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| cover of 30 June 2014 issue |
The sudden military victories of a Sunni militant group threaten to touch off a maelstrom in the Middle East
As the brutal fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater
Syria (ISIS) rampaged through northern Iraq in mid-June, a spokesman for
the group issued a statement taunting its shaken enemies. Ridiculing
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an “underwear merchant,” he
warned that his fighters, who follow a radical strain of Sunni Islam,
would take revenge against al-Maliki’s regime, which is dominated by
Shi‘ites. But this vengeance would not come through the capture of
Baghdad, the spokesman vowed. It would come through the subjugation of
Najaf and Karbala, cities that are home to some of the most sacred
Shi‘ite shrines. The Sunni fighters of ISIS would cheerfully kill and
die, if necessary, to erase their blasphemous existence.
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