The caliphate wants you! Conflating Islam and Islamist ideology in Islamic State of Iraq and Syria recruitment propaganda and Western media reporting

Abstract

Having declared its caliphate in mid-2014, the militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) effectively utilised Islamic terminology, texts and narratives to recruit thousands of Muslims globally to join its ranks in the conquest of territory in Iraq and Syria and to commit acts of terrorism in numerous cities around the world. This chapter will examine ISIS recruitment propaganda based on analyses of its online magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah. Of particular focus will be the extent to which the militant group draws on the religion of Islam as a recruitment strategy in the service of its Islamist politico-military ideology and objectives. This will be addressed in relation to the scholarly debate over the relationship between Islam and Islamism. The chapter examines the appeal of ISIS among significant, albeit relatively small, numbers of discontent Western Muslims and the extent to which Western media organisations have been complicit in ISIS recruitment through a tendency to conflate Islam and Islamism and frame the group in ways that are consistent with its own propaganda material.