ISIS Changes Name, Declares Caliphate

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which
has over the last month taken control of vast swaths of Iraq, has
declared itself an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria a few days after
the al-Nusra Front, the Syria Al Qaeda affiliate, was reported to
have signed a “loyalty
pledge” to ISIS. In the statement it released, with English
translation (PDF),
ISIS claims to have “demolished” the governments of Syria and Iraq,
to have “disgraced” infidels and “humiliated” heretics. It also
called Sunnis “masters” and “esteemed.” The dick-swinging comes
after the group’s declaration that it had transcended race- and
class-based distinctions in favor of “piety,” the kind with which
they “forced the noses of the cross-worshippers onto the ground
with the most miserable of weapons and weakest of number.”

The group also claimed that the “ummah” (the Muslim “nation” for
which ISIS claims to speak) “succeeded in ending two of the largest
empires known to history in just 25 years and then spent the
treasure of those empires on jihad” and claimed it would be a sin
for them not to declare an empire of their own, called a caliphate,
with  their leader,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, naturally chosen as the caliph.

“The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations
becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority
and the arrival of its troops to their areas,” the
statement read. According to
news reports in an audio statement a spokesperson followed that
up with “Listen to your caliph and obey
him. Support your state, which grows every
day.”

ISIS formed amid the Syrian civil war, when the Islamic State of
Iraq, the Iraqi Al-Qaeda affiliate, joined in the hostilities.
 Last April, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the Iraq Al
Qaeda affiliate, announced that they had merged with al-Nusra but
the Syrian group
denied the merger and reiterated their loyalty to Al Qaeda,
which was
also upset by ISI’s attempt at a hostile takeover. ISI
continued to fight on its own in Syria, against the government,
more moderate rebels, and other jihadists, eventually becoming
ISIS. The group’s declaration of an Islamic state and its leaders
megalomaniacal claim to be a caliph is aimed not just to the
governments in the Middle East (and the world) but to Al Qaeda
affiliates in the region as well.

The ability of ISIS or any jihadi group to fell an empire, as
they claim such groups did to the Soviet Union (which spent its
last decade mired in an occupation in Afghanistan) and the United
States  (whose two land wars in Asia showed it a
very bad idea to wage two land wars in Asia) goes only as far
as empires are willing to mire themselves in the kinds of wars and
military interventions that can only
benefit such groups.