By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
The Islamic State and the Taliban won’t get along–and that’s a good thing for South Asia.
Is the Islamic State (IS, also commonly known as ISIS) obsessed with the Taliban? And if so, why? A new issue of the group’s self-published magazine, Dabiq, offers some hints as to why this is the case. Dabiq’s pages are filled with refutations of the Taliban’s ideology.
Thomas Joscelyn, in the Long Wars Journal, describes how the hostility that ISIS bears toward the Taliban stems from the fact that the Taliban draws its legitimacy not from a universal Islamic creed, but from a narrow ethnic and nationalistic base. In other words, while ISIS fights to establish a Caliphate encompassing the entire ummah (Muslim community), the Taliban merely seeks to establish an Afghan state that they claim is ruled ruled by Islamic Law. However, in an interview with the ISIS Wali (custodian) of Khorasan, a self-declared ISIS province that includes Afghanistan, the group denies that the Taliban even rule by Islamic Law at all:
Does the nationalist Taliban movement have areas of consolidation in Khurāsān? And do they rule them by Allah’s law?
The Wālī: The nationalist Taliban movement only has control of some regions of “Afghanistan,” nowhere else. As for ruling them by Allah’s law, then it does not do that. Rather, they rule by tribal customs and judge affairs in accordance with the desires and traditions of the people, traditions opposing the Islamic Sharī’ah.
Read the full story at The Diplomat