Ideological Roots of ISIS

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
Denying the holiness of the Koran or the prophecies of Muhammad is straightforward apostasy. But Zarqawi and the state he spawned take the position that many other acts can remove a Muslim from Islam. These include, in certain cases, selling alcohol or drugs, wearing Western clothes or shaving one’s beard, voting in an election—even for a Muslim candidate—and being lax about calling other people apostates. Being a Shiite, as most Iraqi Arabs are, meets the standard as well, because the Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection. (The Islamic State claims that common Shiite practices, such as worship at the graves of imams and public self-flagellation, have no basis in the Koran or in the example of the Prophet.) That means roughly 200 million Shia are marked for death. So too are the heads of state of every Muslim country, who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office or enforcing laws not made by God.
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The humanitarian cost of the Islamic State’s existence is high. But its threat to the United States is smaller than its all too frequent conflation with al-Qaeda would suggest. Al-Qaeda’s core is rare among jihadist groups for its focus on the “far enemy” (the West); most jihadist groups’ main concerns lie closer to home. That’s especially true of the Islamic State, precisely because of its ideology. It sees enemies everywhere around it, and while its leadership wishes ill on the United States, the application of Sharia in the caliphate and the expansion to contiguous lands are paramount. Baghdadi has said as much directly: in November he told his Saudi agents to “deal with the rafida [Shia] first … then al-Sulul [Sunni supporters of the Saudi monarchy] … before the crusaders and their bases.” 

http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/13/sectarianism-of-islamic-state-ideological-roots-and-political-context/j1iy
In a video interview posted online in October 2013, Sami al-Aridi—the top cleric of the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front—explained some of the ideas that differentiate the Islamic State from other jihadi groups, including al-Qaeda. In contrast to the Islamic State, al-Aridi cited as legitimate scholars mainstream Wahhabi clerics, such as Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz Al al-Sheikh and prominent theologian Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz.43 He noted that al-Qaeda adheres to the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence and is more accommodating than the Islamic State of Muslim clerics, often engaging them.44
In contrast, the Islamic State considers clerics a key factor in the persistence of tyrannical, illegitimate governments in the Muslim world. The Islamic State believes that tabayun (a process of investigation) is sometimes needed to determine whether a person is a true Muslim. According to al-Aridi, the Islamic State declares a Muslim to be kafir (an infidel or unbeliever) based on intuitive suspicion, consequentiality, and vagueness.45
For the Islamic State, ordinary Muslims receive their religious education from clerics who are aligned with corrupt Muslim rulers who perpetuate Western hegemony. Accordingly, the Islamic State prioritizes the fight against clerics and rulers over the fight against the West.46
The Islamic State’s particular sectarian outlook is also characterized by the tendency to emphasize sunna (the Prophet’s traditions) as integral to the faith—a departure from mainstream clerics who consider them nonobligatory secondary practices that only strengthen faith. The Islamic State deems a person who adheres to these traditions to be respectful of the Prophet and those who do not adhere to the traditions to be disrespectful. Abu Mariya al-Qahtani, who served as the Nusra Front’s chief cleric before he was replaced by al-Aridi, wrote in February 2014 that the Islamic State distinctly integrated these traditions into Islamic jurisprudence, changing terms from “optional” and “recommended” to “obligatory” and “duty.”47
This view was also popular among followers of Juhayman al-Utaybi, a Saudi extremist who seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca along with his followers in November 1979 and declared himself the Mahdi (an expected messiah in Islam). According to Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, religious followers of al-Utaybi would often pray in a mosque with their shoes on, and would take them off as they leave the mosque, as the Prophet Muhammad had reportedly done on occasions.48
Mainstream clerics often dismiss such practices as signs of the Islamic State’s lack of religious qualifications, but for the group, these revivalist practices are evidence of adherence to original Sunni traditions.
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According to the Islamic State, a Muslim becomes an infidel if he fails to declare as an infidel another person worthy of being declared as such. The group declared al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri to be an infidel because he sympathized with ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, who endorsed democracy. The Islamic State considers members of the Nusra Front as apostates because they fight alongside foreign-backed groups.
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Al-Anbari, the longest-serving and highest authority in the Islamic State until his death in March 2016, produced 40 lectures designed to explain his group’s religious ideology. The lectures centered on the illegitimacy of institutions in Muslim countries, including mosques and courts. He saved special ire for Shia, Sufis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and mainstream Salafists (he often referred to the latter as murjia, a pejorative term for pacifist imams). In one of his lectures, he singled out these Salafists as the “most absurd” among the Islamic State’s detractors, a reflection of the fierce ideological battle between the two since the group’s recent rise in Syria and Iraq.
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The central role of Islamist ideas is best captured in a saying popular among Islamic State supporters, attributed to Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye: “The Islamic State was drafted by Sayyid Qutb, taught by Abdullah Azzam, globalized by Osama bin Laden, transferred to reality by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and implemented by al-Baghdadis: Abu Omar and Abu Bakr.”


http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/9304.htm
These are Islamic Arabic terms with a rich, nuanced and complicated history over centuries, but which extremists have simplified and weaponized and wield with great effectiveness to brainwash the young, zealous, and untutored recruit. They are Kufr (unbelief), Shirk (polytheism or ascribing partners to God), Al-Wala wal-Bara (loyalty and disavowal), Taghut (tyranny), Rafidah (rejectionists, a pejorative term for Shia Muslims) and Tawhid (oneness or strict monotheism of God). Except for Tawhid, which is the key Islamic doctrine not limited to Salafis, all searches returned results of English-language voices reinforcing the underlying bases of the Islamic State narrative even though none of the voices were of actual ISIS members or supporters. The top entry for al-wala wal-bara – the key concept of actively hating non-Muslims and giving loyalty to the (right) Muslims – was by none other than the late Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Shiraz Maher, in his magisterial new book (Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea, 2016) notes about this key element in the ISIS/Al-Qa'ida discourse that "all of this was ultimately shaped to create alternative structures of legitimacy and authority for Salafi-jihadi actors who typically operate beyond the framework of the state. It allowed them to delegitimize their opponents for not having displayed adequate levels of al-wala wal-bara, while presenting themselves as the custodians of a pure, unadulterated form of Islam."
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In 2014, ISIS used the slaughter of the supposedly rebellious Jewish Beni Qurayza tribe in Medina, exterminated at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify the slaughter of the rebellious Syrian Sunni Muslim Shaitaat tribe. As George Orwell wrote, "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."


http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2015/02/24-byman-williams-isis-war-with-al-qaeda
In territory it controls, the Islamic State uses mass executions, public beheadings, rape and symbolic crucifixion displays to terrorize the population into submission and “purify” the community, and at the same time provides basic (if minimal) services. This mix earns them some support, or at least acquiescence, from the population. Al Qaeda, in contrast, favors a more measured approach. A decade ago Zawahiri chastised the Iraqi jihadists for their brutality, correctly believing this would turn the population against them and alienate the broader Muslim community, and he has raised this issue in the current conflict as well. Al Qaeda recommends proselytizing in the parts of Syria where its affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra holds sway, trying to convince local Muslims to adopt Al Qaeda’s views rather than forcing them to do so.


http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-68?result=4&rskey=ysOG1P&mediaType=Article#ref_acrefore-9780199340378-e-68-note-57
no jihadi group calls itself “takfiri”; instead, it is a label used against jihadis by some of their non-jihadi opponents, and it is also used in intra-jihadi disputes. These kinds of disputes have led to the split between IS and al-Qa‘ida. Al-Qa‘ida declared its dissociation from IS because of the infighting that it was causing among jihadis,³¹ while IS deemed al-Qa‘ida to have deviated from the true path of Islam for failing, among other things, to declare takfir against the Shi‘ites and to wage war against non-jihadi groups in Syria.³²
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On the level of infighting among jihadis, since believers have an individual obligation to take up jihad and defend the faith, doctrinal disagreements have served as a recipe for bloody divisions or sedition (fitna). The public dispute between al-Qa‘ida and IS is not unique to jihadism. Harun describes Peshawar as the place that welcomed jihadis to fight against the Soviets and also as a place “lit with internal strife [fitna] and divisive and destructive ideas to Islam.” ⁵³ Many zealots, he relates, did not hesitate to declare takfir against fellow Muslims, lamenting that the “takfiris” were obsessed with rejecting the religious credentials of jihadi leaders, including Bin Laden, who were not sufficiently religious in their eyes.⁵⁴ He claims that in 1992, two takfiris attempted to assassinate two al-Qa‘ida leaders, Abu ‘Ubayda al-Banshiri and Abu Hafs al-Misri, in Miranshah, North Waziristan,⁵⁵ and other takfiris even attempted to assassinate Bin Laden in Sudan in 1994.⁵⁶ Other writings by jihadi ideologues suggest that some jihadis refused to fight alongside the Taliban, deeming some of their religious practices, such as performing prayer at a cemetery, a form of association with God’s divine unity (shirk), and therefore accusing them of kufr (unbelief).⁵⁷

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8873.htm
"The following is the executive summary of Prof. Ella Landau-Tasseron's paper. The full paper is available here: http://www.memri.org/publicdocs/MEMRI_IA_1205_Delegitimizing_ISIS_On_Islamic_Grounds-FINAL.pdf
"The critics are appalled by ISIS' atrocities and do their best to delegitimize it. They make no reference to the fact that ISIS is building an Islamic state that revives past Islamic institutions, such as the contract between community and ruler (bay'a), the seizure of war booty, the poll tax on Christians, the Koranic punishments for specific crimes (hudud), Shari'a courts and civil courts (mazalim), the choice offered to polytheists between conversion and the sword, and the owning of slaves. ISIS' goal, to make Allah's word supreme (by force if necessary), is directly derived from pre-modern Sunni consensus. In modern times most Muslims are not driven to commit atrocities in order to implement this goal. However, objecting to it explicitly or refuting it convincingly is a difficult task, as this goal and the jihad needed to achieve it, are based on the core texts of Islam.

Both ISIS and its critics rely on Islamic texts, sometimes the very same texts. The nature and content of these texts require selective reading and allow various and even contradictory conclusions."