In defending their town against the heavy siege by Islamic State (Isis) fighters, the Syrian Kurdish inhabitants of the town of Kobani have had to face up to the possibility of annihilation. The battle became everyone’s to fight. Untrained young women were given weapons and sent to the front. Hand grenades were even distributed to grandmothers.
Days earlier, a Kurdish fighter who ran out of ammunition, preferred to blow herself up rather than be captured by Isis. If Kobani has fallen by the time you read this, it is quite likely that most of its people will have followed suit. The survivors, if they are lucky, will have joined the hundreds of thousands displaced Syrians and Iraqis fleeing the Isis butchers.
There is no doubt that sheer extreme brutality is one of the distinguishing marks of Isis. A handful of American and European victims have made the international news – although even the horrifying term ‘beheaded’ disguises the hideousness of what really happened: the head slowly hacked off the victim. But scores of beheadings take place when Isis comes to town. Heads are stuck on spikes, the murderers pose beside them and the photos are posted online.
And if it is not beheading, then it would probable be crucifixion.
But it’s important to realise that sheer brutality – so great that even other jihadists have publicly winced – is not the only distinguishing feature of Isis. Great barbarism goes hand in hand with great sophistication in the use of the media.
Isis wants us to know about and gasp at the executions, the terrifying scale and intensity of the violence, the European-born fighters, the recruitment of European women under the age of 25. Isis has several media organisations dedicated to the purpose of producing high-grade propaganda material and internet memes in at least four major languages: English, French, German and Russian. It knows how to manipulate the social media, like Twitter, and news organisations, so that its message comes across.
This technological sophistication already distinguishes Isis from other jihadist groups. But there’s more.
For the first time, a jihadist group has effective control over, or logistical access to, a vast territory, spanning huge tracts of Syria and Iraq. It’s estimated the size could be that of the UK.
From a political viewpoint, territorial control is significant in itself. In this case, it has economic implications.
The wealth of Isis, on one estimate, is around $2 billion. Some of that money could have come from hundreds of millions of dollars that were stolen from the banks of the Iraqi city of Mosul (although some doubt whether the banks did have that kind of money). However, other wealth is self-generating.
The part of Iraq under Isis hegemony accounts for 40 per cent of the country’s wheat production. In eastern Syria, Isis controls some oilfields and it has also entered the energy market.
In controlling territory, Isis is also able to raise funds from extortion, kidnapping and protection money (for example, through the transportation of goods between Turkey and parts of Iraq that are not controlled by Isis).
Self-generating wealth makes Isis less dependent than other groups on international fundraising. It has relative autonomy from regional powers that may have been among its early paymasters. Isis fighters have outgrown their original patrons.
It is this combination of features that makes the terrorist group such a formidable enemy. Add to that a leadership gifted in military strategy. There is certainly no doubt about the scale of the challenge for the US and Europe.
We need to be sure, however, that our response is not the one Isis would like to induce. It is battling for our hearts and minds, hoping to provoke the kind of action that would play into its hands.
Great barbarism goes hand in hand with great sophistication in the use of the media
Some of these actions concern the battlefield. But in broad cultural terms, it is evident that there is one thing that Isis really wants from us: non-Muslim citizens of Europe and the US.
It can be seen in the battle over naming. The official name of the group is ‘Islamic State’. It’s a proper noun and, therefore, should not take the definite article, ‘the’. But it’s only natural for a fluent English speaker to introduce ‘the’ into a sentence; it sounds unidiomatic to write things like, ‘The Syrian city of Raqqah is the capital of Islamic State.’
So the tiny word ‘the’ is introduced and a big flourish of language magic takes place. From a name that does not refer to a real State, we suddenly have ‘the Islamic State’ as though it actually is. Our own words lend it the appearance of statehood; indeed, an ‘Islamic’ statehood.
Muslim Britons celebrating the Eid al-Adha, last Saturday, were furious that their feast was spoiled by the tragic news of the execution of Alan Henning. They prayed for him and continue to protest that Western media should not lend even the thinnest of Islamic veneers to the terrorist group by referring to it by its chosen name.
We should take such mainstream Muslims seriously. Isis leaders certainly do. Anyone in their territory who is caught referring to them as Da’esh (which is the Arabic equivalent of the acronym ‘Isis’) is severely punished.
It is part of Isis propaganda that it stands for real mainstream Islam. It doesn’t.
The atrocities that take place in its territories – the policing, the beatings and the intimidation; the prohibition of long-standing features of everyday Middle Eastern culture (like music, dancing and traditional attire); the concerted effort at ‘missionary’ work among fellow Muslims – show just how cut off the Isis conception of Islam is from the mainstream (even mainstream conservatism).
If we swallow Isis propaganda, we would become an unwitting part of its machine. We may think that we’re being cunning, that we’re not being naive about the true nature of real Islam. We may think that we’re being gimlet-eyed about the enemy in our midst.
But we will actually be allowing ourselves to be incited by Isis. We would have accepted its playbook. A division of the world into Westerners versus Muslims plays right into its hands.
Isis doesn’t have the recruits it does from Europe – a tiny fraction of Europe’s Muslims but significant nonetheless – because disaffected youth can’t wait to join it.
Isis has an elaborate network of agents that identify and carefully groom possible recruits. A sweeping stigmatisation of mainstream Muslims would, of course, greatly help its work.
Isis is not the only propaganda machine at work. Other sources, identifying mainstream Islam, wholesale, as inherently fertile ground for Isis sympathisers, may be found in, for example, neo-conservative think-tanks and foundations, which twist every survey that is released to mean a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam is imminent, even when the authors of the study don’t agree.
But if these neo-conservatives should serve as an example, it is as what to avoid. They are the geniuses whose theories about the nature of the Middle East led us into the disaster that is Iraq. Their ‘war on terror’ led to a growth in Al-Qaeda recruitment that was unprecedented. The last thing we should do is listen to them.
ranierfsadni@europe.com