Summary, June 29

ISIS' leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, today declared himself Caliph, that is, leader of the new Caliphate. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is now known as IS, Islamic State (and I will refer to it as IS from now on).

For those who are unclear, a Caliphate is a religious-political Islamic state. The early history of the Islamic world was the history of successive caliphates ruled by caliphs, such as the Ummayad Caliphate, the Abbassid Caliphate, and so forth. The last caliphate was destroyed in 1918, when the Allied forces broke up the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Caliphate). Allied colonial policy in the Middle East has since involved the policy of keeping the Muslim world broken by means of supporting local military leaders, and no caliphate has risen since the fall of the Ottomans.

The closest analogy to a caliphate is the medieval Christian notion of "Christendom", a global religious-political hybrid aiming to subordinate all of humanity to a single Law under a single Leader (Pope, Caliph). Equally, the Byzantine notion of the Holy Empire under the Emperor gives some sense of what a caliphate is.

ISIS' advance represents the first sustained effort to create a new caliphate. With the announcement of the birth of the Islamic State, we can expect the situation in the Middle East to take an even more serious turn. Consider the following:

1. Now that IS has declared itself, it represents a direct threat to every other Islamic nation. This is now a religious matter - as a caliphate, the caliph can claim the allegiance of every Muslim. Further, every Muslim is bound by his religion to defend the caliphate. Hence, unless other Islamic nations are willing to bow to IS, they must destroy it.

2. As an explicitly religious state, IS will likely galvanize popular support. Disenfranchised and oppressed Muslims, unimpressed by the results of the Arab Spring, may turn to IS' leadership. Islamic youth lacking jobs and meaning will perhaps turn to IS to give them a purpose, one supported by their holy texts.

3. Pro-IS imams will now dictate religious duties to Muslims. Rhetoric will change, and we can expect the growth of pro-caliphate literature unless IS is quickly destroyed. Al-Qaeda galvanized a religious literature through its assertion that it was defending Islamic land from crusaders; expect nothing less from IS.

This is big. HUGE, in fact. The entirety of Middle Eastern politics of the past 100 years just took a turn for the worse.

Thread: 'THE END IS HERE': ISIS/ISLAMIC STATE PRIMER (Page 4)