The rise
of the Islamic State (IS) in 2014 led to a cottage industry of books on the
topic. Under The Black Flag, At The Frontier Of The New Jihad was one of
them. Author Sami Moubayed wrote that the purpose of Under The Black Flag
was to explore the ideological history of IS. He was a Syrian historian, which
shaped his work. That’s seen with the first half of the book being about the
Islamic empires, the caliphate and the Islamist movement in Syria even though
he admits that the Islamic State had little to do with that country until 2011.
When IS is finally discussed in the second half it is full of inaccuracies. The
lack of focus and the problems it has with its topic makes Under The Black
Flag a book to avoid.
The
problems with Under The Black Flag are apparent right from the start.
Moubayed’s interest in history and Syria dominates the beginning of the book.
He starts with a discussion of the caliph and caliphate and goes through the
Islamic empires of the Umayads, the Abbasids, the Mamluks and Ottomans. It also
discusses some of the early Islamic thinkers that came to influence today’s
jihadists like Ibn Taymiya who argued that Muslims were straying from their
religion and called for a return to the basics of the religion via a jihad.
Moubayed also discusses the rise of Wahabism in what would become Saudi Arabia.
This is meant to be a background to the Islamic State declaring its caliphate
in 2014. While it’s interesting to read this Islamic history it’s not really
necessary to explain IS’s decision in 2014. More importantly he claims that the
roots of IS were in Wahabism. That isn’t quite true. The Islamic State are
Salafis which is derived from Wahabism but different. Many people use the terms
interchangeably today, but there is a difference. Wahabis follow Mohammed Bin
Abdul Wahab while Salafis have a whole range of other influences. Furthermore,
Moubayed doesn’t spend any more time going through the modern Salafi thinkers
that led up to IS when his stated goal was to explore its ideology.
Moubayed’s
next problem is that he spends several chapters on Syria which have nothing to
do with the Islamic State. He begins with a short history of Alawites and their
place in Syrian society throughout history and how they came to power with
Bashar al-Assad. Then there is a discussion of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
and the Islamist groups and thinkers that arose out of it such as Abu Azzam who
organized foreign fighters that went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and
who had a large influence on Osama bin Laden. After that Syria’s role in
foreign fighters going to Iraq after 2003 is discussed, and then Jabhat
al-Nusra a group formed by the Islamic State to fight in the Syrian civil war,
which eventually broke away. Besides Al-Nusra’s conflict with the IS Moubayed
doesn’t relate these sections to his book’s topic. Moubayed even writes later
on that IS really wasn’t interested in Syria until 2011. Why include all this
history then? Because Moubayed was a Syrian historian and he took advantage of
his book deal to write about what his main interest was.
It’s not
until half way through the book that the Islamic State is given a serious
discussion, but it starts off rather badly. It’s immediately apparent that
Moubayed didn’t take the time to do his research on IS’s roots. He claims that
Abu Musab al-Zaqawi became an aide to bin Laden in Afghanistan. That bin Laden
gave him a magazine to run in that country. That after 9/11 Zarqawi was sent to
Iraq to spread Al Qaeda there. Moubayed then tries to emphasize the role of
Syrians in Zarqawi’s organization in Iraq. The author then writes that after
Zarqawi’s death in 2006 his group came apart and became outlaws acting
independently of its leadership. It’s during this low point that IS demanded
total loyalty from other Iraqi insurgent groups or they would face death. The
author claims this was what led to IS’s near defeat. Moubayed writes this
vacuum allowed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to become the organization’s new head and
he led it to a revival by spreading to Syria in 2011. Nearly everything he
writes in this history is so wrong it makes the book almost useless as a guide
to the Islamic State. Zarqawi for instance met with bin Laden in Afghanistan
and received funding to set up his own camp in that country but he never joined
Al Qaeda. He went to Iraq because of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and
because he wanted to take advantage of the coming U.S conflict with Saddam
Hussein not because bin Laden sent here there. Likewise, the description of
IS’s decline and rebirth is full of inaccuracies as well. For being a historian
Moubayed failed to apply his skills here.
It’s not
until the last third of the book that Under The Black Flag finds it
legs. That’s when it goes through the basics of the Islamic State after 2014
including its governance, its education system it set up, its funding, the huge
draw it had for foreigners, the role of women, and its media organizations.
Again, Moubayed tries to emphasize Syria throughout such as covering IS’s
running of Raqqa as an example of its attempt to create an Islamic state. The
problem of course is that the reader has to go through the first two-thirds of
the book which is either off topic or misleading to get to this point.
The
declaration of the caliphate by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014 led to a huge
explosion of books on the topic. Many of them were quickly put together to cash
in on the event. You can put Under The Black Flag in that category.
Moubayed never accomplished his stated goal of explaining the Islamic State’
ideology. What he really did was write half a book on Islam and Syria because
that was his field of expertise, and then muddled through the other half about
the Islamic State. He gets so much wrong about the origins of IS it’s not
worthwhile to even read that part.
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