In the latest issue of ISIS magazine -apparently there is an actual online ISIS magazine- the terrorist group declared war on an unlikely enemy: other Muslims.
Experts believe that declaring war on Shia Muslims is part of a larger recruitment strategy (ISIS is a Sunni organization).
The latest issue of Islamic State’s online magazine targets the terror group’s fellow Muslims even more than the West. Dabiq, as the English-language publication is called, devotes a majority of the 56 pages in the latest issue to justifying the killing of Shia Muslims. In numerous articles, the magazine goes to great lengths to give a theological basis for killing members of the minority Muslim sect that controls Iran and Iraq and has been at odds with Sunni Muslims for over a millennia.
“The magazine spends so much time justifying the killing of innocent Shiites that it suggests that ISIL is frustrated that too few Sunnis favor sectarian massacres,” Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for the Clarion Project, said. “ISIS is making the argument because it sees a problem it needs to address.”
ISIS’ literary arm charges that Shia Muslims, or Shiites, qualify as apostates to the Sunni majority and therefore deserve to be killed. The radical terror group’s target audience seems to be fellow Sunnis who consider Shiites to be Muslims, or at the very least, not deserving of being murdered.
…Fanning the flames of the Sunni-Shia split, which dates to shortly after the death of Mohammad, benefits ISIS by helping it recruit Sunnis, Mauro said. And the terror group’s leadership appears to believe a final battle has been prophecized.
Let’s be clear, both Sunni and Shia Muslim sects have produced terrorists.
Both sects have spawned more than their share of terrorists, though the terror organizations operate differently. Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shebab and Boko Haram are Sunni organizations, while Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, are Shia.
To make things even more complicated, Fox News pointed out that ISIS is also at war with Saudi Arabia, which is a Sunni nation.
So really the underlying root of the problem remains the same: ISIS will try to kill anyone who is not 100% on board with their twisted, radical Islamic agenda, even if they are Muslim.
