Theology of Violence-oriented Takfirism as a Political Theory: The Case of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

The notion of takfīr (lit. excommunication) was part of pre-modern heresiology that revolved around a range of conceptualisations of kufr (rejection of belief) and the conditions of belonging to a Muslim community (Al-Shahrastani 1923).1 This issue of religious and sectarian belonging was directly connected to belonging to a Muslim polity. Takfīr, therefore, entailed pronouncing judgment on Muslims for having exited a community of Muslims either through what was understood to be their ‘erroneous’ beliefs and/or actions. Such judgments have often had direct political consequences (Khalidi 2005). Those who voluntarily had left Islam and, consequently, left a specific Muslim community, have traditionally been re-classified as murtaddīn (apostates) and/or kuffār (non-believers, sing. kāfir) (Chaliand and Blin 2007). For example, in his Incoherence of the Incoherence, the seminal philosopher and jurist Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) opined that “heretics,” namely, those who violate the agreed upon principles of the divine law are apostates, ought to be killed (Khalidi 2005: 167). In the classical period of Islam, the issue of excommunication has often been a complex legal discussion among Islamic scholars and philosophers. The earliest systematic form of such theologically based excommunication appeared in the 660s, when a zealous militant opposition group of proto-Khawārij (lit. ‘those who go out’) or Khārijites, called upon Muslims to reject and rebel against ʿAlī’s political authority. The series of events within which later Khārijite theology started to crystalize is oftentimes described