By Ehsan
Part 8
How Did ISIS Turn Tawhid into a Tool for Takfir?
ISIS relies on a deviant ideological system to justify its widespread violence and crimes against Muslims and non-Muslims. In this system, the sacred concepts of Islam have been subjected to extreme and distorted interpretations. ISIS has taken Tawhid, the oneness of Allah Almighty, and turned it into a means of justifying violence and takfir. The group has reduced Tawhid to the level of its own particular form of rule and given it a one-sided, extreme interpretation. It believes that any political or legal system different from its own particular system is a Taghut, and it declares the rulers and followers of such systems to be kafirs.
ISIS reduces Tawhid to Tawhid al-Hakimiyyah. According to this understanding, any form of authority, judgment, or administration of society that is not based on its own self-proclaimed rule is shirk and kufr. Anyone living under such systems or supporting them is called a mushrik or kafir. In its eyes, even Islamic systems that do not follow its own caliphate are systems of shirk and apostasy.
ISIS claimed in its Dabiq magazine that whoever rules by something other than the judgment of Allah Almighty, whether ruler or ruled, is a kafir. On the surface, the claim appears to have been taken from verses of the Holy Quran. But ISIS gave those verses a shallow and distorted interpretation. Concepts explained and interpreted over centuries by great Islamic scholars and mujtahids were reduced to their simplest and harshest meaning. The result was a concept of rule whose outcome was nothing but killing, brutality, and crime.
The difference between ISIS and other Islamic movements becomes especially clear in its interpretation of Tawhid. It opened the door to takfir on an unprecedented scale. ISIS considers around one and a half billion Muslims around the world to be apostates. In its view, nearly all Muslims have left Islam because they reject its interpretation of Tawhid and rule. Shiites are called Rafidah and kafirs. Sufis are called mushriks and grave-worshippers. Even Sunni Muslims who disagree with ISIS are declared apostates. Such a wide use of takfir has no precedent in the history of the Khawarij, nor has any other takfiri group reached this level.
The scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah have always distinguished between doctrinal kufr and practical kufr. Allamah Ibn Taymiyya makes this clear in Majmu’ al-Fatawa. If a person commits a sin or implements an un-Islamic law, he does not leave Islam as long as he does not believe that law to be better than the Sharia of Allah Almighty and does not hold such a belief in his heart. Practical kufr by itself, without the corresponding belief in the heart, does not take a person out of Islam. The Khawarij ignored this distinction, and ISIS followed the same path, declaring Muslims kafirs over the smallest pretexts.
True Tawhid in Islam is not confined to one issue. It is a set of beliefs and actions of the heart and tongue, including love for Allah Almighty, worshipping Him, and following the Messenger of Allah (PBUH). Tawhid cannot be reduced to political rule alone. ISIS took this great and sacred concept and turned it into a political tool. In doing so, it showed how far it was from the depth of Islamic knowledge and caused enormous harm to the Islamic Ummah.
ISIS’s extreme interpretation of Tawhid limits it to governance and brands every other political system a Taghut. This interpretation stands in complete contradiction to the jurisprudential and theological principles of Ahl al-Sunnah. It has also severely damaged the image of Islam around the world.
The book The Army of Satan points to an obvious contradiction when discussing the presence of former Ba’ath Party soldiers within ISIS’s structure. People who spent years serving secular systems later began declaring others kafirs simply because they lived under a Taghuti system. In the hands of ISIS’s leaders and commanders, Tawhid al-Hakimiyyah became more of a political tool than a firm religious foundation.
