Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 25

DAESH

Ali, served five years before he was killed. Daesh’s leaders, no doubt aware of the high attrition rate of caliphs
in Islamic history and worried about the probability of
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s demise, announced in the first
issue of Dabiq magazine, “We will strike the neck of
anyone—whoever he may be—that attempts to usurp
his [referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] leadership.”50

Shia, Alawites, and the
Twelfth Imam
O Sunnis of Iraq, the time has come for you to learn the
lesson of the past … that nothing will work with the rafidah except slicing their throats. They conceal their hatred,
enmity and rage towards the Sunnis … they trick and
deceive them.51
—Daesh spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
Like the Sunni, the Shia also believe in the figure
called the Mahdi. The Shia believe the Mahdi has
appeared and will return as the twelfth imam.52 Former
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was
reported as saying that the real ruler of Iran was the
twelfth imam and government policy should be guided
by hastening his return.53 Vali Nasr, writing about the
Shia revival in 2007, reports that Muqtadir al-Sadr,
the Iraqi Shia cleric who gained prominence after the
fall of Saddam Hussein, named his army the Mahdi
army to indicate “that his cause was that of the Twelfth
Imam.”54 According to a Pew Research Center study
conducted in 2011–2012, 72 percent of Muslims surveyed in Iraq believed they would live to see the return
of the Mahdi.55
To understand Daesh’s actions in Syria, one needs
to understand the deeply rooted animosity between
the ruling Alawites and the Syrian Sunni Muslim
Brotherhood, or Ikhwan.56 The Syrian government,
headed by Bashar al-Assad, the son of Hafez al-Assad, has maintained control in Syria by brutally
repressing the Sunni majority living there. After
the Iranian Revolution (1979), Syrians “took to the
streets … demanding an Islamic state—one not controlled by infidel Alawites.”57 The Ikhwan tried to
assassinate then President Hafez al-Assad and seized
the Syrian town of Hama. Hafez al-Assad responded
by destroying the town and killing twenty thousand
members of the Ikhwan.58 Today, Bashar al-Assad
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2016

carries the same animosity toward the Ikhwan,
cl aiming that Turkish President Recep Tayyib
Erdogan “belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood ideology” and is ”very fanatical and that’s why he still
supports ISIS.”59
The Assads belong to the Alawite sect, which
believes in a sort of trinity.60 The word alawi means
“upper, heavenly, or celestial.” While Alawites claim
to be Muslim, with the name derived from the name
Ali, Hafez al-Assad reportedly said, “I’m not Moslem.
I belong to the Allawi faith …. The Allawi religion
is a very complicated business.”61 According to Sam
Dagher, “Alawites believe that Imam Ali … was an
incarnation of God, who revealed himself in six other
people before Ali’s seventh-century caliphate.”62 In the
eyes of Daesh, the Shia and Alawites are apostates;
this is why Daesh is committed to their destruction.

The Return of the Mahdi
In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful,
here is the awaited Mahdi. … Pay allegiance to brother
Mohammed Abdullah al-Qurayshi.63
— Juhayman ibn Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Otaybi
While Daesh clings to the prophetic end-of-days
imagery, believing the end of days imminent, similar
claims were also made on the last day of Ramadan in
1979, when gunshots broke the early morning silence
at Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca. Snipers fired
from the minarets, killing scores of worshipers.64
The bloodbath continued for two weeks as Saudi
soldiers refused to retake the holy ground, citing religious concerns, and Saudi officials sought guidance
in hadith books.
Saudi soldiers thought they would go to hell if
they tried to retake the mosque because the Quran
expressly forbids fighting there.65 The gunmen,
Saudi youth familiar with a prophecy involving the
Mahdi, believed they were ushering in the end of
days.66 They believed the Mahdi had arrived, as a
man with attributes of the Mahdi had appeared.
The Saudi government checked old hadith books to
determine if the individual really was the Mahdi,
and after determining that he was not, issued a
fatwa, or religious ruling, giving Saudi soldiers the
religious authority to retake the mosque. Despite the
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