The roots of ISIS leave few unstained 
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ISIS (also known as ISIL) is the acronym for the terrorist organisation known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant">the Levant</a>). Since June 2014, the group has been referring to itself simply as the Islamic State (IS), and has conquered a large swath of land that straddles the Syria-Iraq border with an estimated area equivalent to the state of Jordan. 
The Iraq War and Syrian Civil War 
ISIS has its origins in Iraq’s Al-Qaeda offshoot which, in 2006 began calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Though Al-Qaeda had no significant presence in Iraq prior to the 2003 Iraq War, and was indeed hostile to the regime of Saddam Hussein; in the chaotic aftermath of the war, Al-Qaeda was able to establish itself as a terrorist force in the country. While Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, it is the Bush administration’s choice to start a second Gulf War that should be seen as one of the most important causal acts in creating the precursors of ISIS in Iraq. 
In addition to a destabilised Iraq, the Syrian uprisings have also been an important factor. The current conflict started after incipient peaceful protests against the Assad regime in early 2011 were met with violent state repression. Such repression helped create increasingly radicalised opposition groups that countered the transgressions of the Assad regime with similarly gruesome crimes. It is this violent anarchy in Syria, which persists to this day on a horrifying scale, that has provided fertile ground for the establishment of ISIS. 
The Rise of Sectarian Tensions 
Perhaps the most immediate cause for the extraordinarily rapid expansion of ISIS in these regions is that it has faced almost no resistance from the populations in the primarily Sunni territories it has conquered. This is because, with the rise of bitter sectarianism between the Shi‘a and Sunni populations following the Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War, both the Sunni majority in Syria and minority in Iraq have suffered much persecution at the hands of the ruling regimes. 
Iraq’s most important leader of the last decade, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, had become <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/06/mosul_s_collapse_is_nouri_al_maliki_s_fault_iraq_s_prime_minister_failed.html">notorious</a> for his calculated attacks against Sunni political leaders and populations, exacerbating sectarian tensions and alienating Sunni regions that felt powerless and disenfranchised. Similarly, in Syria, most of the opposition targeted by the Assad regime is Sunni. In the territories conquered by ISIS, with its virulent anti-Shi‘ism, the tables have now turned completely. 
Of course, no geopolitical situation of this scale ever has a single cause. Some go back in time and blame the postcolonial dismemberment of the region. ISIS appears <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/jun/25/map-isis-hates/">particularly exercised</a> by the ‘evils’ of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. One could also cite the <a href="http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/the_west/">long history of interference</a> of major Western powers, most notably the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_policy_in_the_Middle_East">United States</a>, which has tended to support brutal dictators in the region, who in turn have kept civil society severely emasculated. 
Regional powers also hold a good deal of the blame in dealing with the aftermath of the illegal American invasion. The problem with the blame game, however, is two-fold. Firstly, superpowers never accept blame, but rather act in accordance with the insightful <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/260802-crime-once-exposed-has-no-refuge-but-in-audacity">remark</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus">Tacitus</a>, that ‘their crimes once exposed have no refuge except in audacity’. 
Secondly, it is always possible to go back further into history, taking another step along the chain of events that led to the current predicament. This allows people’s biases to influence which starting point they choose, however specious it may be. Hence, much of the mainstream western media effectively blames the same region that they <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15234-how-the-media-fueled-the-war-in-iraq">clamorously</a> and disastrously <a href="http://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/iraq-and-the-media/">demanded</a> be invaded in 2003. 
Is ISIS popular among Muslims? 
An important question arises as to the popularity of ISIS among Muslims worldwide. Among a global population of around 1.6 billion Muslims, even according to the highest estimates, <a href="http://rt.com/news/183048-isis-grow-expand-jihadist/">ISIS forces</a> make up a negligible 0.0006% of the Muslim populace. And yet they are by far the largest Muslim terrorist organisation by numbers. Most Muslims around the world are horrified at their behaviour, which has been <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/08/21/muslim-leaders-have-roundly-denounced-islamic-s/200498">condemned</a> by Muslim leaders and organisations the world over. 
The only place they seem to have support is among some Sunnis in parts of Iraq and Syria, but this is widely acknowledged to be due to their opposition to the Iraqi and Syrian regimes that have been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/sectarian-conflict-iraq-maliki-us">persecuting</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/middleeast/in-homs-syria-sectarian-battles-stir-fears-of-civil-war.html?pagewanted=all">the</a> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-syria-killing-family-idUSTRE80Q06J20120127">Sunni</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-iraq-a-sunni-revolt-raises-specter-of-new-war/2014/01/06/280f9216-7714-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html">opposition</a> <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21580618-islamists-government-proving-harder-opposition-power-religion">for</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/middleeast/fading-hopes-of-unity-in-iraq-as-sectarian-tensions-rise.html?pagewanted=all">many years</a>. The popularity of ISIS among these Sunni groups at present is almost certainly not because of the sudden popularity of jihadist ideology, but because of the manner in which Sunnis have been terrorised in both Syria and Iraq over the past few years. 
Under such circumstances, ISIS, who <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-leader-preaches-holy-war-abu-bakr-albaghdadi-puts-persecution-of-shiasat-heart-of-his-ideology-ahead-of-push-on-baghdad-9590571.html">persecute the Shi‘a</a> at every opportunity, can present themselves as saviours of persecuted Sunnis. The grave danger this entails is that it can only make ISIS more popular in the Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. Perhaps the most effective way to prevent the growth of ISIS is to do what we can to prevent the ongoing cycles of violence in both Syria and Iraq that only exacerbate sectarian tensions in the region. Sadly, the cycles of violence seem destined to persist for the foreseeable future, at least in Syria, given the lack of any meaningful efforts to put an end to the violence on the part of international powers. 
There’s no question that ISIS plays up its Islamic bone fides. But can a group that claims to be Islamic automatically be considered representative of Islam as followed by the majority of the world’s Muslims? For many commentators, this is simply taken to be the case, particularly by those who are not experts on Islam. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims, by contrast, will do what they can to dissuade others from arriving at the conclusion that Islam plays a central role in the formation of such organisations. 
A Bleak Future? 
The reality is that all ideologies, religious or otherwise, are liable to have both moderate and extreme manifestations. The European Enlightenment, seen as a legacy to be proud by much of modern Western civilization, gave us Secular Liberalism, but it also gave us Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Christianity is the modern world’s largest religion, and is a source of solace for millions, but there also exists the extreme Christian right in the US, whose Presidential candidate of choice, George W. Bush, helped create a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tables">death toll in Iraq</a> of appalling proportions—far greater than what any extremist non-state actor in the 21st century has managed to rack up. 
Ultimately, the negligence and paralysis of the international community, alongside the inefficacy of the region’s states in the face of the Syrian conflict has permitted the creation of horrors that may haunt us for many years to come. When all sides have blood on their hands, who can be a saviour?
<pre>Image from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions</pre>

Understanding ISIS and the Prospects for Peace

Evolution has always been a contentious theory to the vast majority of religious communities, Of late &#8211; Muslims have been revisiting the arguments about Islam and its stance on the theory 
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Early last month, a conference was held in London, entitled &#8220;Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution?&#8221; under the auspices of <a href="http://www.thedeeninstitute.com/" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Deen Institute</a>, an organization which <a href="http://www.thedeeninstitute.com/about-us" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">aims at</a> promoting engagement between the Islamic tradition and modernity. The event sparked off a debate on social media and op-ed columns regarding the place of evolution in the Islamic worldview. 
The conference, whose lectures were recently<a href="http://www.thedeeninstitute.com/evolution-conference" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">published online</a>, brought together scientists like<a href="http://biology.mcgill.ca/faculty/abouheif/members.html" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Prof. Ehab Abouheif</a> and <a href="http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/2715/138/" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Prof. Fatimah Jackson</a> with theologians like <a href="http://www.mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/staffdirectory/Usama_Hasan.aspx" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dr Usama Hasan</a> and the prominent <a href="https://www.facebook.com/yasir.qadhi" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Shaykh Yasir Qadhi</a>. Also invited was <a href="http://www.thedeeninstitute.com/evolution-conference/itemlist/tag/oktar%20babuna" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dr. Oktar Babuna</a>, representing the hardcore creationist ideas of Harun Yahya, who is deemed by many Muslim scholars to be a charlatan. Sadly, by the end of the day, Babuna was reduced to such a laughing stock that even Qadhi distanced himself from him. 
Abouheif and Jackson made their case for evolution in a style reminiscent of the bestselling and quite compelling book, &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_God:_A_Scientist_Presents_Evidence_for_Belief" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Language of God</a>,&#8221; by devout Christian geneticist Francis Collins. Babuna&#8217;s creationist ideas were roundly rejected by all the other panellists. What I found most interesting, however, was the theological discussion. 
Although Qadhi, who is more of a specialist in theology than Hasan, soundly rebutted Hasan&#8217;s apparent suggestion that Muslim scholars had discovered and believed in modern evolutionary theory centuries ago, his response that scientific evolution and Islamic theology are at loggerheads is considerably overstated. For one, Hasan pointed out that preeminent center for Sunni Islamic learning, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_University" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">al-Azhar University</a>, holds that the theory of evolution does not fundamentally contradict Islamic belief. In addition, the influential, if controversial, Egyptian scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, stated three years ago on a special Arabic Al Jazeera <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIaL99uXukU" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">show</a> dedicated to this subject that even if evolution were true, there is no reason for it to conflict with Islamic theology. Some conservative Muslims have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqTwKyujcos" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">attacked</a> (in Arabic) al-Qaradawi for his statements. 
My own suggestion to Muslims grappling with such an issue is to recognize that when it comes to what we believe, science and religion address two kinds of truth: empirical and revealed. Empirical (observation-based) truth is the stuff of science. It&#8217;s contingent on our sense perception, and humanity&#8217;s current state of knowledge. It&#8217;s truth with a lower-case t. It&#8217;s relative to what the human senses can access at a given point in time, and makes no claims to being absolute. This is not to belittle it, as most empirical truths are what we consider facts, like the fact that the spherical earth goes around the sun. 
Revealed truth, by contrast, is based upon revelation which, if you believe it, is Truth with a capital T. For the believer, it is absolute, not relative. Our knowledge of empirical truth can and has improved over time; just as the once held &#8216;fact&#8217; that the sun goes around the earth has been corrected with the passage of time. No reasonable person believes this &#8216;fact&#8217; today; though the ancients may have been justified in thinking it was genuinely scientific. Revealed truth, on the other hand, claims to be constant, absolute, and unchangeable. 
Problems of this kind are nothing new for Muslim theologians. An example is the statement of the Prophet that: after the sun sets, it goes to the Throne of God and prostrates, before rising again from the East. This statement is recorded in multiple collections of Prophetic statements including the respected Sunni collections of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_al-Bukhari" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bukhari</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_Muslim" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Muslim</a>. Muslims additionally believe that such statements from the Prophet constitute revealed truth. The reality is that virtually no Muslim theologian has ever taken such revealed truths to be statements of empirical truth. In such an instance, a Muslim will believe in the revealed truth, but not think this means that the empirical truth is wrong. Rather, the two kinds of truth address different domains, the moral and the empirical (what is observable through the senses). The first addresses what Muslims should believe as a matter of faith, and how they should behave; and the other is whatever a reasonable person believes about the observable world based on the current state of human knowledge. 
How does this relate to the theory of evolution for Muslims? 
I&#8217;m not arguing for the truth of evolution in this piece, for that I recommend Collins&#8217; book mentioned above. I&#8217;m only presenting how, if it were deemed empirically true, as it nearly unanimously is in the scientific community, it should cause Muslims no trouble with respect to their traditional Islamic beliefs. If the Qur&#8217;an appears to be making empirical statements about creation, like the Prophetic statement above, it doesn&#8217;t need to be understood in an everyday literal sense, even if we hold it to be True in an metaphysical sense. Many Muslims will be familiar with the fact that same logic applies to the many seemingly anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Qur&#8217;an. 
Some commentators have described this conference as marking <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/jan/11/muslim-thought-on-evolution-debate" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">a Galileo moment</a> for Muslims. I would argue that this isn&#8217;t quite the case, as Islamic religious authority is decentralized, and there is no formal &#8216;religious establishment&#8217; that has binding authority over Muslims. With even the historic center for Sunni learning, al-Azhar University, and influential scholars like al-Qaradawi accepting that Muslims could believe in evolution&#8211;though neither seems to&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t seem like this is a serious issue in theology. Rather it seems to be so only in the popular Muslim consciousness. As Muslims continue in the path of learning, as encouraged by the Prophet, I hope that a more nuanced attitude to this issue will emerge at a popular level, and then we can focus on more important discussions like that of climate change or alleviating poverty. This conference was an important step in that direction. 
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<pre>Image from : http://frankyvanherreweghe.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/lamrabatevolution.jpg</pre>

Usaama al-Azami