Turmoil in the Levant: Inconclusive Conclusions

Abstract

“What is IS [the Islamic State] a case of?” This question Jillian Schwedler posed in an essay published in February 2015 in the Washington Post. In this article, she discussed the terms that academics and the broader public use in analyzing Islamist organizations in general and the IS in particular.¹ Of course, Schwedler had no difficulties in categorizing the IS as a radical and extremist jihadist group. Yet, how is this group different from other jihadist organizations? This question has occupied scholars and media pundits in their assessment of the rise of the IS and its warfare in Syria and Iraq. In an essay for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, for instance, Volker Perthes, the director of the German think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) in Berlin, warned the public not to underestimate the significance of the role of the IS in the Syrian civil war. Instead of talking about a mere terrorist organization, Perthes suggested considering the IS as the central actor in a jihadist state-building process, which is “totalitarian, expansive, and hegemonic” in its nature.² Perthes’s essay raised immediate responses. In the journal Zenith Naseef Naeem and Daniel Gerlach, to take only one example, criticized Perthes in that talking with reference to the IS about a state-building process enhanced its status and disparaged the concept of the state.³