ISIL as a Mass Movement

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 12, 2016, Graeme Wood discussed the self-proclaimed Islamic State as a mass movement and laid out the reasons for reasonable versus unreasonable fear of the movement and its constituents’ intentions. Based on his interactions with the Islamic State’s supporters abroad, Wood recommended that future U.S. government policy responses toward the Islamic State take into account not only military and political factors, but also “countercultural, religious, and existential ones,” and that politicians remain simultaneously rational and empathetic for their constituents.

Takeaways:

• Even though they enjoy the comforts of their lives in the developed world, supporters of the Islamic State living abroad are steadfast in their convictions and practices that are not aligned with modern notions of human rights. Their opinions are “premeditated,” and entirely based on interpretation of Islamic scripture and history.  They recognize Al Baghdadi as the political successor to Muhammad and “adhere to a harsh, intolerant form of Islam” practiced only by a minority of Muslims.
• The Islamic State’s supporters are far more demographically diverse than what is represented by mainstream media based on age, national origin, class, occupation, and gender. In addition, the movement’s numbers far exceed that of Al Qaida’s during its “heyday,” where tens of thousands have migrated to Syria and Iraq. This means that U.S. counterterrorism strategies must treat the Islamic State as a mass movement rather than a conspiracy.
• There is a stark mismatch between the Islamic State’s ideological rhetoric and its actual military capacity.  Its tactics for expansion in Iraq and Syria are not applicable to Turkey or heavily Shiite-dominated areas of Iraq since the Islamic State feeds on local populations whose desperate state allows them to consider the Islamic State’s interpretation of Islam as an alternative to their current conditions.
• The Islamic State’s main priority is to expand its caliphate and protect its core territories, not attack Western targets. The foremost obligation of Islamic State supporters in the diaspora is to immigrate to the caliphate, but only in the event that they are unable to do so should they carry out terrorist attacks of their own abroad. Those attacks that do occur are conducted by loyal cells directed by their command in Syria. These individuals likely number in the hundreds throughout Europe.
• The Islamic State coordinates its attacks to have maximum impact on Western populations with minimal retaliation to avoid territorial loss. So long as they remain prominent in the global eye, an attack on U.S. soil would be a poor calculation in this regard. That being said, it is likely there will be additional attacks in the United States and Europe as the Islamic State’s fortunes change and it shifts toward an Al Qaida-like conspiracy strategy that does not utilize its mass numbers.