Divine Test or Divine Punishment? Explaining Islamic State Losses

Since it began losing territory in Iraq and Syria in 2016, the Islamic State’s official line for explaining its losses has been that God is subjecting the believers to a test or trial (tamhis, ibtila’). The theme was introduced in May 2016 by Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani, the Islamic State’s official spokesman until his death later that year, in an audio address recalling the struggles of the Islamic State of Iraq between 2006 and 2012. Al-‘Adnani reminded listeners of “God’s practice of testing and trying the mujahidin,” hinting that more of the same lay in store. In October 2016, an editorial in the Islamic State’s official Arabic weekly, al-Naba’, spoke similarly of God’s habit of “trying the believers with misfortune and hardship … before God’s victory will descend upon them.”

In other words, so the message goes, take heart and despair not, for the divine tribulation will surely pass and the triumphant march toward final victory will resume. As Abu al-Hasan al-Muhajir, al-‘Adnani’s successor as speaker, put it in a speech in April 2017: “If we are dispossessed of a city or an area or a village, this is only the testing and trying of the Muslim community, in order that the ranks may be purified and the filth expunged.” Thereafter, he said, God will give victory to the believers and, as prophesied, they will go on to conquer the world.

To most members and supporters of the Islamic State, this message might be persuasive enough. But not all are on board. Indeed, a large number have pushed back spiritedly against the notion that their suffering is somehow a divine test, accusing the Islamic State of being responsible for the present travails. According to them, what we are witnessing is not a divine test so much as a divine punishment. The Islamic State’s leadership, in this view, erred badly, indulging ideological extremism, corruption, and oppression, thus incurring God’s wrath. The two explanations for the Islamic State’s losses are thus the trial thesis and the oppression thesis. As the Islamic State prepares to cede its final pocket of territory in eastern Syria, the adherents of the latter may be growing.

The oppression thesis takes form

The oppression thesis dates back to at least summer 2017, when two Islamic State scholars composed letters setting out a litany of complaints against the caliphate’s leadership. The two letters, by Abu Muhammad al-Husayni al-Hashimi and Abu ‘Abd al-Malik al-Shami, respectively, were described in an earlier post, and since have been translated by Aymenn Al-Tamimi (see here and here). As will be recalled, these men were reacting to a series of developments involving the promulgation of a memorandum on takfir (excommunication) seen by the scholarly class as too extreme and the subsequent death of several scholars who objected to it. Yet their concerns went beyond the immediate context of the takfir dispute.

Al-Hashimi questioned the Islamic State’s very claim to be following “the prophetic methodology,” arguing that “oppressors, ignoramuses, and innovators” had taken over the caliphate while Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was nowhere to be seen. Al-Shami complained similarly of “oppressive, errant, deficient, and extremist commanders” who had seized the reins of power in the caliph’s absence. Both claimed that these leaders were advancing a Kharijite ideology, referring to the early Islamic sect famous for its extremism in takfir. In al-Shami’s words, the Islamic State was “exchanging its religion for the religion of the Kharijites,” while dissenters were being imprisoned or killed.

As a result, according to the two letter-writers, the Islamic State’s worldly fortunes were being affected. God was punishing the pseudo-caliphate. “Do you not have a reminder and an admonition in all these dreadful events and calamities that are befalling the Islamic State?” al-Hashimi asked al-Baghdadi, quoting Qur’an 6:42: “Indeed, We sent to nations before thee, and We seized them with misery and hardship that haply they might be humble.” Al-Shami was equally strident on this score. “Indeed,” he wrote, “what the Islamic State is going through today is not a test, as the misleading media lead us to believe. Rather it is a substitution”—a reference to God’s threats in the Qur’an (9:39, 47:38) to “substitute another people instead of you.”

For both writers, a key piece of evidence was a statement made by Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani back in April 2014, in a speech defending what was then the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. In the speech, al-‘Adnani beseeched God to punish the Islamic State if it veered toward extremism. “O God,” he exclaimed,

if this state be a state of Kharijites, then break its back, kill its leaders, bring down its flag, and guide its soldiers to the truth. O God, and if it be a state of Islam, ruling by Your book and the practice of Your prophet and waging jihad against your enemies, then fortify it, empower it, make it victorious, establish it in the land, and make it a caliphate on the prophetic methodology.

In the eyes of al-Hashimi and al-Shami, God’s reply to al-‘Adnani was abundantly clear. The signs of His disfavor were everywhere and irrefutable. “Indeed, I see the confirmation of this entreaty being realized before us,” al-Hashimi commented. “We have seen clearly how al-‘Adnani’s entreaty … was answered,” wrote al-Shami. The extremist and oppressive functionaries appointed by al-Baghdadi were getting their comeuppance. And yet, as is God’s way, all were paying the price. Al-Shami quoted verse 8:25 of the Qur’an: “And fear a trial which shall surely not smite in particular the oppressors among you; and know that God is terrible in retribution.”

The oppression thesis gains steam

Even though al-Baghdadi retracted the controversial takfir memorandum in September 2017, in a sign of support for the scholars and their somewhat more nuanced position on takfir, the concerns voiced by al-Hashimi and al-Shami lingered among the scholars, unconvinced as they were that the leadership had truly changed. Over the next year and more, the scholars continued to air grievances of the same kind, and they continued to be imprisoned and killed. That the Islamic State was inviting punishment was a recurring theme in their remarks.

A major spokesperson for the oppression thesis was the Jordanian-born Abu Ya‘qub al-Maqdisi, for a time the head of the Islamic State’s Office of Research and Studies. In mid-March 2018, he addressed a letter to “those in authority” in which he elaborated his concerns and called on his correspondents to reform. Among other things, al-Maqdisi criticized them for imposing limits on the range of acceptable religious discourse, particularly as concerns takfir. In his view they had come “to equate themselves with God in commanding right and forbidding wrong,” which was to say they were usurping God’s sovereignty. Al-Maqdisi complained further of “the spread of innovations,” including “the throwing of accusations of unbelief and innovation without restriction,” and “the spread of oppression and violation of blood and property.” It was these transgressions, he submitted, that were to blame for the current troubles:

We are certain that the successive losses, defeats, and setbacks that have befallen this state are not the result of a shortage of numbers and materiel. Indeed, the cause of this is sin, which has drawn the wrath of the Almighty and the visitation of His retribution against us all.

Al-Maqdisi called on his correspondents to correct their errors, but the advice did not go over well. Repeatedly imprisoned in 2018, he was executed toward the end of the year on charges of apostasy.

Another Islamic State scholar who publicly espoused the oppression thesis was the Saudi Abu al-Mundhir al-Harbi. In a sermon during the siege of the Province of al-Raqqa (presumably late 2017), he said, “Indeed, this tribulation and this setback that we are passing through, we have no doubt that it is a punishment from God for what our hands have perpetrated … We have sinned and oppressed and grown arrogant.” It is necessary, al-Harbi continued, for us “to repent sincerely to God, to recognize that we have oppressed and transgressed and grown arrogant and haughty.”

Two other scholars to sing this tune were the North African Abu Mus‘ab al-Sahrawi and the blind Egyptian Abu ‘Isa al-Masri. In early summer 2018, al-Sahrawi delivered a sermon in eastern Syria excoriating the leadership for oppression and extremism. “What has befallen us,” he told his congregation, “what has broken our back, divided our authority, and empowered the enemies of God over us is oppression and extremism in religion.” According to the media group that uploaded the sermon online, al-Sahrawi was henceforward banned from preaching. Also speaking that summer, likely also in eastern Syria, al-Masri likened the Islamic State to a sinking ship. “Just as oppression and corruption sink the ship,” he said, “so extremism in religion sinks the ship as well.”

Al-Nasiha

Distributing these works online is a collection of dissident media agencies comprising Mu’assasat al-Wafa’, Mu’assasat al-Turath al-‘Ilmi, and Mu’assasat Ma‘arij. The first of these has also published articles by pseudonymous scholars blaming the Islamic State for its failures. (See, for instance, this March 2018 essay by Abu Suraqa al-Hashimi.) Yet an even more critical outlet in this regard been a media group called al-Nasiha (“Advice”), launched in 2018 as a forum for giving advice to the caliph.

Since its founding, al-Nasiha has published some twenty essays by a small group of writers. The most prolific of them is a certain Ibn Jubayr, who has given the impression of being in the Islamic State’s last holdout in eastern Syria. While extremely harsh in tone, Ibn Jubayr has for the most part exhibited a begrudging loyalty to the caliphate. Echoing the concerns of al-Hashimi and al-Shami, he has complained of the marginalization of the scholars, the effective disappearance of al-Baghdadi, the spread of extremism, and the consolidation of power in the hands of a small group of unscrupulous and repressive men. In July 2018 he told the latter that “your soldiers see you as the cause behind the erosion of the [Islamic] State and its breakup.” And in October 2018 he said to them, “Your oppression and your arrogance toward God … have served the coalition and brought us to where we are today.”

Gradually, al-Nasiha veered in the direction of outright opposition. The starting point was a speech by al-Baghdadi in August 2018 in which he reiterated the trial thesis, came to the defense of his deputies, and decried division. Ibn Jubayr responded with a critical commentary, noting regretfully that the caliph was very much aware of the oppression being unleashed by his underlings. The breaking point for him seems to have come in December 2018, when a number of imprisoned scholars were killed in a coalition airstrike on a prison in the Syrian village of al-Kushma. In an essay on the event, published in February 2019, Ibn Jubayr claimed that the Islamic State was now in some ways worse than the infidel states of the Middle East. Mentioning al-Baghdadi, he remarked, “may God swiftly set him right or replace him,” and addressing his deputies, he said, “God has made you and your false caliphate a [warning] sign for all who see your oppression.”

Al-Naba’ responds

It was not till early February 2019 that the Islamic State’s Central Media Department (Diwan al-I‘lam al-Markazi) finally took it upon itself to refute these arguments, devoting an article to them in al-Naba’. “One of the greatest crimes and greatest innovations that we are seeing today spreading among the people,” read the article, “is their plunging into some of God’s foreordainments and their attempt to explain God’s will by means of them.” This was al-Naba’s way of attacking the view that the Islamic State had invited God’s punishment. Those espousing this view, the article said, “deny categorically that what is befalling some of the believers today is the test by which [God] will raise them by degrees.” Rather, they claim that the cause is God’s anger at the “sin or oppression” of the Islamic State’s rulers and the “deviation of [its] creed and path.” And they argue that His anger will not be lifted until these supposed errors are corrected.

The problem with this argument, according to al-Naba’, is that it presumes knowledge of the unseen—namely, knowledge of God’s “foreordainments”—and to claim such knowledge is “manifest unbelief.” “The Muslim servant,” al-Naba’ says, “knows that what befalls him or others is by God’s wise decree, but he does not know God’s intention behind this decree.”

Two weeks later, an author for al-Nasiha wrote a refutation of the al-Naba’ article, disputing the idea that to judge the Islamic State negatively was to claim knowledge of the unseen. “It is known in the religion by necessity,” wrote the author,

that oppression does not please God, that unwarranted killing does not please God, that extremism in religion does not please God, that torturing Muslims does not please God, that imprisoning them and terrorizing them and wrongly seizing their property does not please God … The things that anger God were clarified and established by Him in His book and in the practice of His prophet.

Furthermore, he went on, there are numerous verses of the Qur’an that show that “sins incur God’s anger, His retribution, and His punishment.” As God says (Q. 40:21), “God seized them for their sins.”

“Injustice” in Baghouz

In light of the above, it is worth noting that several Islamic State members who have fled the last bastion of Islamic State rule in Syria, in Baghouz, seem to subscribe to some version of the oppression thesis as outlined by Ibn Jubayr and others. One of them is Shamima Begum, the British “ISIS bride” who recently explained to the Times of London why “[t]he caliphate is over.” “There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they deserved victory,” she said. If her account is to be believed, her Dutch husband was imprisoned by the Islamic State for six months on charges of espionage, during which he was subjected to torture. “There was a lot of similar oppressions of innocent people. In some cases fighters who had fought for the caliphate were executed as spies even though they were innocent.” A similar complaint was voiced by the American Hoda Muthana, who mentioned the oppression of the Islamic State in an interview with the Guardian. “In the end,” she said, “I didn’t have many friends left, because the more I talked about the oppression of Isis the more I lost friends.”

Speaking with Agence France-Presse, a man named Abdul Monhem Najiyya offered a different kind of criticism: “There was an implementation of God’s law, but there was injustice … The leaders stole money … and fled.” As for al-Baghdadi, he complained, “He left us in the hands of people who let us down and left. He bears responsibility, because, in our view, he is our guide.”

Another harsh verdict came from one Um Rayyan, who told the Associated Press, “I think this is the reason for the failure of the Islamic State … God protected us (from the international coalition.) But when there was corruption inside us, God stopped making us victorious.” Her particular grievance was the elevation of Iraqis over non-Iraqis, a theme to which Ibn Jubayr devoted an essay.

Of course, some of these comments are self-serving and should be assessed skeptically. Yet they do suggest that the oppression thesis has its adherents among those fleeing the caliphate. As the al-Naba’ article indicated, objections of this kind have been “spreading” (muntashira). Whether they might erode the Islamic State’s base of support is hard to say, however, as the trial thesis has its devotees as well. As a woman in Syria recently told a CNN journalist, “God is testing us.” For the moment, this appears to be the dominant narrative among former residents of the caliphate. How dominant it remains will be a measure of the Islamic State’s strength in the years to come

Caliphate in Disarray: Theological Turmoil in the Islamic State

On May 31 of this year, Turki al-Bin‘ali, one of the Islamic State’s foremost religious authorities, was killed in Mayadin, Syria in an airstrike carried out by the U.S.-led coalition. Three weeks later, U.S. Central Command confirmed the death of “Turki al-Bin’ali, the self-proclaimed ‘Grand Mufti,’ or chief cleric, of ISIS.” His supporters online bemoaned his loss, circulating his “last will and testament” from June 2015, and in some cases composing commemorative poems (see here and here). The international media also took an interest in his death, CNN, for instance, reporting that “[o]ne of ISIS’ most important figures has been killed by an airstrike.” The Islamic State’s own media outlets, however, were noticeably silent on the matter. There was to be no official statement regarding the demise of the 32-year-old cleric from Bahrain, let alone any kind of eulogy. The reasons, it now seems, are clear.

At the time of his death, al-Bin‘ali was involved in a highly contentious theological controversy that has been roiling the Islamic State for some time. The dispute concerns the group’s position on takfir, or excommunication—namely, the excommunication of fellow Muslims—and al-Bin‘ali was on the losing side. On May 17, 2017, the Islamic State’s Delegated Committee, its executive council, issued a memorandum setting out the official stance on takfir, and for al-Bin‘ali it was too extreme. Two days later, he refuted the memorandum in a letter to the Delegated Committee, and twelve days after that, he was killed. More such refutations by Islamic State scholars followed, and in at least one other case the result—death by airstrike—was the same. In mid-September, in a highly unusual move, the Delegated Committee rescinded its controversial memo on takfir; al-Bin‘ali seemed to be posthumously vindicated. But before this, the several refutations of the Delegated Committee, including al-Bin‘ali’s, as well as some additional statements of dissent, found their way online. Together, these form an extraordinary window onto the theological turmoil in the Islamic State.

The caliphate’s “mufti”?

The first thing that should be addressed is the question of what role Turki al-Bin‘ali actually played in the Islamic State. As I wrote more than two years ago, there were rumors in late 2014 that al-Bin‘ali had been elevated to the position of chief mufti, and the accounts of certain Islamic State defectors seemed to corroborate that report. In 2016, a U.S. Treasury designation described him as the Islamic State’s “chief religious advisor,” noting that he “provides literature and fatwas for ISIL training camps.” Similarly, the U.S. Central Command statement referred to him as the group’s “Grand Mufti” and “chief cleric.” Some Arabic newspapers had taken to calling him “the mufti of Da‘ish.”

Al-Bin‘ali, as it turns out, was the emir of a body known as the Office of Research and Studies (Maktab al-Buhuth wa’l-Dirasat), which was previously known as the Committee for Research and Fatwas (Hay’at al-Buhuth wa’l-Ifta’), and before that as the Department of Research and Fatwas (Diwan al-Buhuth wa’l-Ifta’). The office has been responsible for preparing the religious texts studied in the Islamic State’s training camps and published by its printing press. At one point, it was also responsible for issuing fatwas. In the summer of 2014, as the Department of Research and Fatwas, it put out the infamous monograph justifying the group’s practice of slavery; in late 2014 and early 2015, as the Committee for Research and Fatwas, it produced a set of fatwas on a range of issues, from foosball to immolation. By late 2015, it was signing its publications as the Office of Research and Studies.

As one can see, al-Bin‘ali’s scholarly unit was demoted from department to committee to office, and in the process stripped of its prerogative of giving fatwas. The fact that al-Bin‘ali was in charge of what was the fatwa-issuing body of the Islamic State did make him, in a sense, the “chief mufti,” but this was never his official title. He was the emir of an office whose name and responsibilities varied over time.

According to a 2016 Islamic State video on the “structure of the caliphate,” the Office of Research and Studies is “concerned with researching shar‘i issues and expounding on any matters referred to it by various bodies”; it is “supervised” by the the Delegated Committee (al-Lajna al-Mufawwada). The Delegated Committee, so named because its members are “delegated” by the caliph, is “a select group of knowledgeable, upright individuals with perception and leadership skills … a body of individuals that supports [the caliph] … communicating orders once they have been issued and ensuring their execution.” It supervises all the Islamic State’s provinces, departments, committees, and offices. The impression given by the documents reviewed below is that the Delegated Committee, increasingly dominated by the allies of uber-extremists in takfir, gradually sidelined al-Bin‘ali and his office—and possibly even had a hand in his death.

“Hazimis” and “Bin‘alis”

As is well known, the Islamic State and al-Qaida are divided over the question of takfir, the former being more takfir-prone than the latter. But within the Islamic State itself there has also been a division, one sometimes described as between the more extreme “Hazimis” and the more moderate “Bin‘alis.”

“The Hazimis” (al-Hazimiyya), or “the Hazimi current” (al-tayyar al-Hazimi), who have been discussed by Tore Hamming and Romain Caillet, among others, are named for the Meccan-born Ahmad ibn ‘Umar al-Hazimi, a Salafi scholar in Saudi Arabia believed to be in his fifties. Though imprisoned by the Saudis since 2015, al-Hazimi is not known for his jihadi leanings, and there is some debate among jihadis as to whether he in fact belongs to the movement. A relatively obscure scholar, al-Hazimi earned a reputation in the jihadi universe only after the 2011 revolution in Tunisia, traveling there to preach on several occasions. In his lectures, he espoused a controversial doctrine known as takfir al-‘adhir, or “the excommunication of the excuser,” which became something of the watchword of the Hazimis.

The notion of takfir al-‘adhir is derived from two concepts in Wahhabi theology. The first is the requirement of takfir; the second is the inadmissibility of al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl, or “excusing on the basis of ignorance.” According to the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), it is incumbent upon all true believers to excommunicate—that is, to make takfir of—those deemed unbelievers, as well as to excommunicate those who fail to excommunicate them. As Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab stated—and this is the line around which the Hazimi-Bin‘ali debate revolves—“Whoso fails to make takfir of the polytheists, or has doubts concerning their unbelief, or deems their doctrine to be sound, has [himself] disbelieved.” The duty of takfir is generally accepted in Jihadi Salafism, but there is some debate over al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl, that is, over whether ignorance may serve as a legitimate excuse for holding errant beliefs, and so shield one from the charge of takfir. For al-Hazimi, who follows the traditional Wahhabi view, al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl is categorically invalid, meaning that the ignorant heretic is to be declared an unbeliever; moreover, as he says, anyone who regards ignorance as an excuse for the heretic’s unbelief is also to be declared an unbeliever. Hence the idea of “the excommunication of the excuser.”

When al-Hazimi elaborated this doctrine in a series of recorded lectures in late 2013, he met with a great deal of opposition from jihadis. In mid-2014, Turki al-Bin‘ali denounced al-Hazimi’s concept of takfir al-‘adhir in a strongly-worded tweet, calling the phrase an innovation. Not long after, Abu Sulayman al-Shami, a Syrian-American official in the Islamic State’s media department, authored a scathing critique of al-Hazimi and his ideas. The main criticism leveled against al-Hazimi by his detractors was that his doctrine amounted to takfir in infinite regress (al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul). Takfir al-‘adhir, they said, necessarily entails a sequence of excommunication in which there is seemingly no end. (To put this in terms of Tom, Dick, and Harry: If Tom is an unbeliever and Dick excuses Tom’s unbelief, then Dick becomes an unbeliever; and if Harry excuses Dick’s unbelief, then Harry becomes an unbeliever; and so on and so on ad infinitum.)

The danger of al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul was explicitly warned against in the creedal manuals prepared by al-Bin‘ali’s division (see, for example, here, pp. 30-32, and here, pp. 58-60). The approach taken in these works was to affirm that while ignorance cannot be an excuse for major unbelief, the one who excuses unbelief on account of ignorance should not be immediately declared an unbeliever. Thus the endless series of takfir is forestalled. It was al-Bin‘ali’s role in promoting this relatively more moderate position that led some to speak of “the Bin‘alis” (al-Bin‘aliyya) and “the Bin‘ali current” (al-tayyar al-Bin‘ali) in contrast to the Hazimis and the Hazimi current. The terminology goes back to at least 2014.

Competing statements

In later 2014, the Islamic State’s General Committee (al-Lajna al-‘Amma), presumably the forerunner of the Delegated Committee, issued a statement prohibiting any talk about “the secondary issues” pertaining to al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl, and threatening to prosecute anyone distributing related audio, visual, and written material. The implied target of this threat was of course the Hazimis and their doctrine of takfir al-‘adhir. Certain “ignorant people,” the statement read, have sought to “sow conflict and division among the soldiers of the Islamic State” by raising these issues.

Also in later 2014, the Islamic State rounded up a number of Hazimi activists within its borders. In September, it executed two well-known shari‘a officials, Abu Ja‘far al-Hattab and Abu ‘Umar al-Kuwaiti, accused of adopting the Hazimi view on takfir, and in December released a video highlighting the arrest of a cell of “extremists”; the video was accompanied by an article in English discussing the “disbanding” of this cell. Those rounded up were accused not only of espousing dangerous ideas about takfir but also of plotting a rebellion against the caliphate. This was not to be the end of the Hazimis, however.

The next official statement on takfir came from something called the Central Office for Overseeing the Shar‘ia Departments (al-Maktab al-Markazi li-Mutaba‘at al-Dawawin). Bearing the number 155 and dated May 29, 2016, this statement, like the first, prohibited discussion of the secondary issues related to al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl; it also explicitly warned against al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul and banned the use of the term takfir al-‘adhir. At the same time, in an attempt to compromise with the Hazimis, it affirmed that there is no excuse for hesitation in takfir, and said that this ought to be clear to anyone living in the Islamic State. For whatever reason, this statement was not put into circulation until April 2017, when it was shared online in both written and audio form and published in the Islamic State’s Arabic weekly, al-Naba’.

If the Central Office statement was a kind of overture to the Hazimis, the next statement, the memorandum by the Delegated Committee from May 17, 2017, was even more so. Titled “That Those Who Perish Might Perish by a Clear Sign, and [That Those Who] Live Might Live by a Clear Sign” (a quotation of Q. 8:42), it was addressed “to all the provinces, departments, and committees.” While the memorandum condemned “the extremists” who adopt the “innovative” idea of al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul, the bulk of its venom was reserved for “the postponers.” The latter are those who refuse to acknowledge takfir as “one of the unambiguous foundations of the religion” and so exhibit undue hesitation in excommunicating “the polytheists.” The final three pages of the memorandum counsel obedience to those in authority. The statement was styled “an important memorandum” in a summary published by al-Naba’ in late May and by Rumiyah in early June.

The Bin‘alis strike back—and are struck

Turki al-Bin‘ali and his allies wasted little time in responding. On May 19, al-Bin‘ali addressed a long letter to the Delegated Committee with his critical “observations” of the memorandum. The letter appeared online in late June. While maintaining a mostly respectful tone, al-Bin‘ali complained bitterly that the memorandum was issued in undue haste, not having been subjected to the scrutiny of “the scholars.” This was in stark contrast to the way in which the Central Office’s statement had been carefully crafted with the input of multiple scholars, including himself. The man who organized that earlier statement, he noted, was Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, the Islamic State’s media chief who was killed in an airstrike in September 2016.

Some of al-Bin‘ali’s criticisms were trivial or pedantic—the new statement contained typographical and grammatical errors, and it relied on a few weak hadith—but his main objections were substantial. Everyone is agreed, he said, that the memorandum was intended to appease “the extremists,” i.e., the Hazimis. The extremists were celebrating that “the Islamic State had repented and returned to the truth,” since the memorandum declared takfir to be “one of the unambiguous foundations of the religion.” For al-Bin‘ali, the implication of this phrase was without question takfir in infinite regress. Another concession to the extremists was a line to the effect that professed Muslims beyond the Islamic State’s territory are not necessarily to be regarded as Muslims. What “most people” have taken away from this line, al-Bin‘ali regretted, is that “the Islamic State excommunicates everyone outside its borders.” He then quoted several earlier speeches by Islamic State leaders seemingly contradicting this position. The letter closes with an appeal to the Delegated Committee to revise and correct what it has written. As noted above, al-Bin‘ali was killed on May 31.

On May 23, Abu ‘Abd al-Barr al-Salihi, a Kuwaiti-born Islamic State scholar of lesser renown, had written his own refutation of the memorandum, reiterating many of the points raised by al-Bin‘ali. He likewise lamented the fact that it “has pleased the extremists,” advising the Delegated Committee to withdraw the memo “in its entirety.” According to news reports, al-Salihi was imprisoned for his dissent, and ultimately died, like al-Bin‘ali, in an airstrike.

Next up was an even more obscure author, the Saudi Abu ‘Uthman al-Najdi, who denounced the memorandum in a brief essay. He urged the Delegated Committee to make a retraction, saying, “I am quit before God of this memorandum.” In late June, Khabbab al-Jazrawi, another Saudi describing himself as within borders of the Islamic State, wrote a refutation accusing the Delegated Committee of engaging in “ideological terrorism”: marginalizing, imprisoning, and threatening “the scholars.” He paid tribute to al-Bin‘ali and al-Salihi, whose blood, he said, had been spilt in defense of the truth.

“Shock therapy”

It was not until July and August that there appeared another batch of refutations by Islamic State scholars, these directed against not only the Delegated Committee’s memorandum but also the leadership of the caliphate more generally. The picture that they paint is of a group in utter disarray.

The first of these refutations was written in Mayadin, Syria by a shari‘a official named Abu Muhammad al-Husayni al-Hashimi, a Saudi of Syrian origin. Dated July 5 and titled “The Hashimi Advice to the Emir of the Islamic State,” it takes the form of a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on whom the author pours out his anger and frustration. The caliphate, he says, “is being eaten up region by region … Those who once feared us are now raiding us, and those who used to flee us, our soldiers now flee them.” The Islamic State has become “an entity in which innovations and extremism have spread,” and in which “the most important positions” are occupied by oppressive and impious men allied to the “Kharijites,” meaning the Hazimis. “O ‘caliph,’” he says, “you are looking on and you are powerless to do anything.” “O ‘caliph,’ where is ‘the prophetic methodology’ in the balance of what has gone before? If it is a caliphate, then certainly it is not a caliphate of the Muhammadan message; it is the farthest thing from the prophetic methodology.” If there is “harshness” in these words, he writes, it is because “the sick patient” is in need of “shock therapy.” Al-Hashimi does not shrink from naming names. There is, for example, ‘Abd al-Nasir (“may God damn him”), the one-time Iraqi head of the Delegated Committee (“may God damn it and curse it”), who put his stamp on the dreadful memorandum; and Abu Hafs al-Jazrawi, a Saudi in the security apparatus who is repeatedly condemned (“may God spread hellfire out for him as a resting place”).

Al-Hashimi reveals that he used to work in the Office of Research and Studies under al-Bin‘ali and his deputy, Abu Muhammad al-Azdi. There he witnessed first-hand its devaluation from department to council to office, and the corresponding decline of its influence in the face of the ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of the Delegated Committee. The latter was waging war on “the scholars,” which was to say al-Bin‘ali and his allies. Al-Bin‘ali’s death, he muses, was no accident: al-Bin‘ali and the other scholars who opposed the memorandum were arranged to die in airstrikes, their coordinates being leaked to “the crusaders.” “Perhaps [the Delegated Committee] has killed some of them and said, ‘the planes of the Crusaders.’” Al-Hashimi also speculates that al-Salihi, along with “more than sixty” of his supporters, perished in this way. Arrested in late June, they were confined to an old prison subsequently obliterated in an airstrike. All of these concerns, he says, are shared by a great many others in the Islamic State. “If you wish, I could name for you more than 30 scholars and judges, all of whom would speak in favor of what I have written or of part of it.”

One of al-Hashimi’s allies was the forenamed Khabbab al-Jazrawi, who in mid-August released a statement on the death of Abu Bakr al-Qahtani. Al-Qahtani, a Saudi scholar in the Islamic State known for his strong opposition to the Hazimis (see his hours-long debate with them on takfir), was himself reportedly killed in an airstrike on August 11. The “murky circumstances” of his death reminded al-Jazrawi of the way that al-Bin‘ali was killed.

Al-Jazrawi goes on in this statement to explain the rise of those he calls the Kharijites. While a few years ago they seemed to have been subdued, it was in reality only one group of them, that led by Abu Ja‘far al-Hattab, that had been put down, and this for excommunicating the caliph and attempting to rebel. It was not for their “extremism” that they were persecuted, but rather for the threat that they posed to the caliphate’s security. This episode notwithstanding, the Delegated Committee sensed that the Hazimis enjoyed considerable popular support, and so drew close to them as a means of protecting itself. “The [Islamic] State started to treat the Kharijites favorably … and [ultimately] adopted the Kharijites’ doctrine in order to hold on to power and out of fear that the Kharijites would turn on them.”

At the end of August, another Islamic State scholar gave voice to the concerns of al-Hashimi and al-Jazrawi in a lengthy statement. This was an open letter addressed by Abu ‘Abd al-Malik al-Shami, in Deir al-Zor, “to all those who care about the caliphate and the establishing of God’s law on earth.” The letter is titled “Sighs from the State of Oppression,” which sets the tone for what follows. Al-Shami, about whom no information seems to be available, describes the current state of affairs in the Islamic State as “a true nightmare threatening to annihilate us.” Events have moved quickly, with one city being lost after another, and now “all that we have left is a small piece of land encompassing Mayadin, al-Bukamal, and some of the villages between them.” The causes of all this misfortune are many, in his estimation, but three in particular: (1) an elite caste of traitorous evil-doers dominating the Islamic State’s leadership; (2) the “Hazimi extremists” protected and empowered by these evil-doers; and (3) a lying and deceitful media constantly reassuring us that all is well.

The caliph, he says, has been out of the picture for some time, the all-powerful Delegated Committee calling the shots in his absence. After Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani and then Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, its leader was the Iraqi ‘Abd al-Nasir, who gave even more support to the extremists than his predecessors. Al-Furqan, he claims, had set up the Central Office for Overseeing the Shar‘ia Departments “in order to please the extremists”; al-Bin‘ali had raised objections to its statement on takfir (no. 155), but al-Furqan had reassured him. Later, ‘Abd al-Nasir, during his tenure, established something called the Office for Methodological Inquiry (Maktab al-Tadqiq al-Manhaji)—al-Bin‘ali refers to this in his letter as the Council on Methodology (al-Lajna al-Manhajiyya)—the purpose of which was to enforce ideological purity by investigating those accused of holding moderate beliefs. It was a bastion of Hazimis. Then came “the great calamity,” the Delegated Committee’s memorandum, which was intended to affirm “some of the doctrines of the extremists,” and which rightly provoked a backlash.

Al-Shami mentions the refutations by al-Bin‘ali, al-Salihi, al-Najdi, and al-Jazrawi, all of whom, he says, were killed or persecuted after speaking out. The extremists, according to al-Shami, are primarily Tunisians and Egyptians, but also Saudis, Azerbaijanis, and Turks. Indulging in some conspiracy theories, he surmises that the Saudi government dispatched al-Hazimi to Tunisia in order to corrupt the minds of young jihadis who would later emigrate to Iraq and Syria. He also considers the leadership of the Islamic State to have been penetrated by the spies of regional intelligence services working on behalf of the Hazimis.

The media, meanwhile, “is hiding from [the mujahidin] news of losses and withdrawals,” all the while enchanting them with outrageous fantasies and illusions. One such illusion is the claim that we are living in end times, that “this state is the one that will conquer Istanbul and then Rome, and that one of its caliphs will be the one to hand over the banner to the mahdi or to Jesus.” Such talk, says al-Shami, is completely unwarranted. “The establishment of a caliphate does not necessarily mean that we are the ones who will fight in Dabiq, and that we are the ones who will conquer Rome, etc.” Two other illusions are the comparison between the Islamic State today and the early Muslims during the Battle of the Trench, in which the Prophet and his companions prevailed over an extend siege by their enemies, and the suggestion that the Islamic State can somehow “retreat to the desert,” recover its strength, and reconquer everything it has lost. There can be no “state” without territory, he insists.

Al-Shami ends his letter with an appeal to “my mujahidin brothers” to demand that the caliph step forward, state his views clearly on what has happened, and dissolve the corrupt Delegated Committee. “The only one who can put an end to this catastrophe is the caliph.” Yet al-Shami is not hopeful. Expecting to die soon, he writes that perhaps future generations of jihadis can learn from the experience that he has recorded here.

“Returning to the truth”

On September 15, the Delegated Committee put out a new memorandum addressed “to all the provinces, departments, and councils” rescinding the earlier one of May 17. “Observance of the content of the memorandum titled ‘That Those Who Perish Might Perish by a Clear Sign’ … has been annulled … on account of its containing errors of knowledge and misleading and unreliable statements that have given rise to disagreement and division in the ranks of the mujahidin in particular, and the Muslims in general.” The memorandum also reauthorized two books by al-Bin‘ali’s Office of Research and Studies that had been withdrawn by the Delegated Committee in early July. Finally, it reminded its readers of “the virtue of returning to the truth,” a phrase that would be the title of an article in the next issue of al-Naba’. The Bin‘alis seemed to be back on top. What had prompted the reversal?

In early September, there were rumors that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had returned to the scene after an extended absence; in doing so, he had come down hard on the Hazimis, detaining many of them, including two of their leaders, Abu Hafs al-Jazrawi and Abu Maram al-Jaza’iri. Following the September 15 memo, Arabic news outlets corroborated those rumors, telling of Baghdadi’s retaking the reins, his sacking of the Hazimis and their supporters, and his appointment of Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shami, a veteran Islamic State scholar, to the Delegated Committee (perhaps as its leader). Al-Shami was also assigned the role of clarifying the group’s official doctrine on issues of takfir, which he soon did in a series of audio statements (see here, here, here, and here). In the series, al-Shami denounces the Hazimis in all but name, rejecting takfir al-‘adhir on the grounds that takfir is not part of the “foundation of the religion” (asl al-din) but rather only one of “the requirements of the religion” (wajibat al-din). The general effect of this distinction is to diminish the primacy of takfir, creating room for disagreement on such matters as al-‘udhr bi’l-jahl.

For the Bin‘alis, there is poetic justice in Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shami’s selection for this role. Not only was he known as a major opponent of the Hazimis; he was, not long ago, investigated by the Office of Methodological Inquiry and imprisoned for his insufficiently extreme views. A three-hour recording of one of his sessions with the Office of Methodological Inquiry was recently made available on Telegram (see here and here). Throughout the interview, the investigators, led by Abu Maram al-Jaza’iri, rudely address al-Shami as Abu Fulan (i.e., “Abu Somebody,” “Abu So-and-So”), and al-Shami repeatedly corrects them, demanding respect: “I am not Abu Somebody. I am Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman … I am Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Shami … I have been a judge with this community since 2005. I am not new.” Indeed, al-Shami is also known as Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Zarqawi, on account of his close ties to the former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. While he seems to have kept a mostly low profile in the organization, he is known as the author of a lengthy rejoinder to Abu Qadata al-Filastini’s criticism of the Islamic State back in 2015.

With Baghdadi having reasserted his authority and al-Shami in charge of religious affairs, the question now is whether the Bin‘ali-Hazimi divide has finally been overcome, or whether it has simply been swept under the rug. Whatever the case, it is clear from the foregoing that the discontent in the Islamic State goes well beyond the issue of takfir. There is frustration with a corrupt administration, a dishonest media, unmet prophecies, and, most of all, interminable territorial defeat. Whether the Islamic State can manage to keep its theological house in order may be the difference between survival and implosion.