Arab intellectuals, ISIS, and the West

Over the past several years, Arab intellectuals have produced an impressive array of writings on al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other Salafi-jihadist movements. This study addresses two important intertwined questions that Arab intellectuals address at some length with regard to just one group, namely the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) (or Daesh in Arabic). These questions are (1) what role did Western powers play in the emergence and growth of ISIS; and (2) how effective was the Western response to ISIS’s rise? Based on a qualitative survey of the writings of Arab intellectuals that appeared, as opinion pieces (editorials), in six Arabic newspapers between June 2014 and December 2018, the paper argues that Arab intellectuals subscribed to two interrelated postulations: (1) the policies of Western powers, particularly the United States, contributed significantly to the rise of ISIS, through moulding the regional environment within which ISIS emerged. Secondly, the Western response to the rise of ISIS was a largely ineffective one. The paper investigates the sources of this image of the West, as a contributor to violent extremism in the broader Middle East, in Arab intellectuals’ readings of the history of the West’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds as well as of more recent Western policies.