into a sign with metaphysical content. The Islamic heritage has collected these signs and divided them into the minor signs of the Hour and the major signs of the Hour. The latter is the subject of interest in the Islamic eschatology, as it is specific, clear, and has not yet begun, and it does not precede the end of the world by a long period like the minor signs whose countdown began with the Prophet Muhammad himself. And it’s almost running out.

The exhaustion of minor signs – as eschatological thought believes – is the engine and motivation for the establishment of these movements and their political and military gathering, not now, but for centuries. History has never ceased to tell us that there is never an era or stage in its stages without such movements appearing.

Islamic eschatological narrative

The Sunni Islamic heritage divided these hadiths and narrations according to the events into two main sections, the first under the name “events that occur before the emergence of the Mahdi,” and the second section is specific to the events related to the Mahdi or following his emergence. These perceptions and visions (Apocalypse, meaning the revelation of the end of the world and the universe) were collected in Islamic heritage under the name “temptations and epics,” or “the chapter on the events of the end of time,” or “signs of the Hour.”

In addition to the narrative of salvation, the Islamic eschatological narrative also includes a large narrative, which is the Mahdist narrative, or as the Islamic heritage calls it, “the remembrance of the Mahdi and his emergence at the end of time.” In this regard, Al-Shawkani (1759-1834 AD) counts the “frequent” hadiths about the Mahdi: “fifty hadiths, including the authentic ones, the good ones, and the weak and unmandable ones, and they are frequent without doubt or doubt. Naim bin Hammad, who died in 844 AD, can be considered the first to be aware of this type of religious literature, so he dedicated a chapter to it and called it (The Book of Seditions), and many Muslim theologians followed in his footsteps, and continue to do so, to this day.

The idea of ​​the caliphate and the final war, “the great epic,” has been present in jihadist thinking and conscience since “Hizb ut-Tahrir” by Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani 1909-1977 AD, and “The Takfir and Hijra Group” by Shukri Mustafa 1942-1978 AD, and Abd al-Latif Musa 1959-2009 AD, but after the book “Da’wah “Global Islamic Resistance” by Abu Musab Al-Suri 1958 AD “Mustafa Set Maryam” and in conjunction with the global dimension of the “Al-Qaeda” organization, the eschatological idea took on a more organized and therefore more bloody, grassroots character. Through this huge book, Al-Suri tried to modernize the idea of ​​the return of the Caliphate and reread it according to the political and military developments that had emerged on the global scene.

Thus, the Syrian strategically redrew the eschatological plan and prepared it to be implemented directly by the jihadi organizations, that is, he prepared it completely and all that is missing is implementation. Therefore, it was not at all excluded that the fighting groups in Iraq, starting with Al-Zarqawi’s group, “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” relied on the ideas of this terrorism theorist, and that they included his idea of ​​the return of the caliphate in an afterlife in their strategy, and this is what appeared through their statements, speeches, publications, books, and slogans. And her films and poems. This is the last war, consisting of a long series of battles, which the organization’s members may not realize, but they are certain that it is inevitably coming. Al-Adnani says, “We will invade Rome… and if we do not reach it now, our children and grandchildren will.”

In conclusion, it can be said that a careful reading of the history of the eschatological, Mahdist, or redemptive Islamist movements reveals that they linked everything to the establishment of a military caliphate “on the method of the Prophet” and made it the most important strategic goal, as they considered its establishment not only the only way to restore the Islamic state, but rather it was divinely destined and historically inevitable. . The “believing” youth, the heir to active and awakening Islam, must join the “Victorious Sect” that “gnaws on faith with its roots and holds on to its religion like one holding hot coals, and they must immigrate or station themselves and fight within an organization whose goal is to establish a caliphate at the end of time until they are martyred at the hands of this just caliph.” And Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in his sermon: “And give good news to the believers,” citing the hadith of the Victorious Sect, “and a group of my nation will continue to fight… until the command of God comes to them.”

During his announcement of the unification of his organization with the “Al-Nusra Front” (currently Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham), which he says was the one who created it and sent one of his soldiers, Abu Muhammad Al-Julani, and supported him with men and money, “with this announcement, the name of the Islamic State and the name of the Al-Nusra Front will be hidden, and they will be part of our blessed history.” This is what Al-Baghdadi said one day, and this article explains why he said it.