The terror group known as the Islamic State was founded on deceit and established by treachery. ISIS exploited religion to justify and fuel its corruption, in order to advance a hidden agenda motivated by self-interest and love of money, and under the pretense of implementing what the group claimed to be true Islam, ISIS committed the most atrocious and heinous acts of terror. The group sailed a sea of innocent blood to spread and expand through fear, hegemony, and tyranny, all the time preaching a distorted practice of Islamic sharia and smearing the fundamentals of Islam and its sacred teachings.
ISIS apparently runs like an illegal and corrupt business similar to the Mafia. The militant group had in place a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. Its middle-managers detailed, for example, the number of wives and children each fighter had, to gauge compensation rates upon death or capture, and listed expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets that noted payments to an ‘assassination platoon’ and ‘Al Mustafa Explosives Company.’ Income from the Sunni Muslim militants’ looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as ‘spoils’. The group even began siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors.
Looking at ISIS as a high-level crime syndicate in the matter of its operating philosophy would explain some puzzling elements of the group’s behavior, ones that don’t fit in with the usual perception of extremist, caliphate-committed jihadist groups. For one thing, ideological purity does not interfere too much with operational opportunity. ISIS is out to earn, increase its footprint, and magnify its clout.
