Simply Put

"Put simply, one of the most wanted men on Earth was able to travel into central Mosul and give a 30-minute sermon in the most venerated mosque in the largest city under control of the most notorious jihadist group of our time."
Charles Lister, visiting fellow, Brookings Doha Centre

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has realized his ambition. A Sunni Iraqi cleric of no great moment, he has skilfully managed to portray himself as an extraordinary leader of men, placing himself in the class of of a prophet in the tradition of Muhammad; his successor in the modern era. Bringing to the ummah of the worldwide Islamic community, a pure vision of Islam, one reflective of its origins and its vision cleansed of the debasing effects of modernity and Western thought.

A video posted on a jihadi Twitter feed showed what purports to be the first known video of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.Youtube

Someone preceded him in that ambition, when in 1996 Mullah Omar stood on the roof of a Kandahar mosque in Afghanistan, wrapping himself as in a holy shroud in a cloak seen as sacred, reputed to have been worn once by the Prophet Muhammad himself. It took six months following his declaration for the Taliban horde to make its conquest of Kabul, and become the administrative power in Afghanistan.

In Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's case, his entry from Iraq into the Syrian conflict earned him, through his militia's ferocious fanaticism the censure of al-Qaeda. And his conquering horde of jihadist Islamists heralded his coming not the other way around. Mullah Omar, for his part, gave haven to the then fledgling al-Qaeda, offering comfort and presence to Osama bin Laden, until the al-Qaeda leader plotted a terrorist attack against the United States that alerted the world to a new global threat.

Both of these extremist fanatical, militantly Islamist groups certified themselves as primitive, their extreme versions of Islam incapable of forming workable governments capable of providing the civic infrastructure and momentum for an advanced society. The fact being they did not envision an advanced society but rather one that retreated into the past. And since this is not the way that human beings distinguish their societies through the advance of time, they were bound to fail.

That failure took the initial form of oppression and violence to ensure that their will would be obeyed and resistance against their rule could not occur. In the process the elite among them became increasingly brutal as they brutalized the vulnerable who had no means to protect themselves and became fully victimized, their lives beyond hope.

They both promised to eradicate corruption then became more corrupt than those whom they conquered. And still offered their pious version of justice which bore no resemblance to being just, merely a veneer to prove that they were acting in the best interests of Islam, and Islam profited all its followers by the very dignity of its promise as a religion of peace, tolerance and fellowship. Islam itself practised the very opposite of those descriptives, clearly enough in its slate of pithy aphorisms.

Just as thousands of desperate Muslims fled Afghanistan when their society fell into utter disrepair, so too will Syrians and Iraqis continue to desperately flee in even greater numbers should the Islamic State continue to spread its wretched tentacles of destruction of human hope.