JASR 33.

3 (2020) 311–336 JASR ISSN 2047-704X (print)

https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.42945 JASR ISSN 2047-7058 (online)

Journal for the Academic Study of Religion

‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’: The Doctrine of Jihād

in Dabiq and Rumiyah

Christopher J. van der Krogt1

Honorary Research Associate
Massey University
New Zealand
c.j.vanderkrogt@massey.ac.nz

Abstract
The Islamic State movement (IS, formerly ISIS) is widely denounced by both
Muslims and non-Muslims as ‘un-Islamic’, for, among other deeds, attacking
fellow Muslims, inciting international terrorism, and taking female captives
as sex slaves—all in the name of jihād. IS’s propaganda magazines Dabiq
(15 issues) and Rumiyah (13 issues), published between July 2014 and
September 2017, sought to justify and explain the movement’s ideology and
actions, presenting its credentials as an almost uniquely authentic expression
of current Sunnī Islam. Drawing on these magazines, this article constructs a
systematic overview of IS’s jihād doctrine, showing its indebtedness to both
traditional sources, the Qurʾān, sunna and fiqh, and to more recent Salafī-
Jihādī thought. IS aims to revive the genuine Islam of the Prophet and the
first generations of Muslims, rejecting the modernist view of military jihād
as purely defensive. While clearly Islamic and heavily indebted to tradi-
tional sources, IS’s jihād doctrine is anachronistic, apocalyptic, selective and
sectarian.

Keywords
Islamic State; ISIS; Dabiq; Rumiyah; jihād; Salafī-Jihādī.

Introduction
Between July 2014 and July 2016, the Islamic State (al-Dawla
al-Islāmiyya) movement (IS, often still known as ISIL or ISIS), published

1. Christopher van der Krogt is an Honorary Research Associate at Massey University,

Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has taught courses on Islam and published a num-
ber of journal articles and book chapters on Islamic topics, including jihād in medieval
and modern contexts.

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312 JASR 33.3 (2020)

online 15 issues of a glossy but gory magazine named Dabiq (Dābiq)

after a small Syrian town. Perhaps anticipating IS’s loss of the town,
which occurred in October 2016, the magazine was renamed as or
succeeded by Rumiyah (Rūmiyya, Rome) in 13 issues from September
2016 until September 2017, which included less original content. Dabiq
was edited and in part written by a French-born American of Syrian
descent, Ahmad Abousamra, known by various aliases including Abu
Sulayman ash-Shami. He also worked on the earliest issues of Rumiyah
before receiving permission to resume combat duties and attaining the
martyrdom he apparently sought in January 2017 (FBI 2013; Rumiyah
8:40–46; Joscelyn 2017). These magazines coincided with the height
and decline of IS power in Iraq and Syria, from its capture of Mosul
and the declaration of the revived Islamic caliphate to the loss of Mosul
and the impending loss of the IS capital, Raqqa. IS presented its views
on jihād (Islamically sanctioned warfare) and other themes in various
media including the 1500 illustrated pages of Dabiq and Rumiyah, for
‘The media front is an integral aspect of jihad’ (Rumiyah 5:24).
Amidst the vast literature on IS by academics, policy analysts and
investigative journalists, some research focuses specifically on these
magazines. For example, Droogan and Peattie (2017) review the first
13 issues of Dabiq to elucidate their ‘structure, evolution, and intended
audience’ and include an issue-by-issue analysis. Welch (2018) proposes
a typology of five kinds of articles in the two magazines, while Toguslu
(2019) subjects Dabiq to a content analysis, examining its ‘performa-
tive’ narratives. Without quite giving Wahhābism its due, Manne (2016,
especially 113–17) usefully reviews the intellectual antecedents of IS,
ending with a chapter on Dabiq. For those new to the subject, Ingram
(2018) offers a ‘quick reference guide’ to both magazines, while Barton
(2019) identifies nine key themes in Dabiq including, briefly, jihād and
hijra (migration). None of these attempts the sustained, systematic
treatment integrating the many aspects of jihād offered here.
Islamic State is a Salafī-Jihādī movement established in Iraq about
2003 as the Jamāʿat al-Tawhīd wa’l-Jihād (Group for Monotheism and
Jihād) by the Jordanian former petty criminal Abū Musʿab al-Zarqāwī
(d. 2006), who visited Afghanistan after the Soviet defeat (Gerges 2016:
65; Hashim 2018: 15, 138). Salafī-Jihādīs (Meijer 2009; Maher 2016)
hold that violent jihād, whether as conventional war or as terrorism, is
necessary to restore an authentic Islamic society modelled on that of
the Prophet and the pious forebears (al-Salaf al-Sālih, Muhammad’s
Companions and the next two generations to c.810 ce). While disclaim-
ing allegiance to any particular madhhab (legal school), they favour

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 313

Hanbalīs such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d.
1792). IS claimed to be founded upon the same principles as the state
created by the latter’s followers in Najd (Rumiyah 10:12), but also looked
back to earlier jihād movements such as the North African Almoravids of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Rumiyah 5:30–33).
This article answers two questions: what is the meaning of jihād as
presented in the two magazines, and where does this understanding
derive from? The article is structured as a systematic survey of jihād
doctrine under four headings: (1) justification for war (jus ad bellum),
especially its merits and aims, jihād as permanent war, and the identifi-
cation of the enemy; (2) the personnel involved, leadership, jihād as a
religious duty, the need for hijra, and the role of women; (3) conduct,
particularly military ethics (jus in bello), the idealisation of brutality, the
rejection of distinctions between belligerents and non-combatants, and
the use of terror and suicide; and (4) the intended consequences of war,
captives, spoils, and establishing sharīʿa rule.
Along the way, the sources of IS’s jihād doctrine, especially the Qurʾān,
sunna (Prophetic tradition expressed in reports called ahadīth, singular
hadīth), and premodern fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence, the human under-
standing of the sharīʿa) will be indicated. Traditional writers are cited
or quoted not to suggest that traditional jihād doctrine was uniform—
though there did develop a high degree of consensus on essentials—but
to illustrate how IS doctrine is continuous with a substantial body of ear-
lier writing. Adaptations of traditional jurisprudence, reflecting more
recent Islamist and Salafist jihādī thought will also be noted. As a sectar-
ian movement, IS arrogates exclusively to itself the status and respon-
sibilities, including the duty of jihād, traditionally claimed by all Sunnī
Muslims collectively. While adapted to the circumstances of a militant
twenty-first-century apocalyptic movement, IS’s understanding of jihād
is firmly grounded in the Islamic tradition and more recent Salafī-Jihādī
thinking.2

Justification I: The Merits and Purposes of Jihād

In keeping with Islamic tradition and Salafī-Jihādī thought in particular
(Maher 2016: 31–35), IS recognises jihād as ‘the peak of the hump of

2. The words ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamic’ are used here to refer to the totality of Islam as
a cultural phenomenon; that is, whatever Muslims do in the name of their religion.
Aggressive jihād, in this sense, is just as Islamic as crusading was Christian even though
Muslims hold opposing positions on it (van der Krogt 2014a: 161–64, 168–69).

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Islam’ (Rumiyah 13:17), an ‘act of worship’, and ‘the ultimate show of

one’s love for his Creator, facing the clashing of swords and buzzing of
bullets on the battlefield, seeking to slaughter His enemies—whom he
hates for Allah’s hatred of them’ (Dabiq 5:38; 15:80). An article celebrat-
ing the merits of jihād during the holy month of Ramadān (Dabiq 10:26–
29) claimed that of the Prophet’s own expeditions, 28 were designated
as ghazwat that he led himself (the two greatest occurring in Ramadān).
He also dispatched 73 sarāyā (not all of a military character) that he
did not lead, of which 11 involved violence in Ramadān; Ibn Nahhās
(d. 1411; n.d.: 126–43) offers a slightly different count. Rumiyah’s first
issue (1:34–36) included an article drawing on a number of medieval
authorities entitled ‘The kafir’s [unbeliever’s] blood is halal [permit-
ted] for you, so shed it’. Moreover, ‘Shedding the blood of a non-dhimmi
[protected non-Muslim] kafir is not sinful, but is rather rewarded with
Jannah [the Garden]’ since a popular hadīth says that ‘A kafir and his
killer will never be gathered together in the Fire’.
According to Islamic tradition (Ibn Nahhās n.d.: 65–71; Ibn Taymiyya
in Peters 1996: 47–48), one of the most meritorious forms of jihād is
service in a frontier post (ribāt; Rumiyah 4:26). A popular hadīth affirms
that ‘One day of ribāt in the path of Allah is better than the Dunyā [world]
and everything in it’ (Dabiq 6:11). Dabiq (9:9–11) explained that even
performing domestic duties on the frontier was ribāt, albeit not as wor-
thy as actually being on guard duty (hirāsa). However, death in ribāt
even from natural causes counted as martyrdom.
The status of jihād is demonstrated by IS, as it has been throughout
Islamic history, by the exaltation of martyrs killed in the fighting (Ibn
Nahhās n.d.: 108–23; Cook 2015: 26–31). The quest for martyrdom
was given new vitality in the writings of ʿAbdallāh ʿAzzām (d. 1989), a
colleague of Usāma Bin Ladin, propagandist for the Afghan jihād, and
highly influential jihād theorist (Cook 2007: 158–61; Manne 2016: 88;
Hegghammer 2020: 296–99, 327, 504). Allegedly, the IS mujāhid (par-
ticipant in jihād; plural mujāhidīn) sought death in battle, for, through
martyrdom, ‘the believer attains the highest of ranks with the Lord of the
heavens and the earth’ (Rumiyah 13:4). According to tradition, the bod-
ies of martyrs exude a musk-like perfume, which was allegedly detected
coming from IS martyrs (Dabiq 15:67; Rumiyah 10:10). Selected mar-
tyrs were accorded hagiographical obituaries under the title ‘Among
the believers are men’ (‘…some of them have died’; Qurʾān 33:23). One
such martyr (shahīd), Mohammed Emwazi, known to his comrades as
Abū Muhārib al-Muhājir, was killed by a drone in November 2015. Part
of a group known by IS hostages as ‘the Beatles’ for their British accents

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 315

and proclivity for beating prisoners, he became known as Jihādī John

(Verkaik 2016: ix, 163–66). Notorious for appearing in videos record-
ing the 2014 execution of journalist James Foley and other prominent
IS prisoners, Abū Muhārib’s ‘harshness towards the kuffar [unbelievers]
was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions,
and factions of kufr [unbelief]’ (Dabiq 13:22–23).
For both traditional scholars and for modern Salafī-Jihādīs, the pur-
pose of military jihād is to establish, defend and expand a state governed
by Islamic norms as embodied in the sharīʿa, just as Muhammad and the
early caliphs had done (Rumiyah 13:16–17). According to Ibn Taymiyya,
unbelievers who did not respond to the message of Muhammad by con-
version or submission had to be fought (Peters 1996: 44). Following the
Qurʾān (8:39; 9:33, 40), al-Zarqāwī declared that his movement per-
formed jihād ‘so that Allah’s word becomes supreme and that the religion
becomes completely for Allah’, not for territory or to replace a Western
tāghūt with an Arab one (Dabiq 8:39). The Qurʾān (4:60) warns against
appealing for judgment to a tāghūt (Satan or a false god), so modern
Islamists have applied the term to tyrants who usurp the divine right
to make law, typically under Western influence. Unbelievers were to be
fought, primarily because of their unbelief, until they acknowledged
Islamic authority by conversion or by living in humiliation and paying
jizya (the poll tax payable by the People of the Book; Dabiq 15:31). This
is indeed the purpose of jihād envisaged by the consensus of medieval
Sunnī scholars (Crone 2004: 364–65, 368–69).
In an article explaining ‘Why we hate you & why we fight you’, Dabiq
(15:31) claimed the principal reasons for IS’s war on the West were
theological and moral. First, Westerners were disbelievers rejecting the
unity of God by worshipping his alleged son and indulging ‘in all man-
ner of devilish practices’. Therefore, ‘even if you were to stop bombing
us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we
would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you
will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam’ (Dabiq 15:33). Similarly,
the third reason for hatred applied to ‘the atheist fringe’ who disbelieved
in their ‘Lord and Creator’ (Dabiq 15:32).
A second reason for hatred, a moral or legal one, was that ‘your sec-
ular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited
while banning many of the things He has permitted’ (Dabiq 15:31).
Western unbelievers had accorded ‘supreme authority’ to their ‘whims
and desires’ by voting for legislators who usurped the divine preroga-
tive to be obeyed. This view reflects the doctrine of divine sovereignty
(hākimiyya) developed by Abū’l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī (d. 1979) and Sayyid

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Qutb (d. 1966), according to which only Allah has the right to make laws
for humans to obey (Qutb 2006: 18, 67–68, 86, 106–107, 120). Secular
liberals have thus promoted such ‘filthy sins and vices’ as ‘alcohol, drugs,
fornication, gambling,… usury’—‘and even “gay rights”’. IS therefore
fought to prevent the spread of ‘disbelief… debauchery… secularism…
nationalism… perverted liberal values… Christianity and atheism—and
all the depravity and corruption they entail’ (Dabiq 15:32).
Just as Westerners claimed to liberate Muslim societies, ‘we’ve made
it our mission to fight off your influence and protect mankind from your
misguided concepts and your deviant way of life’ (Dabiq 15:31–32). IS
claimed to be fighting (Western) unbelievers

not simply to punish and deter you, but to bring you true freedom in this
life and salvation in the Hereafter, freedom from being enslaved to your
whims and desires as well as those of your clergy and legislatures, and
salvation by worshiping your Creator alone and following His messenger
(Dabiq 15:33).

This passage recalls Sayyid Qutb’s (2006: 81; cf. 93–94) understanding
that the purpose of jihād was ‘to secure complete freedom for every man
throughout the world by releasing him from servitude to other human
beings so that he may serve his Lord’. Qutb, moreover, quoted the histo-
rian al-Tabarī (d. 923), who recorded that the Arabs gave just this expla-
nation to the Persians before the battle of Qādisiyya in 636.

Justification II: Jihād as Permanent War

In classical fiqh, jihād is permanent war: it will last until the whole world
is incorporated into the dār al-Islām (the region where the sharīʿa pre-
vails) or until the Day of Judgment—whichever comes first. The Hanafī
jurist al-Sarakhsī (d. 1106), for example, after outlining the stages by
which jihād against polytheists developed in the time of Muhammad,
concluded that ‘Finally, God ordered him to initiate the war against
them. What was eventually retained was the obligation to wage war
against the polytheists… an obligation which will be maintained until
Judgement Day’ (Abbès 2014: 240; cf. Ibn Qayyim, d. 1350, quoted in
Qutb 2006: 63–64). The Prophet himself had foretold that a group of
Muslims would continue ‘crushing its enemies… until the Hour over-
takes them’ (Dabiq 14:66; cf. 2:44; 7:24; 9:53 for similar ahadīth). The
writers of Dabiq (5:3) looked forward to a time when ‘The shade of this
blessed flag [of the caliphate] will expand until it covers all eastern and
western extents of the Earth, filling the world with the truth and justice

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 317

of Islam and putting an end to the falsehood and tyranny of jāhiliyyah

[barbaric ignorance such as prevailed before the coming of Islam]’. The
enemies of IS could only end the war against them by converting to Islam
or, in the case of Jews and Christians, accepting Islamic rule—though
even Christians were really pagans as illustrated by Catholic veneration
of the host during mass (Dabiq 15:31, 63).
Influenced by apocalyptic texts and ahadīth generated by the Arab-
Byzantine conflict in Syria during the seventh and eighth centuries, IS
expected the final victory of Islam to occur relatively soon (McCants
2015: 28–29, 102–107; Cook 2020). Muhammad was said to have
declared, ‘The Hour will not be established until the Romans land at
al-Aʿmaq or Dabiq’ (Dabiq 1:4; 4:33). The Aʿmāq (Amik) Valley and
the town of Dābiq were close to the Syrian frontier between Islamic and
Byzantine territory. Dābiq, once the assembly point for Muslim troops
and a place for performing ribāt, became the anticipated location of an
apocalyptic battle (al-Malhama al-Kubrā) against the Christian forces
(Dabiq 3:15; 4:35; Rumiyah 4:24–26) before the arrival of the Dajjāl
(Antichrist) and the Masīh (Messiah; Collet 2018: 11, 23–29, 60). Dabiq
(4:34–35) asserted that in the early Arabic of the ahadīth it quoted,
‘Romans’ referred ‘to the Christians of Europe and their colonies in Shām
[Syria]’ before the seventh-century conquest. More precisely, ‘Romans’
(Rūm) referred to the Byzantines from whom Syria was conquered. The
cited ahadīth do not refer to the original Rome though there are other
apocalyptic texts that do (Cook 2002: 64–66), and the first six issues of
Rumiyah ended with a hadīth affirming that Constantinople would be
captured before Rome.3
Each issue of Dabiq began with an optimistic quotation from
al-Zarqāwī: ‘The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue
to intensify—by Allah’s permission—until it burns the crusader armies
in Dābiq’. Readers were assured that ‘the war will only end with the black
flag of Tawhid (Islamic monotheism) fluttering over Constantinople and
Rome’ (Dabiq 15:7; cf. 13:47). Rumiyah similarly featured a quotation
from al-Zarqāwī’s successor, Abū Hamzah al-Muhājir: ‘O muwahhidin
[monotheists], rejoice, for by Allah, we will not rest from our jihad
except beneath the olive trees of Rumiyah (Rome)’. The cover of Dabiq
issue 4 featured the IS flag instead of a cross atop the obelisk in St Peter’s
Square (cf. 4:5, 8, 17, 37, ‘We will conquer your Rome’).

3. Constantinople (Istanbul) was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, but is now,

according to IS, ruled by apostates.

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Before their final victory over unbelievers, Muslims would have to

defend themselves when attacked. Many Muslims today claim that mili-
tary jihād is solely defensive, but Dabiq expressed scorn for ‘the Islam-is-
a-peaceful-religion crowd’ (Dabiq 15:31). An article entitled ‘Islam is the
religion of the sword not pacifism’ declared that while apologists claim
Islam is a pacifist religion, in fact, ‘Allah has revealed Islam to be the
religion of the sword, and the evidence for this is so profuse that only
a zindīq (heretic) would argue otherwise’. Apologists commonly but
incorrectly argue that the word Islam means peace (salām), but accord-
ing to Ibn Taymiyya as interpreted by Dabiq (7:22–23), it actually means
submission (istislām) and sincerity (salāma).
IS’s war against the West was, nevertheless, undertaken in part for
self-defence. The final three justifications in the Dabiq 15 article on rea-
sons for fighting were defensive: the West’s crimes against Islam as a
religion, its crimes against Muslims themselves (bombing, killing and
maiming ‘our people around the world’ as well as supporting oppressive
regimes) and its invasion of Islamic lands (Dabiq 15:33). IS spokesman
Abū Muhammad al-ʿAdnānī ash-Shāmī (d. 2016) declared to Americans
and Europeans that his movement had not initiated war on their coun-
tries. Rather, ‘It is you who started the transgression against us, and thus
you deserve blame and you will pay a great price’ (Dabiq 4:8).
For IS, as for other Muslims who felt threatened by Western hege-
mony, current conflicts were viewed as a resumption of the medieval
crusades—just as President George W. Bush had said (Dabiq 4:42;
Rumiyah 2:19). Quoting a rhetorical question posed by Bin Lādin
about why the US, Germany, Australia and even Japan fought against
the Muslims of Palestine and Afghanistan, Dabiq (7:3) answered, ‘It is
yet another crusade just like the former crusades led by Richard the
Lionheart, Barbarossa of Germany, and Louis of France’.4 Western oppo-
nents of IS—even Jews, despite their historical experience as victims
of crusading—were characterised as crusaders (e.g., Henry Kissinger,
Dabiq 4:39). After all, ‘The Jewish state itself was established for the
Jews primarily by the British crusaders’ (Dabiq 9:18).
Since IS has been established primarily in Islamic societies, the princi-
pal objects of its jihād have not been Westerners but other Muslims—also
understood in moral and religious terms. Like other Salafī-Jihādīs, IS sup-
porters eagerly practise takfīr, declaring other self-described Muslims

4. Actually, the French King who participated in the Third Crusade along with
Richard and Barbarossa was Philip II Augustus. Louis VII participated in the Second
Crusade, and Louis IX led two crusades of his own.

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 319

to be in fact unbelievers (kuffār/kāfirūn) or apostates (murtaddīn) who

should be fought and killed. This practice recalls that of the rebellious
Khawārij (‘seceders’) of the seventh and eighth centuries who are, how-
ever, firmly repudiated by IS and other Sunnī Muslims (Dabiq 2:20–21).
IS refused to condemn the Sunnī people of Iraq and Syria or Muslims en
masse as apostates, and it punished what it described as a Khārijī cell
for plotting to attack both IS and the masses (Dabiq 6:31; Bunzel 2015:
38–39). Salafī-Jihādīs had debated the applicability of takfīr for decades
before its enthusiastic adoption by IS as a weapon in its war against Shīʿīs
and others struggling for power in Iraq (Maher 2016: 106–107). All the
enemies fought by IS were allegedly tainted with kufr (Rumiyah 7:19).
As Ibn Taymiyya explained, Muslims are required to fight until religion
belongs entirely to Allah (Qurʾān 8:39), ‘So if only some of the religion
is for Allah and some of it is for other than Allah it becomes obligatory
to fight… until the religion is for Allah alone’ (Dabiq 10:57). Religion
‘not for Allāh’ includes ‘desires, opinions, traditions, codes, manmade
laws, and factions’ (Dabiq 10:58). Following Abū Bakr’s war against the
‘apostate’ Arabs who refused to pay zakāh to Medina after the death of
Muhammad, Ibn Taymiyya was understood to endorse jihād against
the Tatars (Mongols) on the grounds that even though they made the
Islamic profession of faith and followed some Islamic laws, they resisted
other duties (Dabiq 7:21; 8:45; 10:56).
IS followed Ibn Taymiyya, and more recently Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, in
conflating war against infidels and renegade Muslims: ‘The most seri-
ous type of obligatory jihad’, the former wrote, ‘is the one against the
unbelievers and against those who refuse to abide by certain prescrip-
tions of the Sharīʿa’ (Peters 1996: 52). Recognition of any source of law
other than Allah and his sharīʿa was contrary to tawhīd, the doctrine of
divine unity (Rumiyah 13:6–8). Dabiq (14:18–19) asserted that ‘refer-
ring judgment to the tawāghīt [plural of tāghūt] is no less severe in
shirk [polytheism] than to worship an idol’. Nationalism and democracy
(both Western ‘idols’; Dabiq 1:8; 8:6) were particularly obnoxious forms
of shirk since they undermined loyalty to the international umma and
substituted human for divine law. Naturally, any Muslims guilty of ally-
ing with the crusaders were ipso facto apostates, such as the disbeliev-
ing Kurds, ‘allies of the crusaders and Jews’ (Dabiq 5:12; 10:34). The
magazines often denounced ‘apostate’ scholars and imāms who misled
their followers (Dabiq 7:54–55, 62, 70; 14:12–17; 15:26; Rumiyah
4:6–7, 17–18; 5:26–28; 7:21). For IS, however, the worst ‘apostates’
were Shīʿīs, referred to as Rāfidīs (‘rejectors’ of the first three ‘rightly
guided’ caliphs recognised by Sunnī Muslims), who ‘hate Islam just as

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the Jews hate Christianity’. Someone raised as a Shīʿī was an apostate

even if ‘he had never truly been Muslim’ (Dabiq 13:33–34). Al-Zarqāwī’s
insistence on fighting Shīʿīs was one of the principal sources of tension
with al-Qāʿida (Bunzel 2015: 14; Gerges 2016: 74–84).

Personnel: Who Should Fight

In traditional fiqh, ultimate leadership in the conduct of jihād belonged
to the imām or caliph. Having asserted itself as the restored, unique
Islamic State, IS called upon Muslims everywhere to offer a pledge of
allegiance (bayʿa) to its caliph (Dabiq 7:35). All Muslims owed obedi-
ence to the imām Abū Bakr al-Baghdādī (d. 2019), also known as Caliph
Ibrāhīm (Dabiq 10:19). Individuals and groups in various parts of the
world were reported to have responded to this call (Dabiq 5:22, 24;
7:33; 10:36). A suitably unified group (jamāʿa) prepared to implement
the sharīʿa could be recognised as a province or governorate (wilāya) of
IS with its own governor (wālī) and advisory council (shūrā) if its docu-
mentation were approved (Dabiq 7:35). West Africa was recognised as
‘another frontier of the caliphate’ in March 2015 when Abū Bakr Shekau,
leader of Jamāʿat Ahl al-Sunna li’l-Daʿwa wa’l-Jihād (better known as
Boko Haram) ‘announced his group’s bayʿah’ to Caliph Ibrāhīm (Dabiq
8:14–15).
Waging offensive jihād was traditionally regarded as a communal
obligation (fard kifāya): if enough Muslims undertook it, the rest of
the community was exempt (Peters 1996: 3–4; Bonner 2006: 106–107,
115). It was commonly asserted that the ruler or his deputy should raid
enemy territory at least annually. For those who were assigned this task,
most obviously the caliph’s soldiers, jihād was a personal obligation (fard
ʿayn), though volunteers also participated with or without official spon-
sorship. When Muslims themselves were under attack, jihād became an
individual duty for those living in the affected area. This obligation could
extend to people not usually expected to fight, such as women, minors
and slaves (Ibn Nahhās n.d.: 19). An illustrated article on ‘The Lions of
Tomorrow’ (Dabiq 8:20–21; cf. Rumiyya 2:16; 9:20–21) explained how
two boys (‘lion cubs’) in the Islamic State were being trained in warfare
by executing two men accused of spying for the Russians and Israelis—
rather as two boys had killed Muhammad’s enemy Abū Jahl in the battle
of Badr.
The personal obligation to fight would extend to Muslims from neigh-
bouring territories if those under attack needed assistance, but modern
communications and transport have extended this duty. Like other recent

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 321

conflicts, for example in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the 2003 invasion

of Iraq drew volunteers from throughout the umma. Nowadays, millions
of Muslims live in the West, and, Salafīs hold, even Islamic lands have
reverted to jāhiliyya or at least suffer under tawāghīt. In this globalised
world, with the umma allegedly under attack everywhere, it follows that
jihād has become a personal obligation for all sincere Muslims insofar
as they are able to contribute. According to Dabiq (14:36; 15:33; cf.
3:32; Rumiyah 5:22), ‘Jihād in this era is an obligation upon each and
every Muslim as numerous lands of the Muslims have been usurped by
the kuffār and numerous parties of apostasy have arisen therein’. This
individual obligation, which actually began with the loss of al-Andalus
(Iberia) in 1492 (Bunzel 2015: 39; Hashim 2018: 111), would continue
until the lands were regained, cleansed of apostates, and ruled by the
sharīʿa. The caliph declared jihād to have become fard ʿayn even for
those whose parents disapproved—as they might legitimately do when
jihād was only fard kifāya (Dabiq 10:15–16; cf. Ibn Rushd, d. 1198, in
Peters 1996: 30).
Muslims were therefore encouraged to imitate the Prophet’s hijra, his
migration from a place of persecution (Mecca) to one where Islam—
including the obligation of jihād—could be practised in full (Medina).
One of the key purposes of IS’s magazines was to persuade Muslims (not
least those who exercised professions such as Islamic law, medicine and
engineering) that ‘hijrah to the land of Islam is obligatory’ (Dabiq 1:11;
cf. 3:26; 9:26; 15:27). Dabiq (8:28–29; cf. Rumiyah 8:19) cited a series
of ahadīth urging Muslims to ‘Abandon the lands of shirk and come to
the land of Islam’. The purposes of such hijra were to avoid the corrupt-
ing influence of unbelievers and to participate in jihād (Dabiq 8:32).
According to a hadīth reported by Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), ‘Hijrah
will not cease as long as there is jihād’ (Dabiq 2:18; 8:32–33; cf. Rumiyah
4:2–3 and Qurʾān 4:97, a proof-text on the duty of hijra).
Muslims living in the West had to choose between apostasy—
adopting ‘the kufrī religion’ endorsed by Western political leaders, in
order to ‘live amongst the kuffār without hardship’—or performing
‘hijrah to the Islamic State’ (Dabiq 7:62). Similarly, Muslims living under
‘apostate tawāghīt’ would soon be forced to choose between migrating
to ‘the wilāyāt of the Islamic State’ and apostasy; that is, between sup-
porting IS or being forced to fight it (Dabiq 7:66). They might travel
to Nigeria (Dabiq 8:15), the Philippines (Rumiyah 10:28–30, 36–41),
‘or any of the other wilayat and outposts of the Khilafah [caliphate]’
(Rumiyah 4:3). As discussed below, IS supporters who could not escape

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the dār al-harb (the region of war, counterpart to the dār al-Islām) were
expected to carry out acts of terror where they lived.
The mass migration of Muslims to Western countries and the adop-
tion of Islam by many Westerners are recent phenomena that provide
both personnel (Muslims by descent or conversion) and cover for terror-
ism in the West (where the presence of Muslims is now normal and not
inherently suspicious). While medieval Mālikī jurists tended to disap-
prove of Muslims living under non-Islamic rule, scholars of other schools
allowed Muslims to remain if they were able to practise their religion
(Abou El Fadl 1994: 157–61). Though not defined in detail, such prac-
tice did not include military jihād, for minority Muslims were assumed
to have an implicit or explicit safe-conduct (amān) according to which
they must obey the law and refrain from causing harm (Abou El Fadl
1994: 175–76). Rumiyah (11:36–38) argued otherwise, asserting that
holding a visa or residency permit did not constitute a promise to obey
the local law and therefore did not debar a Muslim from engaging in acts
of terror.
Like the Muslim women of Mecca after the hijra, women were
expected to migrate to the Islamic State (Dabiq 8:32–37), but IS maga-
zines discouraged them from fighting despite the view of ʿAzzām that
women should fight in the current global pan-Islamic defensive jihād
(Cook 2009: 183). Traditionally, women were expected to be support-
ive non-combatants, for example by providing water and caring for
the wounded (Rumiyah 3:40), and Dabiq (15:23) deemed it part of
the fitra (natural disposition) of women that they were not required
to fight. A well-known hadīth recalled that when some women sought
to participate in jihād the Prophet replied, ‘Your jihad is the pilgrim-
age to Mecca’. Addressing the women of IS, Umm Sumayyah described
herself as ‘the wife of a mujāhid and the mother of lion cubs’ (‘A Jihād
Without Fighting’, Dabiq 11:40–45). A woman’s role, she wrote, was
to wait patiently for the return of [her] husband, a mujāhid and poten-
tial shahīd. As a mujāhida herself, her weapon was ‘good behavior and
knowledge’ with which she could bring up her children with a correct
understanding of Islam, including ‘the fiqh of jihād’. Noting that women
were ‘excused from fighting’, Rumiyah (1:18–20) emphasised charity,
quoting a hadīth saying that they should ‘wage jihād with their wealth,
souls and tongues’. Non-belligerents, especially women, the sick, the
disabled, and prisoners should practise jihād with their tongues. This
included encouraging those who fought, disparaging those who did not,
ridiculing the enemy and, above all, praying (duʿāʾ; Rumiyah 3:32–33).
On the other hand, occasional female terrorists who operated beyond

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 323

IS territory were deemed highly praiseworthy. In December 2015, after

declaring their bayʿa to the caliph and undertaking a shooting spree,
Tashfeen Malik Syed and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook attained
shahāda (martyrdom) in a shoot-out with police in San Bernadino,
California (Dabiq 13:3–4).
As Dabiq (10:58–59) reported, scholarly opinion was divided on the
permissibility of engaging the support of unbelievers in jihād, but the
prohibition appeared especially obvious when the unbelievers thereby
gained control over the Muslims and their religion as occurred when
other militant groups allied with outsiders. As already noted, Muslims
who partnered with ‘crusaders’ were deemed apostates.

Conduct: How Muslims Should Fight

Targeted assassinations were deemed a part of jihād, and Dabiq (7:58–
60) invoked examples of assassinations instigated by the Prophet against
individuals who had insulted him. It also named contemporary enemies
who deserved the same fate, including two Muslim ‘apostates’ who
denounced the January 2015 murder of 12 Charlie Hebdo staff after the
magazine published cartoons of Muhammad.
Before engaging in large-scale hostilities, traditional writers expected
Muslims to offer the enemy the option of accepting Islam or (for the
People of the Book) Islamic rule—unless Muslims were themselves
attacked or the enemy already knew enough about the religion (Ibn
Rushd in Peters 1996: 37–38). This, according to Dabiq (15:28), was
the prevailing situation: it was now time for action in accordance with
Allah’s command to ‘kill the mushrikūn [polytheists] wherever you find
them’ (Qurʾān 9:5)—especially given ‘the ongoing crusade against
Islam’. Similarly, a lengthy analysis of relevant ahadīth and ancient
authorities in Rumiyah (12:18–23) argued that daʿwa (teaching about
Islam) was obligatory before fighting those who had not heard about
Islam and permissible but not obligatory when fighting those who had.
At present, ‘the entire world’ was ‘waging war against the Khilafah State’
and there was not likely to be anyone who had not heard of Islam.
This characterisation of the rest of the world as the enemy seemed
to legitimise IS’s most disturbing feature: its extraordinary brutality. IS
has delighted in overthrowing domestic and international law—agreed,
of course, among unbelievers. Indeed, ‘The clear difference between
Muslims and the corrupt and deviant Jews and Christians is that Muslims
are not ashamed of abiding by the rules sent down from their Lord
regarding war and enforcement of divine law’ (Dabiq 15:80). Alluding

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to horrific events in modern history, Dabiq (15:80) declared that IS

would have no regrets over ‘killing and enslaving native Americans’,
forcing the Japanese to convert by dropping another nuclear bomb
upon them, coercing the Vietnamese to become Muslims by the threat of
napalm, or slaughtering Jewish men in a manner ‘that would make the
Holocaust sound like a bedtime story’. Rumiyah gave detailed advice on
‘Just Terror Tactics’ (meaning attacks in the name of justice). Favoured
weapons included knives, not simply ‘to attain a reasonable kill count’
but to inflict terror (Rumiyah 2:12–13; cf. 4:8); vehicles (3:10–12), as
in the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016 (Rumiyah 5:41); and fire,
including Molotov cocktails (5:8–10).
A note in Dabiq (12:39) recorded that when al-Zarqāwī read The
Management of Savagery (Idārat al-Tawahhush), written by the pseud-
onymous Salafī-Jihādī Abū Bakr Nājī, he declared, probably disingenu-
ously, ‘It is as if the author knows what I’m planning’. Nājī’s advocacy
of unremitting violence to promote and exploit the collapse of public
order to prepare for a caliphate has certainly been implemented by IS
(McCants 2015: 82–84; Manne 2016: 118–30, 132–33, 150–51; Raja
2019: 80–109). IS brutality was further encouraged by two other mili-
tant Salafī-Jihādī theorists, Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Muhājir and Sayyid Imām
al-Sharīf, better known as Dr Fadl (Gerges 2016: 34–41).
An essential prerequisite for such terrorism is the erasure of moral
distinctions between rulers, soldiers and civilian non-combatants.
According to IS, ‘every Crusader nation claiming to be ruled by the
“Will of the People” has implicated their own populations in the crimes
their militaries commit against the Muslim nation, making the obliga-
tion to target them even more obvious for the doubtful’ (Dabiq 15:28).
Maher (2016: 56–68) emphasises the novelty of such reasoning, pro-
posed by Bin Lādin in 1997, though it has some connections with more
traditional arguments about retribution (qisās) and permitting attacks
despite the presence of protected persons such as women and children
(tatarrus, human shields). Traditional fiqh offered only limited protec-
tion to non-combatant unbelievers, lacked a consistent definition of who
should not be harmed, and, while discouraging the intentional killing
of women and children in combat did not actually punish it (Landau-
Tasseron 2006: 2–4, 11, 18–20). Some scholars, especially Shāfiʿīs, held
that Qurʾān 9:5 meant all infidels’ lives were forfeit (Landau-Tasseron
2006: 16–17, 21–22). This is the position taken by IS (Rumiyah 1:35;
5:6)—though as Ibn Taymiyya (in Peters 1996: 49–50) observed, that
did not necessitate killing those who did not impede the Muslims. The
Prophet had allegedly used a catapult, accepting the inevitable harm to

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 325

non-combatants, and the Shāfiʿī Ibn Nahhās had no qualms about using
mangonels and fire despite the likelihood that women and children
would be killed (Cook 2015: 55–56). Such views provided a precedent
for terrorist tactics (Cook 2009: 185; Rumiyah 5:7). Any unbeliever in
the dār al-kufr (another name for the dār al-harb) was therefore vulner-
able, for killing unbelievers was ‘a form of worship to Allah’ (Rumiyah
1:36). Accordingly, after the Russian air force intervened in the Syrian
war, IS claimed responsibility for the October 2015 bombing of an Airbus
A321 leaving Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, killing 224 people,
mostly Russian tourists (Dabiq 12:2, 43).
Since civilians were allegedly as guilty of attacking Muslims as their
governments and military forces, it became an obligation for Muslims ‘to
attack the Crusader nations and their citizens in their homelands’ (Dabiq
15:28; cf. 6:3, 4; 7:37). In the words of the convert Shane Crawford,
alias Abū Saʿd al-Trīnīdādī, ‘Due to their mere disbelief, their blood by
default is lawful to spill. How much more obligatory is it to do so after
they’ve waged war against the Muslims and killed their women and chil-
dren’ (Dabiq 15:69; Cottee 2019).5 Hostage-taking, such as occurred in
the Lindt café in Sydney in December 2014 and the Bataclan theatre in
Paris in November 2015, was highly recommended, and deception, such
as pretending to offer a property for rent, was proposed as a means to
achieve it (Dabiq 6:3; Rumiyah 9:46–51). In order to weaken the enemy
and finance jihād, Muslims were encouraged to take infidels’ property
‘by force or through theft and fraud’ and even to kidnap their children
(Rumiyah 11:38–39). Terrorist attacks far from IS territory have some-
times been directed against people ‘guilty’ of more than their govern-
ment’s attacks on Muslims. In June 2016, Omar Mateen, ‘one of the
soldiers of the Caliphate in America’, attacked ‘a nightclub for sodomites
in the city of Orlando, Florida’ (Dabiq 15:43).
Large-scale terrorist attacks on groups identified only as members of
a category such as Americans or homosexuals have only become pos-
sible through modern technology, especially in aviation, weaponry and
communication. For IS, such assaults drew inspiration from al-Qāʿida’s
‘blessed’ attacks of 9/11 (Dabiq 7:54; 15:37; Rumiyah 1:15).
One of the signature methods of IS and comparable Islamic groups
is the suicide mission, even though the Qurʾān (4:29) seems to forbid
suicide (Rumiyah 8:31). Rumiyah (4:24–25; cf. 29) featured an article
on ‘The Pledge to Fight to the Death’, which has some support in the
ahadīth although the Qurʾān (9:15–16) itself already threatened hellfire

5. Crawford’s assumed name reflects his place of origin, not his theology!

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to those who retreated from battle without sufficient reason. This vow,
moreover, was not explicitly linked to intentionally seeking death.
Suicide attacks are not clearly supported in traditional fiqh, but they
have become increasingly used by Muslims since the 1980s, especially in
the context of the Palestinian struggle (Cook 2007: 146–53)—initially,
in an irony lost on IS, by Shīʿīs in Iran and Lebanon (Moghadam 2019:
218). For a time, the immensely influential Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī (b. 1926)
endorsed Palestinian suicide attacks (including by women) on the
grounds that Israel was ‘a military society’ having universal conscription
and disproportionate military resources (Bartal and Rubinstein-Shemer
2018: 32–33, 103–109, 194). Despite al-Qaradāwī’s rejection of such
methods in other contexts, IS, following al-Qāʿida, similarly sees itself
as attacked by far more powerful enemies while rejecting the distinction
between soldiers and civilians. A seeker of martyrdom (an istishhādī)
may wear an explosive vest or drive a truck laden with explosives (e.g.,
Dabiq 9:29–30; Rumiyah 9:56).
A fighter who plunges into the enemy, an inghimāsī, is prepared to die
but begins the attack using more conventional weapons, escaping alive
if possible (Dabiq 2:13). The technique may have been adopted from
al-Qāʿida (Colquhoun 2016; Hashim 2018: 212), but it was already
commended by Ibn Nahhās (n.d.: 84–93). Both istishhādī and inghimāsī
attacks were frequently reported in the magazines; for example, a Dabiq
(15:44–45) story described how inghimāsī soldiers attained martyrdom
by attacking ‘a gathering of Rafidah’ at their ‘pagan shrine’ (a Shīʿī mau-
soleum) in July 2016.
There could be only temporary interruptions to jihād (Ibn Rushd in
Peters 1996: 38–40). An enemy of the state could be given a covenant
of security as a muʿāhad (or muʿahd; Rumiyah 11:34–35) and, if its
enemies ceased fighting, IS could envision a temporary truce to focus
on more immediate threats ‘before eventually resuming our campaigns’
(Dabiq 15:31). Following the Prophet’s precedent in signing the Treaty
of al-Hudaybiyya with Mecca, IS, in accordance with traditional fiqh,
argued a temporary armistice could be agreed if it were ‘for a greater
shar’ī [sic, sharʿī, legitimate] interest’. Beyond that, ‘A halt of war
between the Muslims and the kuffār can never be permanent, as war
against the kuffār is the default obligation upon the Muslims’ (Dabiq
8:67). Thus, the editor of Dabiq (11:58) asserted that for America, the
war could only finally end with defeat, ‘accepting Islam or paying jizyah’.

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Consequences: The Outcome of Jihād

For the writers of Dabiq (4:3–4) and Rumiyah (13:17), ultimate victory
was assured: they had Allah’s promise that his religion would prevail
over all other religion (Qurʾān 9:33). Since the caliphate’s soldiers had
‘surrendered themselves to Allah’, there was ‘no possibility of their sur-
render to humans’ (Dabiq 14:5). Al-ʿAdnānī warned the unbelievers, ‘We
will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,
by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us’. Or,
at least, if the present generation did not achieve this goal, its children
and grandchildren would, and they would ‘sell your sons as slaves at the
slave market’ because ‘our Lord, the Mighty, the Prevailing, has prom-
ised us with our victory and your defeat’ (Dabiq 4:8).
IS propaganda magazines listed successful attacks but were reti-
cent about setbacks. However, an item on ‘Affliction and Faith’ (Dabiq
14:26–27) included images of war with accompanying ahadīth remind-
ing believers that they should expect Allah to send them afflictions.
Commenting on a qurʾānic passage (3:152, 165–68) about Muhammad’s
defeat at Uhud, Ibn Taymiyya, writing in the context of the Islamic
struggle with the Mongols, advised that ‘the defeat of the Muslims in
his times was due to sins, bad intentions, boasting, conceitedness, etc.’.
These words were ‘just as applicable to the Ummah today’, and patience
in the face of calamity was ‘a mercy and blessing’ (Dabiq 14:45–46).
Only hypocrites (munāfiqūn) would lose faith, like those who professed
to be Muslims but avoided jihād in the Prophet’s time (Dabiq 14:47–49).
If the Muslims lost territory, it was merely ‘a trial and a purification…
the ebb of the tide’ and would be ‘followed by expansion and the great
conquest’ (Rumiyah 9:33; cf. 8:5).
Like traditional scholars, the magazines naturally had more to say
about the consequences of victory, such as the fate of enemy prisoners.
The Qurʾān gave the options of release or ransom (Qurʾān 47:4; Dabiq
7:21). However, the majority view, following early precedents, also per-
mitted execution and enslavement (Ibn Taymiyya in Peters 1996: 50;
al-Māwardī 1996: 145–46; Ahmad 2003: 3:32; Landau-Tasseron 2006:
4–5). Writing in Dabiq (14:52–55) and obviously only able to say what
his captors permitted, John Cantlie, a British journalist held by IS since
2012, lamented that the British and American governments refused to
pay ransoms unlike the French and others. He suggested that, benefit-
ting from considerable oil revenue, IS did not demand ransoms for the
money but only in order to obey the Qurʾān. IS prisoners from non-
Islamic countries were commonly offered for exorbitant ransoms and

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executed if their governments refused to pay. Dabiq (11:64–65) pub-

lished two full-page ‘advertisements’ offering for sale a Danish prisoner
and a Chinese, each ‘abandoned by his government’. The following issue
pictured their corpses with the words, ‘The fate of the two prisoners:
Executed after being abandoned by the kāfir nations and organizations’
(Dabiq 12:64).
Male captives deemed to have apostatised from Islam were tradition-
ally liable to be executed (al-Māwardī 1996: 61, 65). For IS, this included
Shīʿīs and most other prisoners, and it was too late to repent after cap-
ture. They could not be ransomed, released, enslaved, or offered a treaty
as ahl al-dhimma (protected people like Jews and Christians who paid
a poll tax), though they might be forced back into Islam (Dabiq 13:42–
43). Execution by burning was controversial, but IS argued that despite
ahadīth reserving such punishment to Allah, the Prophet’s companions
occasionally used fire against their enemies (Dabiq 7:7–8; Rumiyah
5:16–18). Moreover, the Qurʾān (2:194; 16:126; 42:40) endorses pun-
ishing a transgression in kind even if this permission is qualified by a
preference for patience (sabr). In January 2015, IS burned alive a cap-
tured Jordanian F-16 pilot, Muʿādh al-Kasāsba, asserting that ‘countless
Muslims’ had been ‘burned alive and buried under mountains of debris’,
so the ‘apostate pilot flying for the crusader alliance’ was treated like-
wise (Dabiq 6:34–36; 7:5–8). Later, two Turkish soldiers met a similar
fate (Rumiyah 5:16–18; al-Jazeera 2016). In these cases, IS saw itself
as punishing criminal apostates rather than ordinary prisoners of war.
Dabiq (9:44–49) defended another notorious IS practice in an article
(‘Slave-Girls or Prostitutes?’) attributed to a female author. When the
Prophet raided the kuffār, wrote Umm Sumayyah al-Muhājirah, citing
appropriate ahadīth, ‘He would kill their men and enslave their children
and women’ (Dabiq 9:45). Al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820) and others had argued that
it was preferable not to kill them because they were more profitable to
the Muslims as slaves (Rumiyah 1:35; 5:6–7). The Qurʾān (4:24; 23:5–
6; 33:50; 70:28–30) endorses the ownership of female slaves (‘those
whom your right hand possesses’) and a man’s right to have sexual rela-
tions with them. As Umm Sumayyah explained, ‘The right hand’s posses-
sion (mulk [milk] al-yamīn) are the female captives who were separated
from their husbands by enslavement. They became lawful for the one
who ends up possessing them even without pronouncement of divorce
by their harbī husbands’ (Dabiq 9:44; a harbī is an inhabitant of the dār
al-harb). This is precisely the view expounded in the eleventh century
by al-Māwardī (1996: 58, 151), who warned that the owners had to
wait until their new captives menstruated or, if pregnant, gave birth (cf.

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 329

Murad 2017: 129 and Roy 2017: 59–60). Because of its endorsement
by generations of Muslim scholars, the sexual enslavement of captured
women continues to be endorsed by conservative writers, for example
Yusuf al-Hajj Ahmad (2003: 3:80–81) in a legal compendium published
in Saudi Arabia this century.
For Dabiq (9:47), then, the revival of sexual slavery was the resto-
ration of ‘a Prophetic Sunnah’ (in effect, a legal precedent, even com-
mand) long in abeyance. This revival was a sign of the coming of the
Hour (Dabiq 4:14–16). Acknowledging that the sharīʿa requires kind-
ness towards slaves, Umm Sumayyah unconvincingly dismissed escaped
slaves’ accounts of ill-treatment as lies (Dabiq 9:48; cf. Khalaf 2016;
Murad 2017). The principal victims of sexual slavery under IS have been
Yazīdī women, regarded, despite centuries of tolerance by Muslim rul-
ers, as devil-worshippers ineligible for the status of People of the Book
(Dabiq 3:18; 4:14–15).
Medieval Muslim scholars wrote extensively on how to distribute
the spoils of war, which included slaves (al-Māwardī 1996: 140–57).
Muslims should fight for Allah not booty (Dabiq 4:30–34); nevertheless,
both the blood and the property of all mushrikūn who did not have a
treaty with the Muslims was permissible to them (Rumiyah 8:13–14;
11:29–30). The mujāhidīn were naturally warned not to take anything
for themselves from ghanīma (spoils captured in fighting) ahead of
lawful, proper distribution (Dabiq 3:29; 4:12; 6:14). One-fifth of the
plunder (the khums, discussed in Rumiyah 8:14; 11:33–34) was tradi-
tionally allocated to the leader for special purposes such as providing
for orphans (Dabiq 2:38). IS rejoiced in a particular variety of ghanīma:
weapons and other war materiel such as tanks and even planes seized
from the Americans and others (Dabiq 2:13, 37, 42; 3:3; 4:8, 23; 5:30;
15:40–42; Rumiyah 1:22; 3:44; 5:39; 6:36–37). It also made its own
weapons (Rumiyah 12:34). Dabiq (3:29; 4:10–11; 7:22) and Rumiyah
(11:38) quoted a hadīth approved by generations of scholars, in which
Muhammad declared his livelihood to be under the shadow of his spear
and that war spoils (understood by some as fayʾ, revenues from captured
territories) constituted the best and most lawful kind of income.
The most important consequence of victory in jihād was the imple-
mentation of the sharīʿa in the newly conquered territory: that is what it
meant to uphold the word of Allah and make his religion prevail. When
IS conquered Raqqah, it ‘spread the authority of the Sharīʿah over the
complete wilāyah’ (Dabiq 10:51). The IS wālī (governor) of Khurāsān
(Afghanistan and western Pakistan) told a Dabiq interviewer (13:49,
51) that, under his rule, courts applied the hudūd punishments (such

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as stoning adulterers), and offices were established for hisba (morality

police), zakāh, education, daʿwa (proselytising), masājid (mosques),
and public services. In contrast to the Taliban, IS banned the growth
or sale of opium along with cigarettes and other prohibited substances.
Even more importantly, shrines were destroyed and graves levelled in the
name of tawhīd. Like Abraham in his father’s workshop and Muhammad
in the Kaʿba, IS soldiers destroyed the idols of ancient Assyria (Dabiq
8:21–24; for the destruction of ancient temples, see 11:32–33).
The only options available to defeated Christians under sharīʿa rule
were to adopt Islam, become despised and humiliated subjects paying
jizya, or accept martyrdom (Dabiq 15:33, 69). Such conditions were
‘based on elevating the true believers—the Muslims—over the disbe-
lieving People of the Scripture who arrogantly reject the Lord’s message’
(Dabiq 15:63). Following the Qurʾān (9:29) and the so-called Pact of
ʿUmar (Levi-Rubin 2018), medieval scholars agreed over these three
choices, and the Ottoman authorities continued to collect jizya as a poll
tax until the mid-nineteenth century. Continued IS attacks on Copts
were justified on the grounds that they no longer had a pact of protec-
tion (dhimma) and did not pay jizya (they had supposedly violated the
Pact of ʿUmar; Bunzel 2015: 40). Allegedly, they armed themselves
and harmed converts to Islam; they also supported the tāghūt President
al-Sīsī—even as members of his army (Rumiyah 9:4–10).

Conclusion
This detailed review of the justification, personnel, conduct and con-
sequences of jihād as expounded in Dabiq and Rumiyah confirms its
embeddedness in traditional Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) drawing on
the Qurʾān and sunna. At the same time, IS ideology is an expression and
development of the Salafī-Jihādī trend within contemporary Islam. IS is
a sectarian group that, through its caliphal claimant, professes to hold
authority over all the world’s Muslims. Accusing other Muslims of apos-
tasy, and assuming unbelievers forfeit their lives unless they surrender
to Islamic rule, IS justifies waging jihād against them both. What makes
IS most distinctive, both in practice and on the pages of its magazines, is
the extremity of its violence and the range of its victims. While justified
by IS’s reading of the Islamic sources, such violence has only become
possible with modern weaponry and explosive devices.
In assessing IS’s jihād doctrine, it is important to remember that fiqh
is not a codified set of laws but a discourse—one in which the writers
of Dabiq and Rumiyah were thoroughly conversant. In keeping with

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 Van der Krogt ‘The kafir’s blood is halal for you’ 331

the Hanbalī tradition, they rejected both taqlīd (imitating previous rul-
ings) and bidʿa (legal or doctrinal innovation; Dabiq 11:10–12; 12:30)
in favour of ijtihād (using traditional sources to resolve current issues).
Of course, IS’s selection and reinterpretation of canonical texts and his-
torical precedents is sometimes tendentious (Jacoby 2019), but that is
commonly the way of living religious traditions responding to perceived
present needs. IS, as a militant movement, naturally draws upon and
reinterprets those parts of the Qurʾān, sunna and fiqh most germane to
its concerns, just as, say, an advocate of Sufism would do.
Indeed, ‘modernist’ Muslims have developed a reinterpretation of
jihād that is at least as innovative as that of any ‘fundamentalist’ or
‘reactivist’ movement like IS (for these labels, see van der Krogt 2014b:
30–32). It was only in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, after the establishment of British rule in India and Egypt, that the
idea of military jihād as solely defensive, based on novel readings of his-
tory and the Qurʾān, became widely accepted (Peters 1996: 6, 122–27;
Bonner 2006: 159–61; Brown 2014: 121–30; Cook 2015: 81, 94–97).
Writing just before the emergence of IS, Jonathan Brown (2014:
123–24) observed that movements like it, such as al-Qāʿida, anachro-
nistically interpret the contemporary world directly through the lens
of scripture, as though they were living in the time of the Prophet and
his Companions. IS denounces the modernist jihād-as-defence school,
while the latter, ignoring its own act of selectivity and reinterpretation,
repudiates the IS doctrine despite its strong pedigree (e.g., Keskin and
Tuncer 2019: 20–23; Ali 2019: 61–69). Thus, the editors of the recent
Contesting the Theological Foundations of Islamism and Violent Extremism
argue that groups like IS have ‘misrepresented and misused in an unprec-
edented way’ such concepts as jihād, hijra, takfīr and khilāfa (Mansouri
and Keskin 2019: 9).
Muslims’ criticisms of IS are part of an important intra-Islamic debate,
but academic scholars of religion simply evade their responsibilities
when they too dismiss IS as ‘un-Islamic’ (Hughes 2017). It is not the ‘cor-
rect’ interpretation of ancient authorities that ensures the Islamic char-
acter of a modern religious group; rather, it is the movement’s felt need
to invoke Islamic authorities that makes it Islamic. Disagreement about
doctrine and practice is normal in religion, but only Muslims would
appeal to the Qurʾān, ahādīth and medieval ʿulamāʾ, however embar-
rassing their conclusions may be to other Muslims. As Aaron Hughes
(2017: 90) argues, ‘The task for scholars of religion is to discuss the
rhetoric of authenticity, not what or whose Islam is more authentic’ (cf.
Roy 2017: 56–57).

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332 JASR 33.3 (2020)

Which understanding of jihād particular Muslims find most conge-

nial likely depends a great deal on their circumstances. It is understand-
able that apologists living in the West, embarrassed by terrorism in
the name of their religion, want to promote the notion that Islam is a
religion of peace. To male Muslims and converts disillusioned with life
where they had grown up, IS at the peak of its power (2014–17) offered
a utopia complete with action, adventure, sex slaves, a glorious death,
and paradise to follow. For at least some Iraqi Muslims and their sympa-
thizers, the replacement since 2003 of minority Arab Sunnī dominance
with a discriminatory, Iranian-backed Shīʿī administration made the IS
worldview attractive. To some former Baʿathists, civil and military, the
movement offered a culturally resonant ideology and a vehicle to fight
their way back into power. Similarly, the extraordinarily violent effort
of Syria’s ʿAlawī-based Assad regime to retain power from 2011 invited
intervention by extremist Sunnī Muslims who rejected the ‘illusory bor-
der drawn up by Sykes and Picot’ in 1916 (Dabiq 8:3). The character-
istic violence of IS reflects both these circumstances and commitment
to a pure, original Islam whose authenticity is guaranteed precisely to
the degree that it defies the current international mores of unbelievers
and ‘apostate’ Muslims. Just as Muhammad was ‘the prophet of mercy’,
asserted Rumiyah (2:23), he was also ‘the prophet of slaughter’.

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