Observing the Holy Month of Ramadan

"It is possible that ISIS will mark its first anniversary as a caliphate by sowing seeds for regional disorder, marked with spectacular and surprise attacks upon targets that have hitherto been assessed by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) to be outside the realm of likely action to ISIS."
ISW report

Mourners hold flags with names of Prophet Mohammad's family members as the bodies of victims of the Friday bombing are transferred to vehicles to be transported to Karbala, Iraq, at Al Jafariya cemetery in Suleibikhat, Kuwait June 27, 2015.   Reuters/Jassim Mohammed

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called time and again for his followers in Islamic State to initiate attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Although Islamic State's focus is on destroying the impious heretics who are faithful to the Shiite version of Islam, it is not averse to attacking Sunnis who don't follow their vision of the purity of 16th-Century Islam. And though Saudi Arabia and Kuwait adhere to the majority Sunni sect, they are proponents of Wahhabism, a version of Islam as fanatic as that of ISIS.

Despite which the Islamic State caliph considers the Saudi royal family to be corrupt, and therefore an insult to Islam, all the more so, presumably, because they are custodians of the two most sacred sites in Islam. The Saudi rulers have overseen the destruction of a number of ancient sites linked to the Prophet Mohammad, and in their place erected sumptuous modern hotels, yet another assault in the purity of Islam.

And since the start of Ramadan this year also marks the one-year anniversary of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's ascent to power as the gloriously luminous caliph of the Islamic State caliphate what better way to celebrate that passage of time than to afflict those who seek to afflict them? Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, after all, have signed on to the U.S.-led aerial assault against Islamic State, and have wrought considerable damage to their groups.

So the deadly attack on the Shiite Mosque in Kuwait, representing the sixth ISIL strike against a Muslim holy site within the space of five weeks, simply demonstrates yet again how much a religion of peace Islam is. All the more so that there is no hesitation whatever in attacking a temple of worship of their own faith, much less to destroy the lives of other Muslims, in a display of pure, unadulterated hatred and malevolent dedication to violence.

Experts from the Institute for the Study of War interpret these acts of destruction targeting mosques as a deliberate ploy by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to crate an incitement to further sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite groups, although Sunni upon Sunni violence is also part of their obvious strategy; any group they perceive as deflecting their purpose is ripe for vengeance.

ISW also predicts that additional attacks will occur, until the end of Ramadan, July 17. And if so, the world of Islam will become accustomed to wincing in self-inflicted pain as jihadis feed off the satisfaction they attain by hurling themselves maniacally in the throes of religious justification at other Muslims with no wish to harm anyone, but to practise their faith unmolested by pathological radicals.

An ISIL affiliate calling itself Najd Province claims that Friday's bombing in Kuwait City's Imam al-Sadeq mosque killing 27 worshipers and injuring at least 200 others carried out by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt in the residential neighbourhood of al-Sawabir, represented a holy mission that they were responsible for. Representing the third attack this group has proudly claimed as its own, two of them taking place in late May in Saudi Arabia.

Inspectors work at the Imam Sadiq Mosque after a bomb explosion, in the Al Sawaber area of Kuwait City June 26, 2015.

Reuters/Kuwait News Agency

Where on May 22 a suicide bomber blasted the Shiite Imam Hussein mosque in the east of the country to help worshippers commemorate the birth of a revered saint. On that occasion 21 people were killed, and dozens more wounded in the heartland of Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslim minority. A second attack a week later saw a suicide bomber disguised in a burqa kill four people in the Shiite mosque in the port city of Dammam.