Part 2
By Khalil
(The Intellectual and Historical Roots of ISIS)
To grasp the true nature of a malignant phenomenon such as ISIS, it is insufficient to confine our analysis to the events of recent years. ISIS is neither a sudden anomaly nor a mere political reaction to contemporary circumstances. Rather, it is the outcome of an ancient, deeply entrenched, and long-festering intellectual pathology, one whose roots extend back to the earliest stages of Islamic history and are inextricably linked to the deviant sect known as the Khawarij.
ISIS represents the latest and most blood-soaked manifestation of this cursed lineage, a renewed eruption of the same toxic ideas that first inflicted a profound and lasting rupture upon the body of the Islamic Ummah.
This connection is not a rhetorical analogy or a convenient historical comparison; it is an undeniable ideological reality. The Khawarij built their worldview upon three exceedingly dangerous principles, all of which have been inherited by ISIS in their entirety.
The first principle was the belief that they alone embodied true Islam. Anyone who opposed their political or doctrinal position, even if he were the legitimate and rightful caliph of the Muslims, such as Hazrat Ali (RA), was declared an unbeliever and expelled from the fold of Islam. Today, ISIS applies this same logic on a vastly expanded scale, labeling every Muslim who rejects its brutal and barbaric interpretation as an apostate whose blood is deemed lawful.
The second principle was the sanctification of violence. The Khawarij regarded bloodshed as an act of devotion and considered the killing of their opponents to be jihad in the path of Allah. Is this not the very same diseased and venomous logic that ISIS now employs to justify the beheading of prisoners, the detonation of explosives in marketplaces and among civilians, and the enslavement of women under the banner of jihad?
The third principle was a superficial and distorted engagement with religious texts. The Khawarij believed that a shallow, literalistic reading of the Noble Qur’an was sufficient, and they dismissed the authority of genuine scholarship, jurisprudence, and ijtihad. ISIS follows this same path by severing the verses of the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) from their historical context and their higher, mercy-centered objectives.
Through a process of selective manipulation that can only be described as satanic, ISIS transforms the religion of compassion into an ideology of cruelty and bloodshed. In practical terms, it extracts verses from their textual and historical framework and assigns meanings to them that no just, balanced, or methodologically sound scholar has ever accepted throughout the entirety of Islamic history.
Instead of turning to the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH), the living and practical explanation of the Qur’an, they isolate specific verses and weaponize them to legitimize their criminal actions. This raises a critical question: how did this corrupt and oppressive ideology, this lethal intellectual virus, survive the centuries from Siffin to Mosul and reemerge with such destructive force? The answer is unsettling but clear: this way of thinking was never fully eradicated from the Islamic world.
In the modern era, this current resurfaced under the banner of takfir and extremism, with ISIS representing its most radical and uncompromising form. The group fused distorted interpretations of jihad, hijrah, and the caliphate into a single ideological construct and cynically exploited the religious emotions of oppressed and disillusioned people. Presenting itself as the savior and architect of an ideal Islamic society, ISIS concealed a far darker reality.
Its leaders were products of a school of thought that viewed its primary enemy not as external adversaries, but as fellow Muslims who dared to disagree with them, precisely as the Khawarij had done centuries earlier.
The historical record of such movements within Islam is one of betrayal, division, and relentless bloodshed. The Khawarij not only tore the Ummah apart but ultimately assassinated Hazrat Ali himself. In our own time, ISIS has murdered thousands of religious scholars, men, women, and innocent children; it has bombed mosques and desecrated sacred sites; and it has committed atrocities so horrific that they stunned the conscience of the world.
The objective of both movements was never reform or guidance. It was destruction, intimidation, and the imposition of a savage and coercive interpretation of religion through violence and terror.
Thus, when we examine ISIS, we are not witnessing a novel phenomenon, but rather a modern incarnation of the Khawarij. ISIS is the offspring of the same diseased and extremist ideology that once devastated the Islamic Ummah and has now returned armed with even more terrifying tools.
Recognizing these historical and intellectual roots makes one truth unmistakably clear: ISIS is neither an accidental development nor a simple political movement. It is an old disease clothed in new garments. Confronting it cannot be achieved through military force alone; it requires the systematic and uncompromising eradication of this poisonous ideology from the minds and hearts of the people.