The common factor between two well known “terrorist” groups, the Islamic State (ISIS) and al Qaeda, is their belief in Islam. Both groups claim their hardline interpretations are reviving the purity of the faith when it was founded in the seventh century. () However, each organization interprets the holy text in different ways, and this is evident through their actions. Jihad, the struggle against the enemies of Islam (), is a concept that every believer of the Islamic faith is familiar with but these two groups interpret it in an extreme way compared to other Muslims. The first difference is that each group shares the vision of establishing a caliphate, but ISIS seeks for a more immediate effect and this will dictate their actions. On the other hand, al Qaeda believes a caliphate cannot be established until Western forces are defeated and expelled from Muslim countries. Secondly, both al Qaeda and ISIS denounce Shiites, Christians, and any group that doesn’t share their worldview, but al Qaeda leaders have emphasized that attacking these groups is not the highest priority, while ISIS has carried out mass killings of minorities in its territories. Lastly, ISIS and al Qaeda both use brutality as a tactic to achieve their greater goals. However, ISIS publishes the specific Koranic justification for their most gruesome acts whereas al Qaeda carries out acts of violence to eradicate any government that does not strictly adhere to Sharia law. Despite the fact that both the Islamic State and al Qaeda live by the scriptures of Islam, each group interprets the text differently and this is evident when observing the different actions each group takes as it relates to land occupation, treatment of other religions, and acts of violence.
The Islamic State and al Qaeda are similar, in that both organizations believe they must occupy territory in order to achieve their ultimate goals; however, their respective analysis of the Koran differs, causing their needs for land to also differ. For ISIS, the ultimate goal is to establish a global caliphate through a global war. A caliphate is the region over which the caliph, a successor to the Prophet Muhammad, holds spiritual and political power. ()The goal to establish a caliphate is derived from their nostalgic vision to “revive the Golden Age of Islam, during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates” () when the Muslim world was the cultural and scientific center of the western world, and Europe a barbaric backwater. In 2014, in the city of Mosul, ISIS leader and caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared to the world that it was an obligation to the Prophet Muhammad to reestablish the caliphate when he states the “duty upon the Muslims—a duty that has been lost for centuries … The Muslims sin by losing it, and they must always seek to establish it". ()In order to reassert their political and religious power, ISIS seizes cities and large plots of land including Dabiq, Syria. This is a city that ISIS ferociously fought to capture and, based on their interpretations of the Koran, it is their belief that the “great battle between infidels and Muslims” will take place there as part of the final drama preceding the “Day of Judgement”. () Wall Street Journal journalist Graeme Wood states that, "Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: Take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding”. () Territorial authority is indeed a requirement for ISIS and this is obvious when examining the fact that shortly after being forced out of Mosul, ISIS recovered and relocated to Syria. In conclusion, the Islamic State would not be able to successfully advance towards their goal of establishing a caliphate, an obligation to the Prophet Muhammad, without occupying and governing land.
Contrary to popular belief, al Qaeda and ISIS have diverging paths towards their goals. They are so different that al Qaeda denounced ISIS because of ISIS’ strong stance on immediately establishing a caliphate. Conversely, al Qaeda, a group that has faded into oblivion with the birth of ISIS, has called for a caliphate to be established, but the primary goal is not the establishment of a caliphate but rather the expulsion of western forces from the Middle East. Members of Al-Qaeda issued fatwas, rulings on Islamic law, indicating that such attacks against western forces, were both proper and necessary. ()Former al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden proclaimed “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah”. ()In the eyes of al Qaeda members, it would be unfit to establish a caliphate until Muslims are the sole occupants of a region. Evidence of this is another proclamation by Osama Bin Laden,“We have declared jihad against the US, because in our religion it is our duty to make jihad so that God's word is the one exalted to the heights and so that we drive the Americans away from all Muslim countries.” () In addition to providing the reason for driving western forces out of the Middle East, this quote proves that members of al Qaeda are extremely intolerant of other religions and countries that do not integrate Sharia law into their governments, topics that will be discussed later in the paper. The most glaring difference between ISIS and al Qaeda, as it pertains to land, is that ISIS strives to occupy land, regardless of the inhabitants, with intentions of establishing a caliphate, but al Qaeda strives to return the Middle East to a Muslim-only region before declaring the caliphate.
Religion, the most influential aspect regarding the operations of ISIS and al Qaeda, leads both groups to take incredibly violent actions against others, solely based on the fact that their victims are non-Muslim or, in their opinion, not practicing the Islamic faith correctly. ISIS commits these acts because they do not tolerate those who do not share the same view as them. As former Secretary of State John Kerry states, “The fact is that ISIS kills Christians because they are Christians; Yazidis because they are Yazidis; Shia because they are Shia”. In contrast, al Qaeda does not prioritize the scourging of religious minorities, but rather the scourging of Western affiliates because the West does not follow “God’s law”. Above all else, al Qaeda prioritizes the West as a target because of the supposed wrongdoings the West has inflicted against Muslims in addition to the West being a hindrance to their global Islamic State. However, this does not limit them to only targeting West affiliated peoples ;and in 2014, about 30,000 people were killed in terror attacks worldwide, the vast majority being Muslims (). Al Qaeda justifies the slaughter of Muslims because of the way they adapt to western society and do not practice Islam “correctly”. Al Qaeda is not interested in any laws made by human beings. The perfect law, God's law, is present in the Quran and the hadith, the sayings and deeds of Muhammad, and should be applied to all things. Al Qaeda not only desires the Sharia to be applied everywhere, but it also seeks to free it of non-Islamic influences. ()