All Islamist movements, groups and movements with a political project, whether they pursue this peacefully or through violence and terrorism, share the belief in the notion of the alternative nation. The alternative entity would supersede the “nation state” in its contemporary sense and either broaden it to an imaginary expanse in the manner of the empires of the Middle Ages or would narrow it to the level of a province or some other type of administrative subdivision of a country over which the organisation would establish its rule, in which it imposes its vision on the inhabitants and which it would use as a base for jihad against others in order to expand that country to the desired length and breadth of the Caliphate of yore. To extremists, that imperial entity is not a political and administrative form of government that may have been suitable at a particular historical phase but whose time has lapsed. Rather, they seek to revive it exactly as they imagined it was, with nothing missing, though perhaps with some additions of their own. In their minds they have elevated this project to the status of a religious obligation. All Islamist groups have subscribed to the alternative nation from the outset of the Islamist movement, even if their methods of expressing it and ways and desired paces for achieving it have differed. The notion has evolved, been reproduced and manifested itself in numerous forms: 1- Migration: In this context it means to abandon society and build the kernel of a new and different society. Existing society is jahili, or ignorant, ruled by heretics and manmade laws. Therefore, members of the group, who see themselves as a unique core of true believers, should not remain in that impure society and continue to live among its errant inhabitants. They should depart and establish their own special society that applies the articles of their beliefs. A salient example was the “Group of the Believers”, popularly known as the Takfir wal-Hijra, which emerged in Egypt in the 1970s. The founder, Shukri Mustafa, convinced the other members of the group to move to Ezbet Al-Nakhl, which at the time was a remote and isolated area on the outskirts of Cairo, in order to lay the first cornerstone of their state. Eventually, authorities learned of their presence and their designs and they were arrested after they abducted and killed minister of awqaf (religious endowments) Sheikh Al-Dahabi. This organisation has since ceased to exist. 2- Emotional detachment: Originally proposed by Sayed Qutb, the concept is not scientifically formulated and contains a number of inconsistencies like many of Qutb's ideas. He holds, “If we physically isolate ourselves from people because we feel spiritually purer, more kind-hearted, more expansive emotionally or of keener intelligence we will not have done anything great... In fact, we will have chosen the easiest path and the least fruitful. True greatness is to mingle with those people with a spirit full of tolerance, compassion for their weaknesses, deficiencies and errors and a genuine desire to cleanse them, educate them and elevate them to our level as much as possible. This is not to suggest that we should abandon our higher horizons and our lofty ideals, or that we should flatter those people and applaud their vices. But nor should we make them feel that we are superior to them… The ability to reconcile these contradictions with all the patience and effort that this requires is where true greatness lies.” However, this contradictory concept was taken to extremes of rigidity in application or one half was applied while the second was ignored out of the illusion that the self-proclaimed faithful were superior to ordinary people by virtue of their closeness to the true faith and their adherence to its strictures. Accordingly, members of Islamist groups and organisations lived in a kind of imaginary or hypothetical alternative state in which they physically mingled with people but inhabited another world in terms of their beliefs, aims and psychological state, which they felt that others were simply not capable of attaining. 3- Occupation of a portion of a country or a city in order to establish an alternative state or society where the extremist group can apply its ideas after gaining control over the surrounding community, whether by persuading a large number of inhabitants to subscribe to the group's radical ideas and using them to control others, or by taking advantage of the marginalised status of that community and the absence of state control in order to fill the vacuum and impose the group's authority and ways of thought through force. There are numerous examples of this. Mali, Somalia and Iraq supply examples of groups that have severed off and taken control over parts of a country. Cairo offers an example of a group that did the same with regard to a portion of the capital. In the 1990s, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya took over Imbaba and proclaimed a state within a state, compelling the government to amass a force of 20,000 Interior Ministry conscripts to bring an end to that self-proclaimed entity. 4- The State of the Idea: There is a book that takes this concept as its title. Written by Muslim Brotherhood member Fathi Othman, it holds that this state is the dream of mankind, one that can not be realised through compulsion or coercion but rather through fully free and conscious choice. The author maintains that the state that was founded by the Prophet in Medina was an early living model of the ideological state. It was not the state of Mecca or the Quraish, or the state of Medina or that city's tribes. It was the state of Islam. This was the concept presented to the human intellect, the state in which muhajireen and supporters of the Prophet converged with Suhaib Rumi, Bilal Al-Habashi and Salman Farsi who, Othman writes, were founding members of the state and society and among its original citizens. What existed at that time was not a state in the modern sense; the presence of the Prophet in it was essential as he had received the revelation, provided guidance and instructions, and issued directives. This does not exist at present. However, extremist groups and organisations (or some of their leaders), even if they would not venture to say this openly, seek to assume the place of the Prophet, impose strictures as they read them, and set the course of the faith even if much of what they say diverges entirely from the text and spirit of Islam. 5- Universal mastery: Conceived by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, it signifies attaining the leadership of the world after inculcating the individual, the family and the community with the ideas of this group until the realisation of “universal Islamic brotherhood”. The notion is illusory from the outset. In addition, it is centred around the Muslim Brotherhood itself, which has made it quite shaky and distorted since the group's founding. World mastership on the part of a group that prioritises the organisation over free thought, that militarises its community and that prohibits creativity and imagination, can only increase brutality and wretchedness in people's lives. 6- The management of savagery: There is a book by this title as well. Its author, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Bakr Naji, describes this fiendish concept as the dissemination of a state of total anarchy in a particular region or country due to the absence of state control, which generates severe suffering for the people. The task of Al-Qaeda organisation, for example, is to move in and take the place of the collapsed government authority, to manage the area and its people until the situation stabilises in manner that is favourable to the organisation, and then to establish an Islamic emirate and apply Sharia law as the leaders of the organisation interpret it. The foregoing concepts illustrate how the management of savagery espoused by Daesh at present evolved through a succession of different phases. Some aspects of these phases or concepts were brought together in the outlooks of politicised religious groups that sought to attain power. Moreover, the ideas, visions and measures that preceded the management of savagery were dangerous in that they always stood in antithesis to and sought to undermine the nation state and contemporary society. The Daesh concept, which was outlined in a book translated into English by US intelligence, is based entirely on the destruction of states and sowing widespread chaos. Therefore, fighting this phenomenon is a humanitarian act, a patriotic duty and a religious obligation. The writer is a novelist and socio-political researcher.
