The Islamic State’s use of the Qur’an in its Magazines,Dabiq and Rumiyah 1

Abstract

This paper looks at the verses of the Qur’an that are most heavily cited by the Islamic State across all 28 editions of its magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah. Published from July 2014 to September 2017, covering both the organisation’s rise to power and subsequent decline, these contain around 1500 references to the Qur’an. Here, the five verses that appear most often are considered. While all quotations are necessarily discerning (and it is no surprise to see that the Islamic State’s authors relay the scriptural extracts that best suit their purposes), it is, nonetheless, valuable to trace out the contours of, and reasons behind, such selectivity. To this end, it is argued that these five verses are firstly used to support notions of loyalty and disavowal, and, secondly, to justify its use of violence. Together, it is further concluded, they act in concert to serve the Islamic State’s primary imperatives of recruitment, power projection and mobilisation.

Keywords

Dabiq Islamic State magazines Qur’an Rumiyah

Between July 2014 and September 2017, the Islamic State produced 28 editions of a glossy, highly polished magazine setting out its leadership’s views on a very broad range of topics.² Initially named Dabiq after a part of Syria mentioned by the prophet as a future location for a conclusive confrontation between the best of Muslims and the worst of disbelievers, it first appeared the week after the Islamic State captured Syria’s largest oilfield (Weiss and Hassan, 2015: xi). In September 2016, it was retitled Rumiyah following the Caliphate’s loss of control over the eponymous town as a reference to the Roman (i.e. Western) forces predicted to be defeated at the same apocalyptic battle (Gosh and Basnett, 2017). Taken together, both titles offer an unparallelled opportunity to study in detail how such an organisation seeks to present itself to an English language audience. As such, they have attracted considerable academic interest, leading to a wide and varied secondary literature. Early studies, such as that conducted by Vergani and Bluic (2015), often adopted quantitative methods to uncover various linguistic and emotional devices within their text. Later on, similar approaches have looked at discourses on morality (Frissen and d’Haenens, 2018), victory (Rasoulikolamaki and Kaur, 2021) and authority (Vergani and Bliuc, 2018). Other topics have included representations of youth (Christien, 2016), recruitment (Lakomy, 2021), visual images of the ‘orient’ (Ahmad, 2022) and incitement (Zekulin, 2021). Some commentators have compared one or both titles to other militant magazines (Watkin and Looney, 2019), while others have considered how they foster a sense of in-group identity (Colas, 2017) or respond to military dynamics on the ground (Wozniak et al., 2022).

The magazines’ religious content has also been noted. Nonetheless, although efforts have been made to look at the way in which such sources have been deployed to substantiate particular legal arguments (Pelletier et al., 2016), to mobilise sympathisers (Frissen et al., 2018) and to legitimise violence (Spier, 2018), there are currently no analyses focussed on seeking to understand use of Qur’anic content across both magazine titles. This is an important lacuna given that the 1592-page corpus that makes up Dabiq and Rumiyah contains almost 1500 references to the Qur’an drawn from 90 of its 114 chapters. Replete with religious citations – often constituting more than a quarter of the entire content of many articles and statements – much of their substance has a tone ‘similar to that of a sermon’ (El-Badawy et al., 2015: 50). Such a detailed engagement might suggest a reasonably comprehensive cross-section of the revelation has been presented. This is not the case. As the paper below will demonstrate, the Islamic State has actually been very choosy in its approach to the Qur’an. Dabiq and Rumiyah contain references to about 600 verses each – rather less than 10% of the Qur’an as a whole. While all citation processes are, of course, inevitably discerning, the form and purpose of such selectivity are, as we shall see, important in understanding the relationship between ideas and action. Specifically, this paper will seek to reveal how its engagement with the Qur’an serves its political and military purposes. It argues that the five most frequently cited verses shown in Table 1 operate in concert to substantiate, firstly, the idea that (true) conviction can only be found in unity with other believers. To this end, al-Ma’idah: 51, al-i-Imran: 103 and al-Hashr: 14, the focus of the next section below, are used to construct clear boundaries between an authentic and harmonious community of the truly faithful and the self-seeking duplicitousness of the Islamic State’s adversaries, both overt and clandestine. Secondly, as we will see in the second section below, at-Tawbah: 5 and al-Anfal: 39 are used to affirm the notion that responding to the threat that these enemies present is a matter of praxis, not merely principles, and that righteous action may involve violence and hardship. Both sets of verses combine to define who this struggle must be directed against and how.

Table 1.

The most frequently cited verses in Dabiq and Rumiyah⁴.

Total citations	Dabiq	Rumiyah	Chapter (WNS position)	Verse	Given translation at first point of use (all parentheses in original)
16	8	8	at-Tawbah (113th)	5	And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the mushrikin wherever you find them, and capture them, and besiege them, and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer and pay zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is forgiving and merciful.
16	13	3	al-Anfal (95th)	39	And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah. And if they cease – then, indeed Allah is Seeing of what they do.
15	13	2	al-Ma’idah (114th)	51	O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and Christians as your allies; they are allies of one another. And whoever is ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.
12	9	3	al-Hashr (101st)	14	They will not all fight you all together except within fortified cities or from behind walls. Their adversity among themselves is severe. You think they are together, but their hearts are diverse. This is because they are a people who do not reason.
12	9	3	Al-i-Imran (97th)	103	And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided; remember God’s blessing upon you when you were enemies, and He brought your hearts together, so that you became, by His favour, brothers. And you were upon the edge of a pit of Fire, and He saved you from it; Thus does Allah make clear to you His verses that you may be guided.

Loyalty and disavowal

The first key concept contained with these verses is the notion of ‘wala’. Very difficult to render in English, it relates, according to Ibn Arabi’s classic study, to one who intervenes preferentially in a dispute – a person who takes sides in other words (cited in Al-Qahtani, 1993: 12). It therefore has connotations of intimacy and protection (both as a giver and receiver) as well as ‘love, loyalty, allegiance and guardianship’ (Bin Ali, 2015: 71). Mentioned 86 times in the Qur’an, its derivatives, ‘wali’ and its plural ‘awliya’, refer to someone ‘who is near or intimate as a friend, helper, companion, partner, relation, beloved, heir, benefactor, saint, protector or guardian’ (Lalani, 2006: 682). It is particularly associated with the Qur’anic chapters, Al-i-Imran, al-Hashr and al-Ma’idah which, like at-Tawbah and al-Anfal are believed to have been received towards the very end of the revelation period. Indeed, ‘arguably the most influential’ chronology of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters developed by Gustav Weil in the 1840s and later refined by Theodor Nöldeke and Frederich Schwally (referred to as WNS in Table 1), places them all within the late Medinan period – after the prophet had left Mecca in 622 and during a time when his nascent state was facing both acute external pressures and regular periods of sustained internal dissent (Sinai, 2017: 112).³ Al-i-Imran: 103 speaks directly to this theme. Cited alongside the hadith ‘whoever dies while not having bay’ah, dies a death of jahiliyyah’ on three occasions (Dabiq Issues 5, 10 and 11), it reinforces the idea that ‘unity is necessary for the believers to be successful in any of their endeavours, in particular those that involve warfare’ (Spier, 2018: 563). More specifically, Isma’il Ibn Kathir (1300–1373) tells us, it refers to two large tribal groups, the Aws and the Khazraj. Before the revelation (a time of ignorance and barbarity known as jahiliyyah (see Webb, 2014)), they were in almost constant conflict at the expense of many lives. ‘When Allah brought Islam, those among them who embraced it became brothers who loved each other by Allah’s grace’ through a new structure of sworn oaths (bay’ah), but, he continues, tensions reopened during the settlement of property acquired following the Battle of Hunayn prompting the reminder contained within this verse (Ibn Kathir, 2000: 829–830).

Seeking to connect itself to this foundational experience, the Islamic State first cite Al-i-Imran: 103 in November 2014 as part of an article entitled ‘Remaining and Expanding’. Just as the early Muslims successfully managed the challenges of expansion and state-building, so too, its authors claim, has the new Caliphate not only brought order to the hitherto chaotic melange of insurgent groups operating within Iraq and Syria, but also projected this power overseas by offering leadership to affiliated organisations internationally. It is no surprise then that its authors only relate the opening phrase of the verse in all but the first occasion it appears in Dabiq and Rumiyah. Emphasised instead is the need to build wala with other like-minded Muslims and to ‘hold firmly’ onto the readers’ bay’ah with the Islamic State. Similarly, while the metaphor of the rope might be a reference to the importance of devotion to, or a covenant with, God or the Qur’an itself, the fact that the verse only subsequently appears in the editions that appeared between July 2015 and January 2017 (a time of growing internal dissent as the cities of Sinjar, Ramadi and Fallujah all fell to enemy forces) may indicate that its authors’ principally see it as useful in the maintenance of authority – an interpretation shared by Nasr et al. (2015) who view the rope as the means through which a believer connects to the broader ‘community of Muslims (al-jama’ah)’ (p. 158, parenthesis and emphases in original).

Wala is thus not simply a state of mind, but also a state of being. It requires, in other words, affirmative action and can be contrasted with the self-interest of non-believers, as demonstrated by the Islamic State’s interest in al-Hashr: 14. Revealed during the aftermath of the Battle of Uhud of around 625, it discusses the accusation that the Nadir tribe colluded with a fifth column within Medina and its subsequent decision to choose war with the Muslims over deportation – apparently believing assistance from the Meccan forces was in train (Al-Ghazali, 2000: 637). It contains three basic points, each of considerable utility for the Islamic State’s effort to defend its territory against much superior opposition. First, the disbelievers think ‘that they are strong and courageous, though in reality they are not; second, . . .they appear united but are in fact at odds with one another’ and, third, their lack of faith means that they will only attack when they judge the odds to be greatly stacked in their favour (Nasr et al., 2015: 1354). Cited mostly in Dabiq, it is thus used initially to distinguish between the supposed unity of the Islamic State and the internal divisions within the Obama administration over policy towards Iraq and Syria (Issue 4: 42). Failing to recognise such intrinsic weaknesses leads to an overstatement of Western power and, it is then argued, a ‘foolish’ line of thinking amongst believers that ‘almost all the events of the world were somehow linked back to the kuffar, their intelligence agencies, research technology, and conspirators!’ (Issue 9: 16). Later, a four-page article entitled ‘You Think They are Together, but Their Hearts are Divided’ tells the reader that, since the religion of the professional soldier is ‘himself, his lusts, his desires, and his self-interests’, both the multi-national Coalition and its patchwork of ‘proxies’ will always be unstable and prone to internal conflicts (Issue 12: 44) – a theme later picked up in Rumiyah to explain the internecine quality of the violence in Syria.

Al-Ma’idah: 51 also deals with the issue of loyalty. It contains the word ‘awliya’, the translation of which into English has been especially controversial. Although presented as ‘allies’ in Dabiq and Rumiyah, most commentators agree that, since these passages were, like al-Hashr: 14, received during a time of armed confrontation with Meccan forces, its meaning should be limited to ‘“protectors” or “guardians” in the strict military sense of these terms’ (Leaman, 2006: 681). Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (839–923, the fourth most heavily cited classical scholar in its magazines), appears to concur. He states that the verse was revealed after some of Muhammad’s followers, fearing an imminent attack from a much superior force from Mecca, threatened to seek a formal guarantee of protection from one or more of the more powerful Jewish and Christian tribes of the area (cited in Bin Ali, 2012: 106). In this sense, the problem was the potential dilution of the Muslims’ command structure, rather than seeking help from non-Muslims per se. After all, it is universally acknowledged that the prophet welcomed support (with ‘no hesitation’ according to Watt (1956: 246)) from the pagan leader Safwan ibn Umayyah during the Battle of Hunayn in 630. As a result, it is generally accepted that, as the great Damascene jurist, Ibnul Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350, himself cited 55 times across all editions of Dabiq and Rumiyah) concludes, ‘it is permitted to accept the assistance of reliable people from among the disbelievers in Jihad’ (quoted in Al-Qahtani, 1993: 76). Indeed, Abdullah Azzam (1984) (bin Laden’s mentor in Afghanistan – also warmly cited in Dabiq (Issue 3: 33 for instance)) was also of the opinion that, contrary to the blanket opprobrium put forward by the Islamic State, it is permissible to accept the help of non-Muslims so long as (1) ‘Islam must have the upper hand,’ (2) they ‘must have a good opinion of the Muslims’ and (3) there must be genuine need (p. 43).

In unusually presenting a restriction on Muslim relations with Jews and Christians (as opposed to the more commonplace Qur’anic injunctions against idolators – see at-Tawbah: 5 below), Al-Ma’idah: 51 introduces the notion of ‘bara’. Generally presented alongside its antonym, to make a single guiding principle of al-wala wal bara, it is mostly translated as rejection or denunciation, but also has connotations of expelling an unwanted member of group who had endangered an alliance, thereby becoming ‘bari’ (innocent or free) of that particular person (Wagemakers, 2012: 148). Taken together, the two ideas ‘can result in strong bonds of loyalty and brotherhood among Muslims on the one hand as well as extreme forms of piety through the disavowal of everything and everyone considered un-Islamic on the other’ and it is thus no surprise that the concept appears extensively within Dabiq and Rumiyah (Wagemakers, 2014: 82). Beginning a four-page article entitled ‘Disavowal of the Mushrikin [idolators] in the Lives of the Prophet and the Sahabah’ with the words ‘“Wala and bara” is a great foundation in all the laws of the prophets. . . and a foundational principle in the Shari’ah of the last prophet’, for instance, its authors develop the theme of al-Hashr: 14 to emphasise the super-arching associative life offered by the Caliphate (Rumiyah Issue 7: 27). Another four-page article entitled ‘Wala and Bara Versus American Racism’ in Dabiq, for instance, presents a concerted attack on those that maintain social identities, especially to race and nation, other than those based on a shared faith – ‘here in the Islamic State, all affiliations are null and void when they conflict with one’s allegiance to Islam and the Muslims’ (Issue 11: 20).

Ignoring the Qur’an’s more general limitations on declaring such enmity as well as its commitment to ‘the notion of kindness, fairness and justice towards non-Muslims’ (including marriage and the sharing of their food as per al-Mumtahanah: 8 and al-Ma’idah: 5 respectively), the Islamic State goes on to remind the reader repeatedly that bara must be applied to sinners (in deed or in word) irrespective of established social bonds (Bin Ali, 2012: 93; Khalil, 2018: 145). The true believer must, its authors write, ‘be prepared to reject his own people when they fall into kufr and shirk, and not to remain attached to them on account of tribal or blood ties’ (Issue 11: 19). Pointing to the example of Abraham’s rejection of his father’s polytheism, the Islamic State develop the work of the Jordanian thinker, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi – once the mentor of its founder and late figurehead, Abu Musab az-Zarqawi. Al-Maqdisi ‘sees adherence to un-Islamic laws as misplaced walāʾ and believes that politicians guilty of this are kuffār [disbelievers]. . . who, apart from being infidels, are also idols [tawaghit]’ (Wagemakers, 2008: 365, emphases in original). In this sense, then, those that follow these leaders are themselves guilty of idolatry. Choosing to live by their laws in the belief that they are acceptable or even preferrable, the logic continues, is therefore evidence of ‘the kind of kufr that expels one from the fold of Islam’ (Muhammad bin Ibrahim quoted in Al-Saud, 2021: 179). The best way of protecting oneself from such excommunication (takfir) and to follow ‘Abraham in showing barāʾ to idols and their followers is, according to al-Maqdisī, jihād since this is the clearest way of showing disavowal from everything that deviates from the unadulterated tawḥīd [oneness] of God’ (Wagemakers, 2008: 368–369, emphases in original).

Apostasy and war

The Islamic State takes al-Maqdisi’s ideas a step further by asserting that ‘there is no excuse for any Muslim who is capable of performing hijrah [migration] to the Islamic State, or capable of carrying a weapon where he is’ (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi quoted in Dabiq Issue 4: 44). These two principles are regularly echoed by the authors of Dabiq and Rumiyah who recurrently talk about ‘the individual obligation on every Muslim and Muslimah to make hijrah from dārul-kufr [the land of disbelief] to dārul-islām [i.e. the Caliphate]’ (Dabiq Issue 10: 47) ‘where, in the absence of a competing state authority, the laws of God can be fully implemented without resorting to the unholy compromises that characterise the usual conduct of political affairs’ (Wagemakers, 2017: 20). A sincere commitment to al-wala wal-bara, in other words, renders cohabitation with non-Muslims impossible. Since ‘the world has split into two encampments, one for the people of faith, the other for the people of kufr’, there is now no middle ground in which ostensibly similar-minded Muslims can occupy (quoted in Dabiq Issue 4: 44). In one of the longest of all the articles in any edition of Dabiq, entitled ‘The Extinction of the Grey Zone’, it is argued that, firstly, with the initiation of the War on Terror and the attack on Iraq and, secondly, with the establishment of the Caliphate, it is no longer possible ‘to be independent of both opposing camps’ (Dabiq Issue 7: 55). Believers must therefore demonstrate ‘their enmity and hatred for the cross worshippers, the apostates, their crosses, their borders, and their ballotboxes, and pledge[] allegiance to the Khilāfah, promising to die defending it’ (Dabiq Issue 3: 11). As such, continued residence outside the Islamic State without taking up arms on its behalf now constitutes a ‘major sin’, which, al-Baghdadi continues, must be taken as evidence of a person’s desire to ‘conciliate with the Jews, Christians, and other kuffar. . . [thereby] bel[ying] the explicit statement of his Lord’ and thus manifesting unequivocal disbelief (quoted in Dabiq Issue 9: 52, 54). Internal process count for nothing. In keeping with the approach of one of its more favoured thinkers, Anwar al-Awlaki who stated simply that ‘we do not judge by what is in the heart. . . we judge by what is apparent’, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi says straightforwardly ‘whoever shows for us kufr, we declare takfir on him’ (quoted in Maher, 2016: 74; Kadivar, 2020: 10).

Extending the idea of bara to such a point has few established precedents. Excommunication has been the ‘sole prerogative of the religious establishment which has, for the most part, shied away from using it. . . takfir was seldom used in Islamic history and heresy trials in the classical era were extremely rare’ (Brahimi, 2010: 135, emphasis in original). With no mention of the term at all within any of its verses (and numerous prohibitions of such actions within the hadith literature), jurists are generally agreed that there is ‘no Qur’anic support for the earthly punishment of apostasy by man’ (Badar et al., 2017: 137). With sedition widely condemned by established scholarship and only 0.4% of the Qur’an concerned with warfare, the expediency of such reasoning for the Islamic State is clear (Marranci, 2006: 21). Not only can it be ‘used to licence intra-Muslim violence’ which as a result means that ‘almost all of the human impact of extremist attacks is Muslims killing or injuring fellow Muslims’, it also facilitates a broader re-reading of the revelation on the legitimate use of violence (Maher, 2016: 71; Cordesman, 2017: 3).

Of the 24 verses of the Qu’ran that ‘could be read as having a “warlike” intent’, al-Anfal: 39 and at-Tawbah: 5 appear most often within Dabiq and Rumiyah (Bonney, 2004: 28). Two of the six ‘sword’ passages identified by Firestone (1999) in his highly comprehensive survey of the Qur’an, these are thought to have appeared towards the end of revelation and are thus understood to be amongst ‘the final qur’anic statement[s] regarding relations with idolaters’ (p. 84). At-Tawbah: 5 is initially deployed to support declarations of apostasy and then – perhaps as the Caliphate collapsed – as a basis for legitimising and encouraging the pursuit of mass casualty attacks on the West and its allies. Like many other Qur’anic extracts in Dabiq and Rumiyah, it is frequently presented in abridged form. Seven out of its 16 citations do not include the highly important commentary on the value of repentance contained within the second sentence. This is highly problematic as neither at-Tawbah: 5 nor al-Anfal: 39 ‘stand alone in the qur’anic presentation but must be read in conjunction with other revelations taking different positions on the issue’ (Firestone, 1999: 84). Ignoring these, Khalil (2018) points out, would overlook the ‘qualified directives’ of other congruent passages and their commonplace call upon believers to restrict warfare to ‘those who attacked you first’ (p. 14). A fuller contextual understanding would, according to Abdullah an-Na’im, reveal the fact that both verses only related to the specific groups of pagan belligerents who acted in disregard of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah of 628, the already highly conciliatory terms of which left the Muslims no possible recourse other than to fight. They should, he concludes, therefore be treated with extreme caution when attempting to formulate generalised guidelines (An-Naim, 1992: 152). At-Tawbah: 5 must, for instance, ‘be read together with the [rest of the] first section. . . (verses 1–28), which are interconnected and deal with the same theme’, but only half of these appear anywhere in Dabiq and Rumiyah (Coruh, 2019: 43). Indeed, the fact that it begins with a conjunction (translated by Asad (2003) as ‘And’, but equally possibly ‘But’ (Khattab, 2015) or ‘So’ (Usmani, 2006)) ‘indicates that its line of logic flows from the verse or verses above it’ (Hayward, 2013: 38). These underline the importance of giving enemy combatants an opportunity to leave unmolested or repent through the establishment of a period of grace, but neither verse 3 nor 4 are cited at all by the Islamic State. Similarly, at-Tawbah: 6 (which ‘commands Muslims to receive a polytheist if he seeks asylum, to preach the truth to him, and then to let him go safely’) is only mentioned twice; Dabiq Issue 8: 48 and Rumiyah Issue 8: 14 (Dağlı, 2013: 75).

As Table 2 sets out, other parts of the revelation that are often considered to be vital accompaniments to these and other martial passages include, amongst others, an-Nisa: 94 (highlighted in March and Modirzadeh, 2013: 375). As Keskin and Tuncer (2019) note, ‘this verse clearly forbids the excommunication of any Muslim even if they do not practise their religious obligations, so long as they utter Muslim salutation and thus claim to be a Muslim’, thereby changing the legal situation regarding any subsequent combat (p. 24). Al-Hajj: 60s insistence on proportionality (Silverman, 2002: 79) and ash-Shura: 40, which Sheikh (2015) sees as demonstrating ‘the moral superiority of patient forbearance and forgiveness’, are widely viewed as similarly essential but are almost entirely omitted (p. 290). Commentaries on the Qur’an have also frequently pointed to the importance of al-Baqarah: 190, which both Al-Ghazali (2000: 105) and Muhammad Asad (2003: 256) list it as indispensable when reading at-Tawbah: 5. Indeed, if these recommendations are followed, Bonney (2004) concludes, then the sword verses certainly appear less belligerent and more defencive in character (pp. 29–32).

Table 2.

Indispensable verses on Jihad.

Chapter	Verse	Translation (from Bewley and Bewley, 2016)	Citations
al-Baqarah	190	Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight you, but do not go beyond the limits. Allah does not love those who go beyond the limits	0
an-Nisa	94	You who believe! When you go out to fight in the way of Allah verify things carefully. Do not say, ‘You are not a believer’ to someone who greets you as a Muslim simply out of the desire for the goods of this world. With Allah there is booty in abundance. That is the way you were before but Allah has been kind to you. So verify things carefully. Allah is aware of what you do.	0
Fussilat	34	A good action and bad action are not the same. Repel the bad with something better and, if there is enmity between you and someone else, he will be like a bosom friend.	0
ash-Shura	40	The repayment of a bad action is one equivalent to it, but if someone pardons and puts things right, his reward is with Allah. Certainly He does not love wrongdoers.	1 (only first phrase)
al-Hajj	60	That is so. And if anyone inflicts an injury the same as the one done to him and then is again oppressed, Allah will come to his aid. Allah is All-Pardoning, Ever-Forgiving.	0

Appearing much more often in Dabiq than in Rumiyah – perhaps because its connotations of establishing order make it more relevant to the Caliphate’s state-building phase – al-Anfal: 39 is, as Troy Spier notes, cited to connect the enmity of the West and its Middle Eastern policy with its polytheism and amorality. Such a reading runs contrary to established exegeses and is facilitated by the decision not to translate the word ‘fitnah’ in all but one reference (in Dabiq Issue 15: 62 it is rendered ‘temptation’). Nearly all other English-language Qur’ans use the words ‘persecution’, ‘sedition’ or ‘oppression’ here (see Islamawaken.com for several dozen examples), thereby underling the fact that it refers to what Fadlallah (2006) called ‘fighting for freedom’, not conversion (p. 452). In other words, it was, within the context of the revelation, the adverse results of ‘breaking of the treaty [of Hudaybiyyah, 628] that invite[d] warfare, not the fact that the treaty-breakers [we]re polytheists’ (Dağlı, 2013: 68). A similar sleight of hand is used in retaining the Arabic word, ‘Allah’ (rather than ‘God’), in four out of the five verses discussed above. This, firstly, connects the message to Muslims, instead of believers or humanity more generally despite the obvious fact that it was initially received by the latter and who are thus mentioned more than five times as frequently (an-Nas) as ‘Muslim(s)’ in the Qur’an (Irshad, 2019: 67). Secondly, it reinforces the idea Christians and Jews might be regarded as enemies – even though, as Firestone (1999) notes, they too hold faith in a divine creator and a last day as ‘essential to their religious systems’ (p. 89). It thus allows the Islamic State to imply that they can be fought because of their differing beliefs rather than only in the service of public order – an idea rejected by the late Sheikh al-Azhar, Shaltut (2013), who concluded that such verses do ‘not state that unbelief in God and the other descriptions mentioned are reasons for the Muslims to fight them’ (p. 13). More broadly, by similarly retaining the Arabic versions of key terms such as hijrah, jihad and bay’ah, the Islamic State is able to circumvent complex debates over their usage and meaning and create an impression that each can substantiate its search for political legitimacy, its imposition of order and its claim to leadership.

Conclusion

The Islamic State’s interpretation of Al-i-Imran: 103, al-Hashr: 14 and al-Maidah: 51 facilitates a radical departure from established patterns of allegiance within the Muslim world. The tribal origins of bay’ah, which had become a basis for international law (see Podeh, 2010), is reimagined within the pages of Dabiq and Rumiyah by extending the notion of wala in a way that ‘directly brings back into play the individuality of Muslim believers, trying to establish with them a direct political bond alternative to the one of the State or of the national community’ (Ramaioli, 2022: 174). Those planning mass casualty attacks in the West can thus be included within its citizenry even though they are far removed from the area under the Caliphate’s control, thereby circumventing the conventional legal foundations of the legitimate use of violence found within established discourses on jihad. Rejecting the term ‘lone wolf’, an article in Rumiyah, for instance, classifies those ‘with bay’ah to the Khalifah’ as ‘mujahidin’ – a status which then allows its authors to designate their missions as ‘just terror operations’ (Issue 2: 12). Another element of such reinvention is that individual oaths of allegiances can be used to institutionalise non-state armed actors as legitimate political entities. Otherwise seditious organisations with little mass Muslim appeal (such as Boko Haram) can thus gain credibility as an outpost of the Caliphate by ‘unifying the jamā’āt [congregation of Muslims] who have given bay’ah, . . .planning a strategy to achieve consolidation in their region for the khilāfah so as to implement the sharī’ah, and presenting all this to the Islamic State leadership for approval’ (Dabiq Issue 7: 35, emphases in original). The expediency of this is clear. It, firstly, ‘serves as an instrument whereby the Islamic State underlines its claim to supreme authority’ and, secondly, ‘establishes a political community, regardless of geographical boundaries and spatial delimitations, once again in an antagonist and rival form in respect of the State’ system (Günther, 2022: 69; Ramaioli, 2022: 176).

In ways not entirely unconnected to other highly selective efforts to reread canonical texts (such as Cuban intellectuals’ reworking of Michel Foucault (Binkley and Capetillo-Ponce, 2008), Anders Breivik’s citation of the Bible in his ‘manifesto’ (Strømmen, 2017) or Andreas Baader’s interpretation of Walter Benjamin (Wohlfarth, 2008), the Islamic State attempts to take some authority from the prophet’s own effort to create a new polity in opposition to the established system of tribes and empires that surrounded Medina. Key here is its use the notion of bara as a means of motivating its fighters and attracting recruits from those no longer willing to live alongside both the unbelievers of the West and those from the region who, through their actions, have left Islam. To this end, another of az-Zarqawi’s mentors argues that ‘any country deferring to the rule of positive law is a land of infidelity that Muslims are obligated to leave’ and that remaining within its boundaries would be tantamount to ‘siding with apostates against Muslims’ with the result that its forces need ‘not differentiate between military and civilians’ (Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir quoted in Al-Khateeb, 2014). By including any Muslim who does not heed al-Baghdadi’s call to arms within the same adversarial category as those actively involved in military action against the Caliphate, its authors thus evoke a highly generalised doctrine of self-defence, while also sweeping away, firstly, established distinctions between forms of manifest disbelief and, secondly, any effort to discern and classify targets. With these premises in place, the key Qur’anic injunctions found in at-Tawbah: 5 and al-Anfal: 39 can be reappraised.

As such, the traditional ‘right versus wrong’ worldview of Muslim scholarship gives way to a more prosaic and malleable ‘us versus them’ dichotomy in which ‘dissent, opposition, reform and scepticism are all heresies’ (Maher, 2016: 72; Al-Yaqoubi, 2015: 3). The Islamic State can thus reinforce its own internal chains of command by arguing that failing to follow an order ostensibly backed up by such abbreviated and decontextualised scriptural extracts constitutes ‘denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’an and the narrations of the Prophet. . . and thereby apostatising from Islam’ (Dabiq Issue 4: 17). The overall result is a form of palingenesis not dissimilar from other forms of revolutionary politics. Mussolini’s ‘new man’, the Khmer Rouge’s year zero and the Groupe Islamique Armé’s ruling that any member of Algerian society that did not offer it active support ‘was tacitly in favour of the regime and therefore deemed apostate and a legitimate target’ all contain comparable elements of purification and rebirth (Cui and Glinert, 2016: 115). In this sense, its followers are ‘born again’ into a new ideational apparatus which, as Winter (2006) observes, provides ‘instant certainty, a framework to interpret the landscape before him. . . [and] a way of feeling superior and in control’ (p. 386). The ‘destruction of the “old society” in favour of building a new type of Muslim and a new Muslim society’, as Paz (2014) puts it, both resolves the apparent tension between the Islamic State’s radical and atavistic tendencies and guides the Islamic State’s highly selective exegetic approach (p. 270). The latter seeks to ‘recapture the social solidarity, the intense moral commitment, the religious urgency that they believe characterised the first Muslim community’ while the former builds ‘a language of reform and protest, even of revolutionary action’, that reclaims Medinan society ‘from the debris of history’ and repackages it as ‘the template for a radically new way of life’ (Humphreys, 2005: 142–143).

While such a profane approach to the sacred is not particularly unexpected (after all, we might predict that the magazines would relay the scriptural extracts and commentaries that best suit the interests of their masters), it is, nonetheless, valuable to trace out the contours of, and reasons behind, such selectivity. Indeed, this type of analysis becomes especially important in an age defined by what Nelly Lahoud calls the ‘decentralisation of Islam’ and the resultant growth in organisations that attempt to ‘assume[ ] ownership of the classical Islamic corpus’. These, she continues, ‘are less interested in the intellectual exercise of reading. . . [it] in the context within which it was intended’ than on highlighting ‘those aspects that lend support to their current programmes’ (Lahoud, 2010: 105–106). The Islamic State is, I have argued above, a case in point. Its magazines are, in other words, the latest example of an established pattern in which Islamic sources are presented in ways that ignore[] both their original context and also the variety of historical differences. . . [in] how to apply their dicta. . . [thereby] collaps[ing] the broad spectrum of Qur’anic teaching into a double requirement: first to believe and then to fight’ (Lawrence, 2006: 179–180).

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper was written as part of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (award number, 2022-387).

Notes

Author biography

Tim Jacoby, after graduating in History and working as a schoolteacher in Turkey and Nigeria, Professor Jacoby completed an MA in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent. From 1999 to 2003, he undertook a PhD and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Politics at the University of York. He then joined the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester where he co-founded the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute in 2009. He has (co)written more than 40 articles in international journals and five books.

References

Ahmad

(2022) Picturing the “hordes of hated barbarians”: Islamic State propaganda (self)orientalism and strategic self-othering. Journal of International Communication 16: 2935–2957.

Al-Ghazali

(2000) A Thematic Commentary on the Quran (Trans A A Shamis). Herndon, VA: The International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Al-Khateeb

(2014) Daesh’s intellectual origins: From jurisprudence to reality. Aljazeera, 3 December.

Al-Qahtani

(1993) Al-Wala Wal-Bara: According to the Aqeedah of the Salaf Part Three (trans O Johnstone). London: al-Firdous Limited.

Al-Saud

ABK

(2021) Wahhabi Salafism versus Islamic State: Age-old traditions appropriated by modern-day terrorists. In: Bano

(ed.) Salafi Social and Political Movements: National and Transnational Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 171–187.

Al-Yaqoubi

(2015) Refuting Isis. Sacred Knowledge.

An-Naim

(1992) Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties Human Rights and International Law. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.

Asad

(2003) The Message of the Quran: The Full Account of the Revealed Arabic Text Accompanied by Parallel Transliteration. Bristol: The Book Foundation.

Azzam

(1984) Defence of Muslim Lands.

10.

Badar

Nagata

Tueni

(2017) The radical application of the Islamist concept of takfir. Arab Law Quarterly 31(2): 134–162.

11.

Bewley

(2016) The Noble Quran: A New Rendering of Its Meaning in English. London: Ta-Ha.

12.

Bin Ali

(2012) The Islamic Doctrine of Al-Wala wal Bara (Loyalty and Disavowal) in Modern Salafism. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Exeter.

13.

Bin Ali

(2015) The Roots of Religious Extremism: Understanding the Salafi Doctrine of Al-Wala Wal Bara. London: Imperial College Press.

14.

Binkley

Capetillo-Ponce

(2008) Foucault, marxism, and the cuban revolution: Historical and contemporary reflections. Rethinking Marxism 20(3): 437–451.

15.

Bonney

(2004) Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

16.

Böwering

(2008) Recent research on the construction of the Quran. In: Reynolds

(ed.) The Quran in Its Historical Context. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 70–87.

17.

Brahimi

(2010) Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror. Abingdon: Routledge.

18.

Christien

(2016) The representation of youth in the Islamic states propaganda magazine. Dabiq Journal of Terrorism Research 7(3): 1–8.

19.

Colas

(2017) What does Dabiq do? ISIS hermeneutics and organizational fractures within Dabiq magazine. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 40(3): 173–190.

20.

Cordesman

(2017) Islam and the Patterns in Terrorism and Violent Extremism. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.

21.

Coruh

(2019) Refuting the extremist interpretations of the text and the prophetic traditions: The case of Quran 2:256. In: Mansouri

Keskin

(eds) Contesting the Theological Foundations of Islamism and Violent Extremism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.35–52.

22.

Cui

Glinert

(2016) Jihadi-Salafi ideology: The suspension of dialectic and radicalization of thought. Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 10(4): 101–120.

23.

Dağlı

(2013) Jihad and the Islamic law of war. In: Bin Muhammad

Kalin

Kamali

(eds) War and Peace in Islam: The Use of Abuses of Jihad. Amman: Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, pp. 56–98.

24.

El-Badawy

Comerford

Welby

(2015) Inside the Jihadi Mind: Understanding Ideology and Propaganda. London: Centre on Religion and Geopolitics.

25.

Fadlallah

(2006) We must think before we act: September 11 was a gift to the US administration (trans J J Donohue). In: Donohue

Esposito

(eds) Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 449–459.

26.

Firestone

(1999) Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

27.

Frissen

d’Haenens

(2018) Legitimizing the caliphate and its politics: Moral disengagement rhetoric. In: Krishna-Hensel

(ed.) Dabiq in Authoritarian and Populist Influences in the New Media. London: Routledge, pp.138–164.

28.

Frissen

Toguslu

Van Ostaeyen

, et al. (2018) Capitalizing on the Koran to fuel online violent radicalization: A taxonomy of Koranic references in ISIS’s Dabiq. Telematics and Informatics 35(2): 491–503.

29.

Gosh

Basnett

(2017) Analysis of Rumiyah magazine. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 22(01): 16–22.

30.

Günther

(2022) Entrepreneurs of Identity: The Islamic States Symbolic Repertoire. New York, NY: Berghahn.

31.

Haider

(2018) Using corpus linguistic techniques in (critical) discourse studies reduces but does not remove bias: Evidence from an Arabic corpus about refugees. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 55(1): 89–133.

32.

Hayward

(2013) Warfare in the Quran. In: Bin Muhammad

Kalin

Kamali

(eds) War and Peace in Islam: The Use of Abuses of Jihad. Amman: Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, pp. 28–55.

33.

Humphreys

(2005) Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

34.

Ibn Kathir

(2000) Al-Mubarakpur

A Compilation of the Abridged Tafsir Volumes 1-10 (trans R al-Mubarakpur). Houston, TX: Dar-us-Salam Publications.

35.

Irshad

(2019) Islamic guidelines towards the safe guarding of humanity and human value. In: Babu

(ed.) The Men and Machine Through Ages [Sic]: An Anthology of Research Papers. Kerala: Mampad College, pp.67–71.

36.

Kadivar

(2020) Exploring Takfir its origins and contemporary use: The case of Takfiri approach in Daesh’s media. Contemporary Review of the Middle East 7(3): 259–285.

37.

Keskin

Tuncer

(2019) Causes of radicalisation: Theological arguments as the ultimate trigger. In: Mansouri

Keskin

(eds) Contesting the Theological Foundations of Islamism and Violent Extremism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 15–34.

38.

Khalil

(2018) Jihad Radicalism and the New Atheism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

39.

Khattab

(2015) The Clear Quran. Bolingbrook, IL: Al-Furqaan Foundation.

40.

Lahoud

(2010) The Jihadi’s Path to Self-Destruction. London: Hurst.

41.

Lakomy

(2021) Recruitment and incitement to violence in the Islamic states online propaganda: Comparative analysis of Dabiq and Rumiyah. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 44(7): 565–580.

42.

Lalani

(2006) Wali/walaya/wilaya. In: Leaman

(ed.) The Quran: An Encyclopedia. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 682–686.

43.

Lawrence

(2006) The Quran: A Biography. London: Atlantic Books.

44.

Leaman

(2006) Wali – Issues of identification. In: Leaman

(ed.) The Quran: An Encyclopedia. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 678–682.

45.

Maher

(2016) Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46.

March

Modirzadeh

(2013) Ambivalent universalism? Jus ad bellum in modern Islamic legal discourse. European Journal of International Law 24(1): 367–389.

47.

Marranci

(2006) Jihad Beyond Islam. Oxford: Berg.

48.

Nasr

Dagli

Dakake

, et al. (2015) The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

49.

Paz

(2014) Debates within the family: Jihadi-Salafi debates on strategy takfir extremism suicide bombings and the sense of the apocalypse. In: Meijer

(ed.) Global Salafism: Islams New Religious Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 267–280.

50.

Pelletier

Lundmark

Gardner

, et al. (2016) Why ISIS’s message resonates: Leveraging Islam, sociopolitical catalysts, and adaptive messaging. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 39(10): 871–899.

51.

Podeh

(2010) The baya: Modern political uses of Islamic ritual in the Arab world. Die Welt des Islams 50(1): 117–152.

52.

Ramaioli

(2022) Islamic State as a Legal Order: To Have No Law But Islam Between Sharia and Globalization. Abingdon: Routledge.

53.

Rasoulikolamaki

Kaur

(2021) How ISIS represented enemies as ineffectual in Dabiq: A multimodal critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Communication 15(6): 650–671.

54.

Shaltut

(2013) The Quran and combat (trans L Khraisha). In: Bin Muhammad

Kalin

Kamali

(eds) War and Peace in Islam: The Use of Abuses of Jihad. Amman: Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, pp. 1–27.

55.

Silverman

(2002) Just war jihad and terrorism: A comparison of Western and Islamic norms for the use of political violence. Journal of Church and State 44(1): 73–92.

56.

Sinai

(2017) The Quran: A Historical-Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

57.

Spier

(2018) Extremist propaganda and Quranic scripture: A “radical” corpus-based study of the Dabiq. Discourse & Society 29(5): 553–567.

58.

Sheikh

(2015) Reclaiming Jihad as a strategy of conflict transformation. Peace Review 27(3): 288–295.

59.

Strømmen

(2017) Christian terror in Europe? The Bible in Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto. Journal of the Bible and its Reception 4(1): 147–169.

60.

Usmani

(2006) The Noble Quran. Karachi: Maktaba Maariful Quran.

61.

Vergani

Bliuc

(2018) The language of new terrorism: Differences in psychological dimensions of communication in Dabiq and inspire. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 37(5): 523–540.

62.

Vergani

Bluic

(2015) The evolution of the ISIS language: A quantitative analysis of the language of the first year of Dabiq magazine. Sicurezza Terrorismo e Società 2(2): 7–20.

63.

Wagemakers

(2008) Defining the enemy: Abū Muhammad al-Maqdisīs radical reading of Sūrat al-Mumtahana. Die Welt des Islams 48: 348–371.

64.

Wagemakers

(2012) A Quietist Jihadi: The Ideology and Influence of Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

65.

Wagemakers

(2014) The transformation of a radical concept al-wala wa-l-bara in the ideology of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. In: Meijer

(ed.) Global Salafism: Islams New Religious Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 82–106.

66.

Wagemakers

(2017) Revisiting Wiktorowicz: Categorising and defining the branches of Salafism in. In: Cavatorta

Merone

(eds) Salafism After the Arab Awakening: Contending With Peoples Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 7–24.

67.

Watkin

A-L

Looney

(2019) “The lions of tomorrow”: A news value analysis of child images in jihadi magazines. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 42(1–2): 120–140.

68.

Watt

(1956) Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

69.

Webb

(2014) Al-Jāhiliyya: Uncertain times of uncertain meanings. Der Islam 91(1): 69–94.

70.

Weiss

Hassan

(2015) ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. New York, NY: Regan Arts.

71.

Winter

(2006) The poverty of fanaticism. In: Donohue

Esposito

(eds) Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 382–392.

72.

Wohlfarth

(2008) Walter Benjamin and the red army faction. Radical Philosophy 152: 7–19.

73.

Wozniak

JSG

Woods

Lee

(2022) The evolving self-presentation of the Islamic State from Dabiq to Rumiyah. The Social Science Journal 59(4): 588–600.

74.

Zekulin

(2021) From inspire to Rumiyah: Does instructional content in online jihadist magazines lead to attacks? Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 13(2): 115–141.