Why does ISIS keep making enemies?

Editor's note : Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at the New America Foundation and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad."

(CNN) Whenever ISIS carries out a new atrocity, whether it's beheading a group of Egyptian Christians or enslaving Yazidi women in Iraq or burning its victims alive, the big question most people have is: Why on Earth is ISIS doing this? What could possibly be the point?

Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them.

ISIS is even at war with its most natural ally, al Qaeda in Syria.

The Nazis and the Khmer Rouge went to great lengths to hide their crimes against humanity. Instead, ISIS posts its many crimes on social media for global distribution with seemingly no thoughts for the consequences.

ISIS' beheading of the American journalist James Foley in mid-August galvanized much of the Western world against the group and led to an intensified U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS, which, according to U.S. military officials, has killed at least 6,000 of its fighters.

The burning to death by ISIS of the Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kaseasbeh, galvanized much of the Arab world against the group and has brought Jordan into the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in a much more aggressive manner.

The beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya by an ISIS affiliate led Egypt's air force on Monday to drop bombs on ISIS positions in eastern Libya.

Former CIA director Robert Gates is reported to have kept a maxim on his desk that read, "As a general rule, the way to achieve complete strategic surprise is to commit an act that makes no sense or is even self-destructive."

ISIS keeps surprising the world and its actions do indeed seem to make no sense or are self-destructive.

So what is going on here?

A key window into understanding ISIS is its English language "in-flight magazine" Dabiq. Last week the seventh issue of Dabiq was released, and a close reading of it helps explains ISIS' world view.

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.

The name of the Dabiq magazine itself helps us understand ISIS' worldview. The Syrian town of Dabiq is where the Prophet Mohammed is supposed to have predicted that the armies of Islam and "Rome" would meet for the final battle that will precede the end of time and the triumph of true Islam.

In the recent issue of Dabiq it states: "As the world progresses towards al-Malhamah al-Kubrā, ('the Great Battle' to be held at Dabiq) the option to stand on the sidelines as a mere observer is being lost." In other words, in its logic, you are either on the side of ISIS or you are on the side of the Crusaders and infidels.

When American aid worker Peter Kassig was murdered by ISIS in November, "Jihadi John" -- the masked British murderer who has appeared in so many ISIS videos -- said of Kassig: "We bury the first crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the rest of your armies to arrive."

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

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.

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.

This is the conclusion of an important forthcoming new book about ISIS by terrorism experts J.M. Berger and Jessica Stern who write that ISIS, like many other "violent apocalyptic groups, tend to see themselves as participating in a cosmic war between good and evil, in which moral rules do not apply."

This also similar to the conclusion of an excellent new cover story about ISIS in the Atlantic magazine by Graeme Wood who writes, "Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State (another name for ISIS) adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, 'the Prophetic methodology,' which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. 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.

ISIS members devoutly believe that they are fighting in a cosmic war in which they are on the side of good, which allows them to kill anyone they perceive to be standing in their way with no compunction. This is, of course, a serious delusion, but serious it is.

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When the 8th king arrives, they too will hand over their power and submit to its authority. I really dont believe they have any major part to play in the unfolding of biblical prophecy.

I actually think that its the shadow Governments within the UK and the US that secretly fund these groups in the first place. They create the problem and then ride in like the hero on a white horse to save us from it once they have the world in the mental condition that they want it it. Just like their god Satan The Devil, they continue to transform themselves into a hero whos here to save the day.

 

I was reading another page on the CNN website this morning when I ran into comments stating that religions are the cause of most of the violence caused now and in the past. That's one of the most stupid and inane assessments I have ever read.

And the guys give as examples the Crusades, the wars in the OT, the horrific crimes of ISIS, etc.

And yet, if you look for the real causes of war, religion is rarely mentioned. If you look at the most common reasons for terrorist acts, comparatively, religion is rarely mentioned.

Edit : It reminds me of a wonderful book I read a few years ago, Man's Fate, written by André Malraux. It's the story of a man taken into the whirlwind of the Chinese communist revolution and who was particularly engrossed by its supposed social promises. He believes so much in them that he starts resorting to violence in order to assert his political ideas and, at the end of the novel, he realizes that having fought violence by violence, he just added gas and logs into the fire, and therefore loses all his illusions... I wanted to quote the wikipedia page about this book, but the analysis is so poor that I'll abstain from it.

 

Religion is the number one cause of war and violence ? Prove it !

 

If you think that WWII was a war caused by religious motives, and more specifically because Catholics wanted to kill Jews.....

Nope ! I disagree !

 

Did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor because they had a beef against the Christians ?

As for the rest of your answer, I don't know what to tell you as an answer to it.

 

Hi All:

Follow the money! All wars are bankers wars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEBupAeo4

frank

 

Yes, we don't know what the future holds for them but I doubt they ever submit to anyone. They'll be wiped out instead. As for the conspiracy theories, sorry but I just don't buy them.
I don't think either they play a role in the unfolding of biblical prophecies excepted that they may have a share in the will of the nations to be united and to forget their differences and their feuds in order to fight them.

 

The point is whether religion is the main cause of violence and war now and in the past, not if religion has a share in them thereafter.

 

I find resources, power and land to be the main cause of most war.

'Religion' is an excuse used to motivate troops.

Look at the first Crusade for example, it was basically retaliation for the Arab-Byzantium wars, and Christianity was used to motivate Western Europe into backing it.

Individual soldiers use theology, ideology and the like for personal motivation, or as a way to deal with the horror.

 

Yes, religion hasn't been, by far, the main cause of wars and violence in history. If we could calculate the number of deaths occurred during the XX[SUP]th[/SUP] century that were directly caused by religion, how many would we find ? What would be the ratio, in comparison with other causes ? Even the violences that occurred in Northern Ireland ? Granted, there is a strong religious part in them but are they really a war of religion ? Yet, as religion is universal and pervades all the layers of the human society, there is obviously a strong connection between war and religion (example in the Bible Ez. 21:21-23) but that's not the main cause.

When I think about wars of religion, in the broad meaning of the expression, I think about the conquest of the Crusades*, the massacres[SUP]#[/SUP] carried out by the Inquisition, the massacre of the St Barthelemy and more, the massacre of the Sikh by a Muslim Emperor, the human sacrifices carried out by all the civilisations in the world and a few more I may forget.

But, if you compare all the wars of religion with the other wars which have plagued human history since, even not earlier than the last past 2 000 years for example, religion has rarely been the real cause of violence. It was one element of a whole, among other important factors which may have contributed to cause them like "geopolitical" motives, greed or merely thirst for glory.

Said otherwise, religion isn't more "guilty" of having caused wars than any other factor.

Nowadays, with the recent environmental issues, access to water, habitable land, petrol and not-polluted areas will surely be the main cause of wars.

With or without religion, the men will always find reasons (or better said: pretexts) to slaughter each other. The real cause of war is elsewhere.



* Yes, I agree with you. The Crusades had plentiful causes and religion was used to motivate those who were illiterate and uneducated, which constituted most of the armies back then, barring the nobles and the knights. The latter ones were certainly more in the know of the real causes.

# It's during this crusade against the Cathars that Arnaud Almaric is supposed to have said : Kill them all; God shall sort them out.

 

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The Japanese word Kamikaze is usually translated as "divine wind" (kami is the word for "god", "spirit", or "divinity", and kaze for "wind"). The word originated as the name of major typhoons in 1274 and 1281, which dispersed Mongolian invasion fleets under Kublai Khan.

 

Frank,

Conspiracy theories might be your daily bread but they ain't mine.

Did the Romans destroy Carthage because Bank of Italy wanted to nab a few grands to Bank of Africa ? Did the Turks kill 1 200 000 Armenians because bankers were behind ? Did Al-Andalus exist because the Qatar National Bank needed a few bucks more ? Did Napoleon fight his way till Moscow because the bank of France and the bank of Italy both needed to make ends meet ?

Please, is there real scientific and journalistic material to put forth ?

Edit: You know, there is something that I have noticed and you are not the only one to do it. We've been discussing and debatting for years over many issues, which means that you know how I work, what makes sense to me and what I will reply to such kinds of material, and YET, you keep posting them. That's insulting ! That's insulting to me, as if you were throwing mud to me and saying "eat it" but first and foremost, that's insulting to you... because the other members of this db and the lurkers out there aren't stupid either...