Part 4
By Khalil
Fabricated Sharia: An Analysis of ISIS’s Distorted Juridical Apparatus
2. Distortion in the Secondary Rulings of Islamic Law
From the very beginning, the inevitable outcome of ISIS’s warped legal and ideological methodology, discussed in previous parts, was the emergence of rulings that carried a superficially Islamic guise while bearing no genuine resemblance to Islamic jurisprudence. These rulings were not merely anomalous within Islamic history; they stood in open contradiction to Islam’s foundational spirit, a spirit rooted in the preservation of religion, life, intellect, lineage, and property.
In reality, these distorted rulings functioned as systematic justifications for violence and as mechanisms for entrenching political domination through fear and coercion.
They can be analyzed under four principal categories. The first and most dangerous among them was sweeping and indiscriminate takfir. A foundational maxim of Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh) holds that a Muslim is not to be declared an unbeliever simply because of sin or because of juristic or political disagreement. This principle is famously encapsulated in the statement:
«لا نُكفِّرُ أحداً من أهلِ القِبلةِ بذنب»
“We do not declare any of the people of the qiblah unbelievers on account of a sin.”
According to this rule, no Muslim may be branded outside the fold of Islam merely because of wrongdoing or interpretive disagreement.
ISIS, however, dismissed this principle entirely. It advanced narrow, self-constructed, and extremist definitions of tawhid and shirk, constricting the boundaries of Islam so drastically that only its own members could remain within them. Under this logic, every Muslim who diverged from its views, including rival Sunni scholars, Sufi communities, ordinary citizens of Muslim societies, and even other militant factions, was labeled an unbeliever or apostate.
In practical terms, this ruling translated into the legalization of killing such individuals and confiscating their property. Put plainly, it amounted to a religious authorization for mass slaughter and plunder. It carved one of the deepest fractures ever inflicted upon the Muslim Ummah and rendered Muslim blood licit in the name of faith.
The second distortion was the revival of organized slavery, a practice for which ISIS became infamous. In the contemporary era, credible Islamic scholars across the spectrum have, in light of Islam’s ethical foundations and evolving global realities, regarded slavery as abolished and indefensible.
ISIS nevertheless rejected this broad juristic consensus outright. It systematically enslaved women and children from minority communities, most notably the Yazidis, and subjected them to sexual exploitation. To rationalize these crimes, the group selectively quoted verses related to warfare while stripping them of historical setting, legal conditions, and textual coherence.
In substance, these actions constituted a form of ethnic and sexual cleansing. Their aim extended beyond the degradation of individual victims to the deliberate dismantling of entire communities and social identities. Such conduct stood in direct opposition to the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, whose treatment of captives emphasized mercy and human dignity.
ISIS’s third major distortion involved the erasure of individual accountability and the institutionalization of collective punishment. The Holy Qur’an states with clarity:
«وَ لَا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَى»
“And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another.”
Yet ISIS disregarded this foundational principle and imposed penalties upon whole families, tribes, and even entire regions for the actions of a single person or a handful of individuals. The demolition of homes, mass executions, and prolonged sieges echoed the pre-Islamic doctrine of tribal liability, a practice Islam emerged specifically to abolish. This policy not only crushed justice but openly violated Islam’s most basic ethical commitments.
The fourth manifestation of ISIS’s profound estrangement from Islamic civilization was its systematic assault on historical and cultural heritage. The destruction of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, the demolition of the tombs of prophets and saints, and the leveling of historic mosques possessed no sound basis in Islamic jurisprudence. These acts constituted cultural annihilation, intended to erase every trace of people’s identity, history, and collective memory so that only ISIS’s narrative would survive.
Such behavior stood in stark contrast to the conduct of Islam’s earliest caliphs, who preserved even non-Islamic structures and safeguarded the material record of earlier civilizations.
Taken together, these four distortions, sweeping takfir, the resurrection of slavery, collective punishment, and the destruction of cultural heritage, were not the results of sincere religious interpretation. They were the products of a calculated political and military agenda in which predetermined objectives, including eliminating rivals, dominating populations, spreading terror, and expanding territorial control, took precedence. Religious texts were then selectively extracted and manipulated to cloak these ambitions in sacred language.
For this reason, these rulings cannot be regarded as legitimate exercises of jurisprudential reasoning. They functioned instead as ideological instruments for acquiring power, deployed under the banner of religion to obscure their true purposes.
Understanding this mechanism is essential in confronting such movements. The struggle against them cannot be confined to the battlefield alone. It must also involve reclaiming the authentic meanings of Islamic teachings and rescuing them from those who would distort them for political ends.
