No one can read ISIS’s infamous manuscript “The Management of Savagery” can fail to see that the organization’s ideology built around a “project of vengeance” that has no coherent doctrine like those developed by other violent fundamentalist groups like al-Jihad and al-Jamaa Islamiya, or even their transnational successor, al-Qaeda, which had been structured around rigid doctrinal foundations and puritanical interpretations of certain religious that justify violence and terrorism.
This distinct, simplified, and superficial ideological structure is more a vengeful fantasy than fundamentalist jurisprudence. That has allowed its cells to remain dangerous in several places, especially Syria, despite the collapse of their infrastructure.
The truth is that this simplistic, superficial ideological framework made adopting the group’s mindset universally accessible, unlike the lengthy doctrinal education required of al-Qaeda leaders and other jihadist organizations. Individuals driven by a desire for revenge on religious, sectarian, or political grounds could be recruited by ISIS to kill and terrorize Americans, as happened in Palmyra and led to US military intervention, or Syrians, as they did in the attack on the Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque in Homs.
It became apparent that there is essentially no difference between those calling themselves the “Islamic State” and “Ansar al-Sunna;” neither has restraints with regard to killing civilians or soldiers anywhere.
Many still remember the crime of targeting the al-Rawda Mosque in Egypt’s Sinai, which resulted in one of the highest casualty counts in the history of terrorist attacks on a house worship: 305 innocent worshippers were killed in November 2017. It goes without saying that it was a “Sunni mosque.”
It is true that ISIS did not “officially” claim responsibility for the attack, but the cells operating in this area - having adopted the mindset of vengeance, terror, and killing children and innocents - were implicated in this heinous crime.
Often described as ISIS’s manifesto, "The Management of Savagery" begins with an introductory chapter titled “The System that Has Governed the World Since the Sykes–Picot Era,” a contrast with the introductions of other jihadist extremist writings, which were rooted entirely in jurisprudential arguments, especially the pamphlet “The Charter of Islamic Action” and a lesser extent “The Inevitability of Confrontation” and “The Neglected Duty.”
Perhaps the real dilemma raised by ISIS’s new cells is that their vengeful outlook no longer targets only regimes, as had been the case in Syria or Iraq, but also extends to other organizations and sects, as well as to regional and local power dynamics that have made these cells “deployable” at any moment.
State weakness- the frailty of any state- and political or sectarian tensions create fertile ground for ISIS’s new cells, facilitating their dangerous acts of terrorism. They have the remnants of the organization behind them, as well as a fluid reservoir of vengeful notions that justify any act of violence or terrorism. Indeed, "The Management of Savagery" explicitly opened the door to “benefiting from the experience of non-Islamic movements in managing savagery through mass violence.” It cites John Garang’s movement in South Sudan and leftist movements in Central and South America, presenting them as groups that “excelled in certain practical aspects of managing savagery in those areas.”
The threat of the “new ISIS” does not stem solely from its ability to operate across fragile borders, from the Sahel and the Sahara in Africa to Sinai in earlier years, and now Syria. It is also dangerous because of its doctrinal fluidity, which permits the violation of all sanctities and calls for spilling blood without restraint.
Older jihadist organizations certainly launched terrorist attacks and targeted state and security officials they opposed. Even within their rigid ideological frameworks, targeting worshippers in a mosque was almost unthinkable. They had limits: a ceiling on violence and terrorism that ISIS lacks. The latter has become a weakened organization of disconnected cells without coherent doctrinal foundations, but it has no hesitation attacking a mosque, a church, or a hussainiya, and to kill children and women without any religious or organizational restraint.
Capitalizing on political failure, security failures, social fragility, and social tensions: that is ISIS’s “fuel.” Accordingly, we should not be surprised that nearly all violent extremists have conducted jurisprudential revisions and initiatives to hinder violence except ISIS. Quite simply, it has no solid ideological edifice to revise, and that is the source of its danger.
