Drawing on the teachings of Muhammed Ibn Abd Al Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb, the group that calls itself Islamic State has formed a doctrine of Islam that, though not entirely new, has been unique in its ferocious application. Though Islam is an intrinsic part of the group’s identity, religious claims can be used to obscure the group’s political realities. The IS group is as much a resistance movement to the past and present U.S. American presence in the Middle East as it is a religiously driven fighting force. Although one may be encouraged to see the IS group’s core tenets as a religious fundamentalist movement, the IS group has commonalities to other, past resistance movements that had dissimilar religious ideologies.

Elements of this theology that have been taken up by the IS group are an interpretation of Islamic doctrine that condones the killing of those who do not follow the same rigid interpretation. Some of these fundamentalist theories emerged after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, often in response to occupation by European colonial powers. Previously, these interpretations were outside of the mainstream of Islamic thought and scholarship and were marginalized.

This more fundamentalist interpretation has not been widely accepted across the Muslim world, both within and outside of the Middle East as well as across Sunni and Shi’a divides. One of the manifestations of this doctrine has been the widespread killing of scholars who have followed a less severe interpretation of Islam, as well as the destructions of mosques and shrines that do not fit into the IS group’s interpretation. An essential difference between the similar theology of Saudi Arabia and the IS group’s interpretation is the combination of theology and ideology.

As Abaas Yunas, an imam and religious scholar who provides services for the Islamic Student Union at NYU Abu Dhabi, notes, “This ideological aspect [of the IS group] has its roots in what people might call Islamist or political Islam and ISIS [one name sometimes used to refer to the group] returns to the thought of Sayyid Qutb.”

There are some essential differences between the IS group and other fundamental Islamic organisations. Al Qaeda, for the most part, did not distinguish between Sunni and Shi’a interpretations. In many cases, it was the U.S. American administration of Iraq that privileged the Shi’a and increasingly sectarian administration of Nouri Al Maliki.

Before the second Gulf War, a shift had already occurred. After the failure of leftist resistance organizations up until the 1980s and the intensification of the U.S. American presence in the Middle East, Islamism became the prominent resistance movement for the region’s population. This interpretation also spread to other parts of the Muslim world, such as Indonesia, where Jema’ah Islamiyah was created.

A strength of the IS group’s ideology is its self-legitimation through theology. By calling itself the Islamic State and granting its leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the title of caliph, the IS group has attempted to establish a single totalizing state founded upon Islam, albeit a radical interpretation of the religion.

Yunas noted that this religious legitimation is purely self-imposed and not in line with teachings accepted by a majority of Muslims.

He described the content of the promotional and legitimating material of IS as unbelievably shallow, “I cringe, it’s utter rubbish … but it’s appealing, it’s visually appealing.”

Through this self-legitimation and its methods of spreading its ideology, the group has now received attention in the West and outside of the areas it controls. The spreading and radicalization of young people via the Internet is something which the IS group has attempted to use towards its advantage. From their glossy, full color magazine Dabiq — the title referencing a final battle between Christians and Muslims, preceding judgement day — and the carefully-produced promotional videos, the IS group has been able to bypass the traditional methods of teaching Islam by trained scholars.

Underlying this discourse is the notion that there may be one definitive interpretation of Islam. In contrast to this, scholars such as Talal Asad, a professor at City University of New York, has posited that Islam is instead a discursive tradition that evolves through the texts, discourses and societies within which Islam operates.

For Yunas, this means that the teachings of the Quran are misconstrued.

“People can interpret [Islamic texts] in many different ways … the difference in the religious scholar is that he can understand the linguistic diversity in the text, he understands and knows the reasons why the text is there and he understands how the text fits into the rest of Islamic traditions. What ISIS does is isolate aspects of the text.”