Whether it's last year’s brutal attack at the office of Charlie Hebdo, or the Paris attacks in which more than 100 people died, or the more recent Brussels attack, Islamic State (IS) has become a potent threat to global peace in the last three years. Since September 2014, ISIS has taken lives of over 1100 people in different terrorist attacks world over. Even now these attacks are far from over as ISIS remains a potent force and holds key positions in Middle-East despite the NATO as well as Russian forces claiming victory against the IS fighters. Much like Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations, Islamic State aka ISIS too is an offspring born of nefarious imperialist intentions of the West and the Islamic world’s perpetual fear of Islam being in danger. Daesh, as it is called in Arabic, is a phenomenon which propagates the idea of Islamic rule or the Caliphate over the world - where power would flow from the sanctum-sanctorum of Mecca itself.

IS and geopolitics - the shaping of a new ‘Middle East’

When Baghdadi rose to the self-proclaimed Caliphate in June 2014, the world reacted sharply. The Sunni pride had taken a great beating during the Arab Spring in which scores of Sunni dictators like Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Saleh were dethroned. Sunni Islam looked for refuge and, Baghdadi with IS, provided it with one. The Syrian conflict which today seems to have engulfed the whole world also stemmed from the hatred between the Shia and Sunni sects.

Bassar Assad of Syria is an Alawite, a sect of Shia Islam, and his family has been ruling the majority Sunni state for more than four decades now. That’s why ISIS, in order to restore the lost Sunni pride, unleashed the offensive against the Syrian regime.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the two citadels on which Islam was born and functioned helped IS to grow and flourish. Both supported IS forces to dethrone Assad in Syria. But IS, like Al Qaeda, became a Frankenstein’s monster. It expanded its base from Iraq to Syria and soon wreaked havoc on other neighboring Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia. Both Saudi Arabia and Turkey did not fathom the extent of the threat from IS and the refugee crisis started taking a toll on Turkey and Europe.

Most of Western Europe already has a population of 6 to 10 per cent Muslims, who have always felt alienated. Once IS was in place, they looked up to it as the savior of Islam. For them, Islamic State was the new knight.

Islamic State: the idea of a new caliphate!

The idea of a caliphate has been an enduring part of the early phase of Islam and remained a bone of contention throughout Islamic history. Except Abu Bakr (AD 632-34), the other rightly guided caliph (companions of Prophet) Umar (AD 634-44), Uthman (AD 644-56), and Ali (AD 656-61) were assassinated. The period of the Ummayads (AD 661-750), and the Abbasisds (AD 750-1258), and lastly, the Ottomans till 1925, had always seen the multiple claims of caliphates.

Islam was expanding and so was the claim. But the question of legitimacy always remained at the core. The current idea of the caliphate though has a legitimacy of some sort. Most of the new research surveys suggest that Islamic State has a profound acceptance to an extent that 92 per cent of Saudi citizens endorsed this idea.

Islamic State seeks its idea from Abbasids. The black flag is a signature to that, but unlike the Abbasids period which was a period of many contributions from philosophy to music and art, Baghdadi’s caliphate seeks refuge in the idea of Ibn Taymiyaah and Abdul Wahhab, the reformers who called for puritanical Islam.

The salafist/wahhabist ideologies are an ultraconservative revivalist idea that believe even Shias are heretics like polytheists or pagans. Sign and symbols provide the idea of the importance of their legitimacy. The selection of an orange suit before beheading and burning people alive is a strategic act to remind the Muslim world how Americans carried their rendition mission against Muslims at Guantanamo Bay.

The IS’s in-house magazine Dabiq has an important message. Dabiq is an ancient place in Syria near the Turkish border, where Muslims believe they will have their final war against their enemy. And they will win.