ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Jordanian pilot is burned alive in a cage. Dozens of caged Peshmerga are paraded through the streets, Videos are released of Westerners and others being ceremonially beheaded. These are just some of the atrocities carried out by the radical Islamic group known as the Islamic State, or ISIS. The world is left to wonder: where does the motivation for these savage crimes come from? The violent culture of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Bashir al-Assad’s Syria has certainly influenced ISIS in its behaviour, and fuelled the frustrations of young volunteers who flocked to join the group. Others may consider the treatment of jihadists by the CIA with its secret prisons and violent interrogation techniques. Whatever the cause, the fact that violence is part of ISIS policy is clear. The group’s leaders even have a guidebook for it: “The Management of Savagery” by Abu Naji Bakr. Who the author is remains unclear, but he has imbued ISIS with the concept that Islam was born in violence, and can only exist through violence such as the Prophet and his followers showed in the first Islamic wars. According to Bakr’s book, Islam now finds itself in circumstances similar to those following the death of the Prophet, when a segment of believers turned away from the new faith. “That is why we must kill people and take measures that were taken at that time too,” Bakr claims in the book. The followers of the prophet “understood the question of violence,” and even the most honored of them, Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, killed and burned people. This was not because they loved killing, but because they knew the importance of violence in instilling fear. That’s what it’s about for ISIS: using violence for its undeniable effect. “The Management of Savagery” is important for understanding the threat posed by ISIS. Even the storming of Mosul appears to have followed tactics described in its pages. Bakr claims cruelty is a phase necessary to prepare the Muslim community, the Umma, for a new caliphate. It is, he writes, “the next stage that the Umma will pass through and it is considered the most critical stage. If we succeed in the management of this savagery, that stage, by the permission of God, will be a bridge to the Islamic State which has been awaited since the fall of the caliphate.” The strategy is that by using extreme violence, people will be forced to join the instigators. In Bakr’s words, the world’s situation will begin “resembling the situation of Afghanistan before the control of the Taliban, a region submitting to the law of the jungle in its primitive form.” He continues that people will long for someone “to manage this savagery. They [will] accept any organization, regardless of whether it is made up of good or evil people.” Even the author realizes the policy is controversial. He writes: “We said that the goal is to dislodge these regions from the control of the regimes of apostasy. It is the goal we are publicly proclaiming (..) not the outbreak of chaos.” The book even discusses the treatment of Americans (“the Crusaders”) and Shiites (“the apostates”), and why they should be killed. The book says: “We are confronting the Crusaders and their helpers among the apostates. Thus, there is nothing preventing us from spilling their blood; rather, we see that this is one of the most important obligations since they do not repent, undertake prayer, and give alms.” The highly public beheadings, killings and humiliations, such as forcing prisoners to wear orange jumpsuits, are described as “paying the price,” fitting reprisals for the damage foreign countries have inflicted on ISIS fighters. Even airstrikes against ISIS targets must face retribution: “We will confront the problem of the aerial attacks of the enemy – crusader or apostate – in areas which we administer. The policy of paying the price will deter the enemy and make him think one thousand times.” The executions of foreign hostages, such James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines, fits under the book’s definition of paying the price. It reads: “The policy of violence must be followed such that if the demands are not met, the hostages should be liquidated in a terrifying manner, which will send fear into the hearts of the enemy and his supporters.” The concept of quid pro quo is expanded in the book to “blood for blood and destruction for destruction.” This concept can take frightening turns: burning a pilot for the fires his bombs started, or leaving explosives in areas ISIS leaves to make the enemy pay for the destruction it created. The book underscores how essential violence and cruelty are in the strategy of ISIS. “We must make this battle very violent, such that death is a heartbeat away … That will be a powerful motive for the individual to choose to fight in the ranks of the people of truth in order to die well, which is better than dying for falsehood and losing both this world and the next.” To understand what ISIS leaders are is putting into the heads of their followers, reading the Management of Savagery is a useful exercise. The book shows how ISIS uses only certain parts of Islam, and distorts them to its own purposes, in order to motivate its followers to use appalling tactics they might never have considered using. Judit Neurink recently published in the Netherlands a book about ISIS, called "The war of ISIS."
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