Extract: Decoding fans of Matrix & LOLCats

An extract from Nicolas Hénin’s book, Jihad Academy: The Rise of Islamic State.

Hénin, a freelance French journalist who has spent more than a decade reporting from the Middle East, won the Prix du livre geopolitique for his book, and before that the May Chidiac Prize for Courage in Journalism.

In June 2013, Hénin was captured and held hostage by the ISIS for 10 months.

People often complain that we lack the keys to understanding Islamic State. The media and politicians keep bringing up the same anathemas and clichés. Yet Islamic State is simply implementing a political programme devised 10 years ago, disseminated in jihadist forums and translated into several languages. The author of this programme was one Abu Bakr al-Naji, a Saudi, judging by his nom de guerre. His manifesto is entitled Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass. The plan is uncompromising: it consists of exploiting the authoritarian nature of Arab regimes and using this against them, as in martial arts, where the principle is to turn the enemy’s strength — in this case, violence — against him. As Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan have explained, Abu Bakr al-Naji “conceived a battle plan for weakening the enemy states through what he called ‘power of vexation and exhaustion’.” He “was using the time-honoured jihadist example of Egypt, but he was also implicitly referring to Iraq. Here he urged the rapid consolidation of jihadist victory in order to ‘take over the surrounding countries’.”

By making use of local frustrations, propaganda and political violence among the people, the aim is to provoke an escalation of savagery. States will respond with even more violence and eventually governments will lose all legitimacy in the eyes of the ruled. Amid the chaos, jihadists intervene by presenting themselves as an alternative to the state’s failure. In his research, the political consultant Frantz Glasman describes Islamic State’s modus operandi: “By re-establishing security, restarting social services, and taking charge of the administration of territories, they can manage this chaos, following a Hobbesian pattern of state building. With the extension of the ‘territories of chaos’, regions administered by the jihadists will multiply, forming the core of their future caliphate. Whether persuaded or not, the populations under their control will accept this Islamic governance.”

This theory of political violence is in one way quite standard. It has much in common with what nihilist theorists seek, but also with the practices of radical groups in many other countries. Yet it is unique in jihadi terms, in that it clearly distances itself from Al Qaeda’s methods. Al Qaeda concentrates on the “distant enemy”, the West, often described as Israel’s proxy. Most salient of all, it claims no territory, at least not in the short term.

By contrast, Islamic State focuses on the enemy nearby. For the youths now fighting in Syria, the Shia are a much more immediate enemy than the Christians or Jews (the targets of Al Qaeda, whose original name was “World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”). Islamic State’s slogan is: “Nine bullets for apostates, one for Crusaders.” Its strategy consists in taking advantage of a state’s failures, trying to provoke and hasten its demise, in order to seize a failed territory and force itself on the people living there.

Both in style and PR, the difference between Islamic State and Al Qaeda is striking. The emergence of Islamic State will have made many aware of the fact that Al Qaeda is a movement for the better off. Osama bin Laden was a billionaire and the scion of a great family. He was educated and travelled to the West. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi comes from a family of refugees and spent his childhood in one of the ugliest, most squalid and polluted cities in Jordan. Bin Laden was the offspring of the Saudi equivalent of the Rockefellers. He spoke to the bourgeoisie, to rich and reactionary donors of the Gulf. Zarqawi speaks to the Middle East’s children in the street, but also to those in the West. When Bin Laden had a message for the world, he would take pains to record it, developing his points at length, replete with religious and political references, and setting out the detail of his worldview. When Zarqawi delivered his first message from Iraq in 2004, he appeared knife in hand. After a few muttered words, he beheaded his hostage, Nicholas Berg, then posted the footage on YouTube, in a video that lasted just a few seconds. Zarqawi’s ideology is reduced to its simplest form.

There is no lenghty exposition of theory. It’s as if there is no message apart from violence…

Romain Caillet got a lot of attention in the media when he suggested that Islamic State had made Al Qaeda “untrendy”. And this is key. Islamic State transforms jihad into a product of globalisation loaded with strong Western connotations. Islamic State’s power is spreading the idea among our lost youth that “jihad is cool”. While Al Qaeda followers are steeped in a Middle Eastern culture, with strong regional references, Islamic State members are products of Facebook and Twitter. The way they hijacked the hashtag #Ferguson during the riots in the United States, to spread (not unironically) the message among Afro-Americans that the Koran stands for racial equality, shows their skill in manipulating social networks. They are also very adept at subverting attempts at counter-narrative. They like challenging the US state department’s Twitter account (@Thinkagain_DOS), showing up its contradictions, often clumsily but sometimes with real humour.

Islamic State jihadists are fans of LOLcats. They call themselves the Fanboys. They all have watched Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Several told me that they see parallels with their own struggle in the movie The Matrix. Some have trained for combat by playing the videogame Call of Duty. One of my most sadistic jailers, who was British, was also a Simpsons fan. Others even see in the way beheadings are filmed allusions to the reality TV show Top Chef...

Excerpted with permission from Bloomsbury India