Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Sunni Islamic extremist group that
controls portions of Syria and Iraq, holds BA, MA and PhD degrees in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad. He named the entity ad-Dawlah l-ʾIslāmiyyah, the Islamic State (IS).
The brutality of their takeover is well advertised, including beheadings of adults and children, both Muslim and non-Muslim, kidnapping and enslavement of women and children, and mass executions. IS plans to establish an expanding khilāfa (caliphate), "an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader known as a caliph – i.e. 'successor' to Muhammad."
Non-Muslims have been a major target of IS. Christian churches have been destroyed, Christians murdered, and priests beheaded. They are given the choice to convert or be killed because they are kuffār, infidels, one “who rejects [g]od in Islam.” Other religious minorities suffer a similar fate.
Some sects of Islam consider other Muslim sects infidels, thus IS and other Islamic groups terrorize other Muslims.
Obama tells us that IS does not represent any religion, yet it was formed by an expert in Islam, calls itself the Islamic State, enforces strict Shari’a law in its territory, and has members only from the Ummah.
Many of the actions of IS are seen in longstanding Islamic nations governed by Shari’a law. Saudi Arabia currently raids churches and arrests Christians and has beheaded over seventy people this year for non-lethal crimes.
Beheading, enslavement, taking of wives from the conquered, mass execution, persecution of Christians and Jews, territorial expansion all have been seen in the caliphate since its beginning.
Certainly, not all Muslims ascribe to IS’s brand of Islam, but how many see non-Muslims as worthless infidels. How many would like to see the caliphate expand?
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