I have always been interested in the Middle East, specifically the Syrian conflict. In early summer 2014, as part of my masterâ??s dissertation, I went to Lebanon to work with the United Nations. I was still there when the Islamic State group, commonly known as ISIS, struck Iraq.
As many in the United States now know, ISIS is an extremist group. Its roots are in a small group of Jordanian jihadis who went to Taliban Afghanistan in 1999 and who were in Iraq waiting for the Americans when the invasion came in 2003. ISIS has been through numerous mutations both in structure and name, and it was nearly destroyed by the U.S. â??surgeâ? in Iraq after 2007. But since the U.S. pullout of Iraq and the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011, ISIS has found a fertile environment for expansion and has set up a proto-state in areas of eastern and northern Syria and western and central Iraq. ISIS adheres to a version of Islamism that marks even other Islamists as unbelievers who can be killed. It claims to be restoring Islam to the time of its advent with the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. In ISISâ?? telling, it is Islam, and all other versions are defective and impure.
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