RustyNails
Member
readme.txt: Mod-sanctioned thread to keep up with the latest news with regards to ISIS and the fight against them. But, new story new thread rule still applies. This is just a singular place to discuss the latest news and updates of what's going on in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the region. There have been countless things happening in the fight against them, and we always have 2 or 3 different threads to keep up with it. Not anymore.
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Who or what is ISIS? Is it part of al-Qaeda?
Last year (2014), the al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq, which called itself Islamic State of Iraq, announced it was merging with Jabhat Al-Nusra, the "approved" al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria which was fighting the Assad regime alongside other rebel groups. It said it would from now on be called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – al-Sham referring to the historical Levant, including both Syria and Lebanon.
Jabhat Al-Nusra's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, rejected what he said was a takeover attempt. After some months of confusion, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's head since the death of Osama bin Laden, supported Golani and, eventually, renounced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of ISIS.
Since then, there has been a civil war fought across northern Syria between ISIS on the one hand and Jabhat Al-Nusra and other rebel groups on the other. Zawahiri's rejection of Baghdadi, who remains a charismatic and appealing leader for many foreign jihadis, has turned al-Qaeda into a double-headed monster. Some even talk of a "moderate" Zawahiri faction, which is more concerned with local sensibilities and forging alliances with other Sunni groups, and a hardline, ultra-brutal version led by Baghdadi.
Who is ISIS's leader?
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over the leadership of Islamic State of Iraq after its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a targeted strike by a US Air Force F16 jet north of Baghdad in June 2006. Zarqawi had earned a reputation as the most brutal of al-Qaeda's emirs, promoting a strategy of mass suicide bombings and highly publicised beheadings, videoed and posted online, and Baghdadi seems to have taken up the methodology with enthusiasm.
Baghdadi's real name is believed to be Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai. Jihadi websites claim he is a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, from a religious family, and that he holds a PhD in Islamic studies.
How did ISIS become so dominant in western Iraq? Wasn't it supposed to have been defeated before the Americans pulled out of Iraq in 2011?
The so-called "surge" launched by President George W. Bush did indeed reduce both Shia and Sunni violence in Iraq between 2006 and 2008.
However, lower level violence, including bombings by ISI especially of Shia pilgrimages and police stations continued, rising slowly last year.
Then, in a lightning strike in December, ISIS seized control of Fallujah and Ramadi, the two major Sunni strongholds of western Anbar province, neighbouring Syria. The Iraqi security forces made some inroads against them, but without any apparent strategy either to retake the cities or to win back their populations. Last week, ISIS began a major assault against other Iraqi cities in Sunni areas, including both Samarra, north of Baghdad, and Mosul.
How did no one see this coming?
Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister of Iraq, has been unable or unwilling to reach out to Sunni parts of the country – partly because his major electoral opposition in Iraq's sectarian politics comes from more extreme Shia factions. The United States left behind an informal militia of anti-al-Qaeda tribal chiefs known as the Sahwa, or Awakening, movement. But Mr Maliki saw them as hostile to him politically and reduced the salaries the Americans were paying them, making them gradually more and more alienated. al-Qaeda played on Sunni disillusionment with the Maliki administration. Saddam Hussein was Sunni and for Mr Maliki, it was too easy to portray them as remnants of the Saddam regime, but many had genuine grievances.
Without some local support, it would have been impossible for ISIS to achieve what it did in Iraq. But the great spur has been the money and recruits that its operations in Syria have won it. For many Sunni sympathisers, particularly in the Gulf, ISIS represents the front line in a long war between Sunni Islam and what they regard as linked heresies – Shia Islam in Iraq and its backer Iran, and the Alawism of the Assad regime.
ISIS vs Islamic State vs Isil vs Daesh: What do the different names mean – and why does it matter?
Islamic State (IS)
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
Daesh
The Islamic State – aka Isis (in current Guardian house style) – is a scary and much-discussed phenomenon, erasing borders, conquering vast areas of Iraq and Syria, massacring its enemies and beheading hostages in slick snuff and propaganda videos. Barack Obama calls it Isil. David Cameron loyally follows suit. Others refer to Isis or IS. Now Francois Hollande has renamed it Daesh. Confused as to how to negotiate this linguistic and political minefield? You might well be.
This terminological conflict has deep historic and cultural roots. The group originated in 1999 as Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad – quite a mouthful. It got simpler in 2004 when its founder, a Jordanian called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged an oath to al-Qaida, then still being run by Osama bin Laden from his Pakistani hideout. Its Arabic name became Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (don’t ask!) – though that was shortened in English to al-Qaida in Iraq.
But then it got more complicated. In 2006, under a man who now calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it morphed into the Islamic State in Iraq (Isi). In April 2013, two years into the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, Isi bigged itself up as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham) and declared a Caliphate – a state for all Muslims. Al-Sham is the historic Arabic name for Syria, Lebanon, and (according to some authorities) Jordan and Palestine. This area is known in English (thanks to the antiquated French phrase for the “lands of the rising sun”
as the Levant. Isis is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Isil is the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant: thus the moniker in Obama’s and Cameron’s briefing books. It’s the same transatlantic solidarity that had London and Washington referring to UBL (Usama Bin Laden) when everyone else used the more familiar OBL (Osama).
Opponents of the term Islamic State say it is neither Islamic nor a state: thus the suggestion of a group of British imams to Cameron that he use the expression “Un-Islamic State.” In a similar legitimacy-undermining vein Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, urged the media to use the rather heavy-handed QSIS: “Al-Qaida Separatists in Iraq and Syria.”
Daesh, now officially adopted by the French government, is the Arabic acronym for Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham, (though it should, to be precise, really be rendered as Da’ish). But why the change? It was never golng to be easy for the French EIIL (l’Etat islamique de l’Irak et du Levant) to supplant the more widely used English ISIL or ISIS (cf Nato vs Otan, EU vs UE). And it may, suggested one French blogger, have been chosen for its “sonorité péjorative” (dèche, douche, tache – to be broke, shower, spot). Hollande said he would be using the phrase “Daesh cutthroats”.
IS supporters, in any case, dislike the term Daesh as it does not spell out the crucial Islamic component. In the words of Simon Collis, the British Ambassador to Iraq: “Arabic speakers spit out the name Da’ish with different mixtures of contempt, ridicule and hostility. Da’ish is always negative.” It’s certainly entered the ever-adaptive Arabic language big time: in the plural form – “daw’aish” – it means bigots who impose their views on others.
Reading Material:
The way language works can distort reality. We must be vigilant in reading between the lines
How does Daesh make money?
Oil production and smuggling
ISIS makes between $1 million and $2 million each day from oil sales, numerous sources tell CNN. The oil comes mostly from refineries and wells that ISIS controls in northern Iraq and northern Syria.
The militants smuggle oil into southern Turkey, for example, and sell it to people who desperately need it just to carry on some semblance of everyday life.
The United States-led coalition fighting ISIS has repeatedly targeted ISIS oil assets in an effort to, in part, damage this arm of the group's financial system.
ISIS is estimated to produce about 44,000 barrels a day in Syria and 4,000 barrels a day in Iraq, according to Foreign Policy. A Kurdish newspaper has published the names of people involved with ISIS and its oil enterprise, the magazine reported.
Some on the list were associated with oil smuggling under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Foreign Policy said, as were those associated with a Toyota branch in Irbil that sells ISIS trucks.
Through its oil operations, ISIS appears to be trying to establish a self-sufficient state in the "Sunni triangle" in west and north Iraq, said Luay al-Khatteeb, founder and director of the Iraq Energy Institute.
Today, ISIS controls approximately 6 million people in Iraq and Syria, he said, and "that is a lot of people who need fuel."
Ransoms from kidnappings
In 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department estimated that al Qaeda and its affiliates had accumulated $120 million from ransoms over the previous eight years.
ISIS was once aligned with al Qaeda. The two groups are thought to operate separately but share similarities.
A 2014 New York Times investigation found that since 2008, al Qaeda and its affiliates had received $125 million from ransoms, including $66 million in 2013.
A Swedish company reportedly paid $70,000 to save an employee whom ISIS abducted.
Though officials publicly deny paying ransoms, the French purportedly have a policy of negotiating with militant groups to free its citizens. ISIS kidnapped Nicolas Henin, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier François, in 2013 in Syria. They were released in April 2014, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said in a report that asked whether paying ransoms is a wise strategy.
The United States has a policy of not doing that, and the recent executions of U.S. and other Western ISIS hostages have sparked debate over whether that should change. ISIS demanded hundreds of millions of dollars for American journalist James Foley, said Philip Balboni, the CEO of GlobalPost, the outlet for which Foley freelanced.
ISIS beheaded Foley and released a video of the slaying.
The terrorists also told the Japanese government to pay a $200 million ransom to free two Japanese citizens. Japan did not negotiate, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. ISIS slaughtered the men.
Looting and selling stolen artifacts and antiquities
ISIS allows locals to dig at ancient sites as long as those people give ISIS a percentage of the monetary value of anything found, according to a September 2014 New York Times opinion piece written by three people who had recently returned from southern Turkey and interviewed people who live and work in ISIS-controlled territory.
ISIS' system of profiteering from antiquities thieving is very complicated, the three said, adding that for some areas along the Euphrates River, ISIS leaders encourage semiprofessional field crews to dig.
"ISIS has caused irreparable damage to Syria's cultural heritage," the writers said, and it's crucial that the digging and smuggling of antiquities be stopped because Syria's history is essentially part of its identity. Leaving some of the targeted heritage intact, they said, "will be critical in helping the people of Syria reconnect with the symbols that unite them across religious and political lines."
CNN has extensively reported on ISIS' destruction of some ancient and deeply meaningful sites in Iraq. Officials in Iraq have said ISIS has blown up shrines such as the tomb of Jonah.
Qais Hussain Rashid, director general of Iraqi museums, told CNN that ISIS militants "cut these reliefs and sell them to criminals and antique dealers." He gestured to an ornate carving that's thousands of years old. "Usually they cut off the head, leaving the legs, because the head is the valuable part."
As if pillaging weren't enough, ISIS simply damages fragile historical sites as if they were empty storefronts for the taking. Rashid said that ISIS has used the ancient ruined city of Hatra, or al-Hadr in Arabic, which dates back to the third century B.C., as a training ground, weapons depot and a place to murder prisoners.
'Taxes,' aka extortion
In 2014, ISIS gained control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria and set out to create civil and administrative entities as if it were a legitimate state. That is, after all, what the militants have claimed to be after -- a caliphate, or an Islamic state led by one person, a successor to the Prophet Mohammed.
States demand taxes. In ISIS-controlled areas, to get anything done -- or to survive -- the people pay a fee to the terror group. Businesses are taxed if they want to have essential things like electricity and security, experts say.
Drivers who want to move through a checkpoint must hand over cash. When it's used more and more, extortion can seem to a terrified and traumatized populace as a normal tax system, Joseph Thorndike, the director of Tax Analysts' Tax History Project, wrote in Forbes.
Stealing
Sometimes there's no pretense such as "taxing." ISIS has stolen money, too. In June 2014, the group raided several banks in Mosul and stole an estimated $500 million, though the full amount is unconfirmed, according to global intelligence firm Stratfor. In Syria, ISIS has seized control of oil facilities, taking over from rebel group al-Nusra, which didn't fight back.
Organs harvesting and sale?
The Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations caused a sensation this week when he said that bodies have been found mutilated, and openings have been carved out of the backs of the corpses. To Mohamed Alhakim, that indicated "some parts are missing."
He said it's possible that ISIS is harvesting and trafficking the organs of dead civilians.
There is tremendous skepticism about that, particularly considering how hard it would be to preserve organs in crude and unsanitary war environments.
Mark Lyall Grant, Britain's ambassador to the U.N., said there was no proof or evidence to support Alhakim's assertion.
Control of crops
Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force in Washington, told CNN that Raqqa, ISIS' de facto Syrian capital, is a kind of breadbasket. "They've got the cotton and the wheat." he said. The United States has targeted grain silos that ISIS controls.
A separate economy?
Last year, ISIS announced that its "Treasury Department" would start minting its own gold, silver and copper coins for its "Official Islamic State Financial System." It's not clear if this has any value. The move is "purely dedicated to God," ISIS declared, and will remove Muslims from the "global economic system that is based on satanic usury."
Crimes of Daesh
Too many and too blood-curdling to mention. From crucifiction to burning of people alive in cages, to attempting to starve a community to death on a mountain top, to beheadings and amputations and torture. They also rape and pillage villages and towns, sexually enslave women and keep prisoners in deplorable conditions.
Theology
This is where the debate is currently happening all across the Muslim world. Almost every public Islamic scholar with an academic background has come out vehemently against ISIS' practices. Although Sunni Islam has no heirarchy, you have to go by what the most prominent and well-respected Imams are saying. The most well-respected Imam currently is Sheikh Bin Bayyah. He has written dozens of books regarding Islamic fiqh (Jurispudence), and he is an expert in every School of Thought (madhab) in Islam. This 83 year old has written a detailed theological argument against ISIS' practices. Even the ones who are of salafist leanings, such as the Grand Mosque Imam of Makkah Sheikh Al As-Sheikh, has come out swinging against ISIS and their wanton violence. It is unprecedented for this imam to give weekly sermons against ISIS, but it's also unintuitive at the same time because such Salafist preachers originated the idea of austere iconoclasm in the first place. The point is, everyone on the theological spectrum is against ISIS' and their followers, save a strand of extremists and their followers.
Essential Reading:
Atlantic: What ISIS really wants
Response to Atlantic
Conclusive Scholarly Opinions on ISIS
Letter to Baghdadi (the self-declared caliph of ISIS)
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's Challenge to ISIS
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi's condemning of ISIS
NOTE: ISIS has issued a death threat against Hamza Yusuf and Yasir Qadhi.
What is being done to fight this menace to civilization?
To be continued.
Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...what-do-the-different-names-mean-9750629.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...o-or-what-is-ISIS-Is-it-part-of-al-Qaeda.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/sep/21/islamic-state-isis-isil-daesh
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/world/how-isis-makes-money/index.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middl...ing-war-crimes-syria-2014111415108320501.html
--------------------------------------
Who or what is ISIS? Is it part of al-Qaeda?
Last year (2014), the al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq, which called itself Islamic State of Iraq, announced it was merging with Jabhat Al-Nusra, the "approved" al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria which was fighting the Assad regime alongside other rebel groups. It said it would from now on be called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – al-Sham referring to the historical Levant, including both Syria and Lebanon.
Jabhat Al-Nusra's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, rejected what he said was a takeover attempt. After some months of confusion, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's head since the death of Osama bin Laden, supported Golani and, eventually, renounced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of ISIS.
Since then, there has been a civil war fought across northern Syria between ISIS on the one hand and Jabhat Al-Nusra and other rebel groups on the other. Zawahiri's rejection of Baghdadi, who remains a charismatic and appealing leader for many foreign jihadis, has turned al-Qaeda into a double-headed monster. Some even talk of a "moderate" Zawahiri faction, which is more concerned with local sensibilities and forging alliances with other Sunni groups, and a hardline, ultra-brutal version led by Baghdadi.
Who is ISIS's leader?
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over the leadership of Islamic State of Iraq after its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a targeted strike by a US Air Force F16 jet north of Baghdad in June 2006. Zarqawi had earned a reputation as the most brutal of al-Qaeda's emirs, promoting a strategy of mass suicide bombings and highly publicised beheadings, videoed and posted online, and Baghdadi seems to have taken up the methodology with enthusiasm.
Baghdadi's real name is believed to be Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai. Jihadi websites claim he is a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, from a religious family, and that he holds a PhD in Islamic studies.
How did ISIS become so dominant in western Iraq? Wasn't it supposed to have been defeated before the Americans pulled out of Iraq in 2011?
The so-called "surge" launched by President George W. Bush did indeed reduce both Shia and Sunni violence in Iraq between 2006 and 2008.
However, lower level violence, including bombings by ISI especially of Shia pilgrimages and police stations continued, rising slowly last year.
Then, in a lightning strike in December, ISIS seized control of Fallujah and Ramadi, the two major Sunni strongholds of western Anbar province, neighbouring Syria. The Iraqi security forces made some inroads against them, but without any apparent strategy either to retake the cities or to win back their populations. Last week, ISIS began a major assault against other Iraqi cities in Sunni areas, including both Samarra, north of Baghdad, and Mosul.
How did no one see this coming?
Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister of Iraq, has been unable or unwilling to reach out to Sunni parts of the country – partly because his major electoral opposition in Iraq's sectarian politics comes from more extreme Shia factions. The United States left behind an informal militia of anti-al-Qaeda tribal chiefs known as the Sahwa, or Awakening, movement. But Mr Maliki saw them as hostile to him politically and reduced the salaries the Americans were paying them, making them gradually more and more alienated. al-Qaeda played on Sunni disillusionment with the Maliki administration. Saddam Hussein was Sunni and for Mr Maliki, it was too easy to portray them as remnants of the Saddam regime, but many had genuine grievances.
Without some local support, it would have been impossible for ISIS to achieve what it did in Iraq. But the great spur has been the money and recruits that its operations in Syria have won it. For many Sunni sympathisers, particularly in the Gulf, ISIS represents the front line in a long war between Sunni Islam and what they regard as linked heresies – Shia Islam in Iraq and its backer Iran, and the Alawism of the Assad regime.
ISIS vs Islamic State vs Isil vs Daesh: What do the different names mean – and why does it matter?
Islamic State (IS)
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
Daesh
The Islamic State – aka Isis (in current Guardian house style) – is a scary and much-discussed phenomenon, erasing borders, conquering vast areas of Iraq and Syria, massacring its enemies and beheading hostages in slick snuff and propaganda videos. Barack Obama calls it Isil. David Cameron loyally follows suit. Others refer to Isis or IS. Now Francois Hollande has renamed it Daesh. Confused as to how to negotiate this linguistic and political minefield? You might well be.
This terminological conflict has deep historic and cultural roots. The group originated in 1999 as Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad – quite a mouthful. It got simpler in 2004 when its founder, a Jordanian called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged an oath to al-Qaida, then still being run by Osama bin Laden from his Pakistani hideout. Its Arabic name became Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (don’t ask!) – though that was shortened in English to al-Qaida in Iraq.
But then it got more complicated. In 2006, under a man who now calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it morphed into the Islamic State in Iraq (Isi). In April 2013, two years into the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, Isi bigged itself up as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham) and declared a Caliphate – a state for all Muslims. Al-Sham is the historic Arabic name for Syria, Lebanon, and (according to some authorities) Jordan and Palestine. This area is known in English (thanks to the antiquated French phrase for the “lands of the rising sun”
as the Levant. Isis is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Isil is the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant: thus the moniker in Obama’s and Cameron’s briefing books. It’s the same transatlantic solidarity that had London and Washington referring to UBL (Usama Bin Laden) when everyone else used the more familiar OBL (Osama).Opponents of the term Islamic State say it is neither Islamic nor a state: thus the suggestion of a group of British imams to Cameron that he use the expression “Un-Islamic State.” In a similar legitimacy-undermining vein Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, urged the media to use the rather heavy-handed QSIS: “Al-Qaida Separatists in Iraq and Syria.”
Daesh, now officially adopted by the French government, is the Arabic acronym for Al Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham, (though it should, to be precise, really be rendered as Da’ish). But why the change? It was never golng to be easy for the French EIIL (l’Etat islamique de l’Irak et du Levant) to supplant the more widely used English ISIL or ISIS (cf Nato vs Otan, EU vs UE). And it may, suggested one French blogger, have been chosen for its “sonorité péjorative” (dèche, douche, tache – to be broke, shower, spot). Hollande said he would be using the phrase “Daesh cutthroats”.
IS supporters, in any case, dislike the term Daesh as it does not spell out the crucial Islamic component. In the words of Simon Collis, the British Ambassador to Iraq: “Arabic speakers spit out the name Da’ish with different mixtures of contempt, ridicule and hostility. Da’ish is always negative.” It’s certainly entered the ever-adaptive Arabic language big time: in the plural form – “daw’aish” – it means bigots who impose their views on others.
Reading Material:
The way language works can distort reality. We must be vigilant in reading between the lines
How does Daesh make money?
Oil production and smuggling
ISIS makes between $1 million and $2 million each day from oil sales, numerous sources tell CNN. The oil comes mostly from refineries and wells that ISIS controls in northern Iraq and northern Syria.
The militants smuggle oil into southern Turkey, for example, and sell it to people who desperately need it just to carry on some semblance of everyday life.
The United States-led coalition fighting ISIS has repeatedly targeted ISIS oil assets in an effort to, in part, damage this arm of the group's financial system.
ISIS is estimated to produce about 44,000 barrels a day in Syria and 4,000 barrels a day in Iraq, according to Foreign Policy. A Kurdish newspaper has published the names of people involved with ISIS and its oil enterprise, the magazine reported.
Some on the list were associated with oil smuggling under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Foreign Policy said, as were those associated with a Toyota branch in Irbil that sells ISIS trucks.
Through its oil operations, ISIS appears to be trying to establish a self-sufficient state in the "Sunni triangle" in west and north Iraq, said Luay al-Khatteeb, founder and director of the Iraq Energy Institute.
Today, ISIS controls approximately 6 million people in Iraq and Syria, he said, and "that is a lot of people who need fuel."
Ransoms from kidnappings
In 2012, the U.S. Treasury Department estimated that al Qaeda and its affiliates had accumulated $120 million from ransoms over the previous eight years.
ISIS was once aligned with al Qaeda. The two groups are thought to operate separately but share similarities.
A 2014 New York Times investigation found that since 2008, al Qaeda and its affiliates had received $125 million from ransoms, including $66 million in 2013.
A Swedish company reportedly paid $70,000 to save an employee whom ISIS abducted.
Though officials publicly deny paying ransoms, the French purportedly have a policy of negotiating with militant groups to free its citizens. ISIS kidnapped Nicolas Henin, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier François, in 2013 in Syria. They were released in April 2014, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said in a report that asked whether paying ransoms is a wise strategy.
The United States has a policy of not doing that, and the recent executions of U.S. and other Western ISIS hostages have sparked debate over whether that should change. ISIS demanded hundreds of millions of dollars for American journalist James Foley, said Philip Balboni, the CEO of GlobalPost, the outlet for which Foley freelanced.
ISIS beheaded Foley and released a video of the slaying.
The terrorists also told the Japanese government to pay a $200 million ransom to free two Japanese citizens. Japan did not negotiate, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. ISIS slaughtered the men.
Looting and selling stolen artifacts and antiquities
ISIS allows locals to dig at ancient sites as long as those people give ISIS a percentage of the monetary value of anything found, according to a September 2014 New York Times opinion piece written by three people who had recently returned from southern Turkey and interviewed people who live and work in ISIS-controlled territory.
ISIS' system of profiteering from antiquities thieving is very complicated, the three said, adding that for some areas along the Euphrates River, ISIS leaders encourage semiprofessional field crews to dig.
"ISIS has caused irreparable damage to Syria's cultural heritage," the writers said, and it's crucial that the digging and smuggling of antiquities be stopped because Syria's history is essentially part of its identity. Leaving some of the targeted heritage intact, they said, "will be critical in helping the people of Syria reconnect with the symbols that unite them across religious and political lines."
CNN has extensively reported on ISIS' destruction of some ancient and deeply meaningful sites in Iraq. Officials in Iraq have said ISIS has blown up shrines such as the tomb of Jonah.
Qais Hussain Rashid, director general of Iraqi museums, told CNN that ISIS militants "cut these reliefs and sell them to criminals and antique dealers." He gestured to an ornate carving that's thousands of years old. "Usually they cut off the head, leaving the legs, because the head is the valuable part."
As if pillaging weren't enough, ISIS simply damages fragile historical sites as if they were empty storefronts for the taking. Rashid said that ISIS has used the ancient ruined city of Hatra, or al-Hadr in Arabic, which dates back to the third century B.C., as a training ground, weapons depot and a place to murder prisoners.
'Taxes,' aka extortion
In 2014, ISIS gained control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria and set out to create civil and administrative entities as if it were a legitimate state. That is, after all, what the militants have claimed to be after -- a caliphate, or an Islamic state led by one person, a successor to the Prophet Mohammed.
States demand taxes. In ISIS-controlled areas, to get anything done -- or to survive -- the people pay a fee to the terror group. Businesses are taxed if they want to have essential things like electricity and security, experts say.
Drivers who want to move through a checkpoint must hand over cash. When it's used more and more, extortion can seem to a terrified and traumatized populace as a normal tax system, Joseph Thorndike, the director of Tax Analysts' Tax History Project, wrote in Forbes.
Stealing
Sometimes there's no pretense such as "taxing." ISIS has stolen money, too. In June 2014, the group raided several banks in Mosul and stole an estimated $500 million, though the full amount is unconfirmed, according to global intelligence firm Stratfor. In Syria, ISIS has seized control of oil facilities, taking over from rebel group al-Nusra, which didn't fight back.
Organs harvesting and sale?
The Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations caused a sensation this week when he said that bodies have been found mutilated, and openings have been carved out of the backs of the corpses. To Mohamed Alhakim, that indicated "some parts are missing."
He said it's possible that ISIS is harvesting and trafficking the organs of dead civilians.
There is tremendous skepticism about that, particularly considering how hard it would be to preserve organs in crude and unsanitary war environments.
Mark Lyall Grant, Britain's ambassador to the U.N., said there was no proof or evidence to support Alhakim's assertion.
Control of crops
Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force in Washington, told CNN that Raqqa, ISIS' de facto Syrian capital, is a kind of breadbasket. "They've got the cotton and the wheat." he said. The United States has targeted grain silos that ISIS controls.
A separate economy?
Last year, ISIS announced that its "Treasury Department" would start minting its own gold, silver and copper coins for its "Official Islamic State Financial System." It's not clear if this has any value. The move is "purely dedicated to God," ISIS declared, and will remove Muslims from the "global economic system that is based on satanic usury."
Crimes of Daesh
Too many and too blood-curdling to mention. From crucifiction to burning of people alive in cages, to attempting to starve a community to death on a mountain top, to beheadings and amputations and torture. They also rape and pillage villages and towns, sexually enslave women and keep prisoners in deplorable conditions.
Not to mention destruction of mosques, churches, tombs, and various priceless historical artifacts. They are especially brutal to non_muslim communities, but Majority of their victims have actually been Sunni and Shia Muslims that took up arms against them or spoke out against them. They derive justification for these actions through their own Sheikhs and Muftis that act as the Ministry of Propaganda for the leader. ISIS is also accused of harvesting organs to fund their operations.
Theology
This is where the debate is currently happening all across the Muslim world. Almost every public Islamic scholar with an academic background has come out vehemently against ISIS' practices. Although Sunni Islam has no heirarchy, you have to go by what the most prominent and well-respected Imams are saying. The most well-respected Imam currently is Sheikh Bin Bayyah. He has written dozens of books regarding Islamic fiqh (Jurispudence), and he is an expert in every School of Thought (madhab) in Islam. This 83 year old has written a detailed theological argument against ISIS' practices. Even the ones who are of salafist leanings, such as the Grand Mosque Imam of Makkah Sheikh Al As-Sheikh, has come out swinging against ISIS and their wanton violence. It is unprecedented for this imam to give weekly sermons against ISIS, but it's also unintuitive at the same time because such Salafist preachers originated the idea of austere iconoclasm in the first place. The point is, everyone on the theological spectrum is against ISIS' and their followers, save a strand of extremists and their followers.
Essential Reading:
Atlantic: What ISIS really wants
Response to Atlantic
Conclusive Scholarly Opinions on ISIS
Letter to Baghdadi (the self-declared caliph of ISIS)
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's Challenge to ISIS
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi's condemning of ISIS
NOTE: ISIS has issued a death threat against Hamza Yusuf and Yasir Qadhi.
What is being done to fight this menace to civilization?
To be continued.
Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...what-do-the-different-names-mean-9750629.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...o-or-what-is-ISIS-Is-it-part-of-al-Qaeda.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/sep/21/islamic-state-isis-isil-daesh
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/world/how-isis-makes-money/index.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middl...ing-war-crimes-syria-2014111415108320501.html
