ISIS Synthesis Essay

The Islamic State The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is one of the largest threats that the international community is facing today. ISIS started as an Al Qaeda splinter group in 2004 and ever since ISIS continued growing in the region. In 2014, many kidnappings, mass killing and public executions magnified ISIS’s world presence. ISIS has taken control of large areas in Syria and Iraq making it hard for the local governments to control their actions. They have been able to seduce Muslims living across the globe to deliver their threats or even commit mass killings. For those reasons, ISIS had became such a major threat to the world by being able to attack anywhere in the world and threatening the security of the international community.

Similar to liberalism they believe different world actors can cooperate to bring about change in the world, but they also believe that instead of wealth the common goal are ideas, culture and norms. Thus a constructivist would argue that the reason why ISIS emerged was because of their ideologies. They had different norms and ideas than Al-Qaeda therefore they broke away to form their own state. To support this theory Lister also believes that ISIS ideology is based on Sunni fundamentalism and purifying Islam by eradicating Shia Muslims. That theory could be relevant in Muslim communities only but it does not cover the rest of the world where ISIS has delivered its attacks. If ISIS main goal is to purify Islam than why is it attacking non-Muslim communities? According to constructivism the goal of this organization is to spread its own norms and ideologies around the world because of their belief that their norms should be embraced worldwide. The solution that constructivism can offer to this problem would be that other state actors would cooperate for the greater interest and fight ISIS by spreading their own ideas and norms to crush the organization. This would be possible through an international institution that has the power to do so or, by cooperative work between actors. Rational choice theory is another framework useful to analyze ISIS