Nabeel T. Jabbour's Blog, page 6

ISIL’s Theological Roots: Ten Men

For years while teaching at seminaries, I have been telling my students that Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, Abu Bakr Naji and Fouad Hussein were going to become so famous that they will overshadow Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Finally it happened – but not exactly how I thought it would. ISIL is the product of the writings and thinking of these three men and others, whom I will address very briefly in this blog and the next two blogs. In this blog I will give you a bird’s eye view of the first five, and in the next  two blogs I will address the next five. My hope is to whet your appetite and motivate you to go deeper to learn more about these men and their influence through your own research.

ISIS: 10 Reasons Muslims are Eager to Join

ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, was the first name that was given to the organization since its territory was in Iraq and Syria. The acronym in Arabic "Dae'sh," has four Arabic letters, D, A, E', Sh. D stands for al-Dawla (state), A stands for  al-Islamiya (Islamic), E' stands Iraq and  Sh stands for Sham (Levant). Sham nowadays stands for Damascus or Syria but in its historical Islamic context Sham or Levant included Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. So a more accurate name for the organization is ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. As ISIL's vision grew larger it changed its name to IS which stands for Islamic State. Their vision is far bigger than Iraq and Levant. They want to expand into Asia, Africa and Europe.