A historian of Islamic history, Timothy R. Furnish, explains the goals of ISIS:
“Long-term, ISIS—as many breathlessly have reported—aspires to not just ruling all the Islamic portions of the Middle East, Europe and South/Central Asia, but Rome and points further west, including the United States. This may be a hookah-dream, but considering that the ideology—if not quite all the brutal activity—of ISIS has solid grounding in Salafism, both its Wahhabi and Deobandi (South Asian) versions, it’s something that should be taken seriously by non-Muslims.
It is the medium-term goals of ISIS that should most concern us. I submit that these primarily are two-fold: 1) to goad us—that is, the United States—into inserting ground troops into, particularly, Syria, as a means of fulfilling the hadith about the great apocalyptic battle near Dabiq; and 2) to take over Saudi Arabia, or at least to cause such regional instability that Riyadh’s regime fractures, and ISIS Toyotas ride triumphantly into al-Haramayn, the “two holy places” of Mecca and Medina.” Read his entire article at:
History News Network | The Goals of the Islamic State: Hijrah, al-Haramayn and Hegemony.
Sultan Murad IV (seventeenth century) and al Baghadadi
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