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The ISIS Reader

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The ISIS Reader

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Highlights

  • The Islamic State movement began as a small group under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadi who established a camp in Afghanistan that collected displaced fighters and families from the Levant in the late 1990s. (Location 104)
  • The initial political agenda of the Islamic State movement was ambitious. It intended to expand its numbers from a handful of foreign fighters and local hosts to a force that dominated the Iraqi resistance. Although Zarqawi’s group had valuable experience in clandestine operations, it had to outpace the reorganising Ba’athists, rival Islamists, and a fledgling Iraqi government with one hand, while battling a very capable foreign military coalition with the other. (Location 113)
  • Ceding the day-to-day struggle (sniping and roadside bombs) to local insurgent groups, Zarqawi’s forces focused on high-visibility attacks against symbolic targets using ‘precision-guided’ suicide bombers and special operations that attracted media attention and popularity among resistance sympathisers. (Location 123)
  • It is a strategy reflected in al-Qaida strategist Abu Bakr Naji’s Management of Savagery, which propagates a controversial and violent method for destroying the government and society before starting anew. (Location 127)
  • As for the concise but beneficial 100-page book titled Management of Savagery, written by an unknown author who went by the pen name Abu Bakr Naji, when Sheikh al-Zarqawi read it, he commented, ‘it is as if the author knows what I’m planning.’ Note: Although Naji’s book describes very precisely the overall strategy of the mujahidin, Naji made some errors on the issue of takfiri elements in parties who forcefully resist sharia and its laws.9 (Location 130)
  • Eliminating enemies can create opportunities to access and sway the population without interference from competing ideologies, and in this respect, the Islamic State movement was an innovator, frequently experimenting with its influence campaigns. (Location 137)
  • we chose the selected sources because they capture the strategic dynamics of a particular period in the movement’s evolution. (Location 175)
  • The most obvious omissions are Naji’s aforementioned text, The Management of Savagery and Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir’s The Jurisprudence of Blood. (Location 177)
  • Zarqawi’s spiritual and ideological mentor, and remains an influential proponent of the Salafi-jihadi ideology.2 According to the historian Shiraz Maher, this spectrum of political thought consists of five tenets: monotheism (tawhid), Allah’s rule as the political system (hakimiyya), association and disavowal (al-wala wal-bara), struggle (jihad), and excommunication of apostates (takfir).3 (Location 311)
  • Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Organisation of the Base of Struggle in the Land of the Two Rivers, more commonly known as al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI), (Location 319)

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title: The ISIS Reader longtitle: The ISIS Reader author: Haroro J. Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter url: , source: kindle last_highlight: 2020-07-29 type: books tags:

The ISIS Reader

rw-book-cover

Metadata

Highlights

  • The Islamic State movement began as a small group under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadi who established a camp in Afghanistan that collected displaced fighters and families from the Levant in the late 1990s. (Location 104)
  • The initial political agenda of the Islamic State movement was ambitious. It intended to expand its numbers from a handful of foreign fighters and local hosts to a force that dominated the Iraqi resistance. Although Zarqawi’s group had valuable experience in clandestine operations, it had to outpace the reorganising Ba’athists, rival Islamists, and a fledgling Iraqi government with one hand, while battling a very capable foreign military coalition with the other. (Location 113)
  • Ceding the day-to-day struggle (sniping and roadside bombs) to local insurgent groups, Zarqawi’s forces focused on high-visibility attacks against symbolic targets using ‘precision-guided’ suicide bombers and special operations that attracted media attention and popularity among resistance sympathisers. (Location 123)
  • It is a strategy reflected in al-Qaida strategist Abu Bakr Naji’s Management of Savagery, which propagates a controversial and violent method for destroying the government and society before starting anew. (Location 127)
  • As for the concise but beneficial 100-page book titled Management of Savagery, written by an unknown author who went by the pen name Abu Bakr Naji, when Sheikh al-Zarqawi read it, he commented, ‘it is as if the author knows what I’m planning.’ Note: Although Naji’s book describes very precisely the overall strategy of the mujahidin, Naji made some errors on the issue of takfiri elements in parties who forcefully resist sharia and its laws.9 (Location 130)
  • Eliminating enemies can create opportunities to access and sway the population without interference from competing ideologies, and in this respect, the Islamic State movement was an innovator, frequently experimenting with its influence campaigns. (Location 137)
  • we chose the selected sources because they capture the strategic dynamics of a particular period in the movement’s evolution. (Location 175)
  • The most obvious omissions are Naji’s aforementioned text, The Management of Savagery and Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir’s The Jurisprudence of Blood. (Location 177)
  • Zarqawi’s spiritual and ideological mentor, and remains an influential proponent of the Salafi-jihadi ideology.2 According to the historian Shiraz Maher, this spectrum of political thought consists of five tenets: monotheism (tawhid), Allah’s rule as the political system (hakimiyya), association and disavowal (al-wala wal-bara), struggle (jihad), and excommunication of apostates (takfir).3 (Location 311)
  • Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Organisation of the Base of Struggle in the Land of the Two Rivers, more commonly known as al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI), (Location 319)