Now this is interesting.
Der Spiegel reports that IS is the product of a calculated strategy led by a former Baathist intelligence officer. The implication is that Islamist ideology is being used to manipulate people by a leadership that has purely secular objectives -- to regain power lost when the U.S. invaded Iraq. The mastermind was Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, who used the pseudonym Haji Bakr. He was killed in a firefight in the Syrian town of Tal Rifaat in January, 2014. Documents in his possession were secretly kept their and have now been seen by Der Spiegel reporters. Money quotes:
What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover. It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an "Islamic Intelligence State" -- a caliphate run by an organization that resembled East Germany's notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency. . . .
Sharia, the courts, prescribed piety -- all of this served a single goal: surveillance and control. Even the word that Bakr used for the conversion of true Muslims, takwin, is not a religious but a technical term that translates as "implementation," a prosaic word otherwise used in geology or construction. .. .
There is a simple reason why there is no mention in Bakr's writings of prophecies relating to the establishment of an Islamic State allegedly ordained by God: He believed that fanatical religious convictions alone were not enough to achieve victory. But he did believe that the faith of others could be exploited.
Not that these revelations will change anything, I suppose. Faith is impervious to facts. But it does clarify where the responsibility for this historic disaster truly lies.
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