Isis: The Origins of Violence Page #3

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picking their way over this rubble.

Oh, and I'm going to be sick.

What I'm thinking is, uh, that...

...when you go to a Roman city and

you go up a street...

...like Pompeii or something,

you can be reasonably sure that

you're not going to get blown up.

But this looks like it hasn't been

cleared.

And there's been a lot of fighting

here.

And part of me is wondering what

might go off at any minute.

And it strikes me that, um...

...that's kind of true to history,

actually,

because there are things in the past

that are like unexploded bombs,

that just lie in wait in the rubble.

And then... ...something

happens to trigger them.

And... There are clearly

verses in the Quran,

and stories that are told about

Mohammed that are very like, um...

...mines waiting to go off.

Improvised explosive devices and

they can lie there for...

...oh, you know, maybe for centuries.

And then something happens

to trigger them, and you get this.

It's scary.

Really scary.

I've got to sit down.

The question is, if these

were unexploded bombs,

then what were they doing here, and

what triggered them to go off?

So it is possible for Muslims in

Islamic State

to genuinely feel that God wants

them to commit the violence

that they are committing?

Yes. The members of Islamic State

who conduct these acts

regard themselves as doing

God's work,

they regard themselves

as being just,

that they are implementing the

laws of God.

And they would say, you know,

it's not for us to decide,

it's not for us to bring our own

inclinations or whims

to this matter.

What about the things for which it's

particularly notorious, say,

the beheadings, the crucifixions?

Beheadings, crucifixions, these are

all things that are discussed

within the context of the

Islamic punishment system.

So again, Islamic State would say

that they are implementing these

punishments, as they have understood

them from the texts.

Do you think that they genuinely

think they will defeat the West,

that Islam will conquer the world?

They absolutely believe Islam will

conquer the world.

And how ancient do you think that

assumption is?

How far back does this idea that

conquering the world for Islam

is for the good of the world?

I think it has always been present

within a strain of Islamic thought.

Isis fighters in Sinjar.

Most Muslims regard them

with horror.

But are they really a dark and

ancient strain of Islamic thought?

"The law of Jihad is coming,"

they sing.

Follow their trail, and we can see

what their version of Jihad meant

for the people of Sinjar.

This is a Shia mosque.

Isis are Sunni, they despise

the Shia.

According to Isis,

if you're Muslim and you don't

believe what Isis believes,

then you're not really

Muslim at all.

You're an apostate.

And based on what Mohammed said, the

penalty for apostasy is death.

But Isis treat different religions

in different ways.

Christians and Jews, so-called

people of the book,

are offered a way out.

You pay a tax, the jizya, the Koran

says, then they'll be tolerated,

albeit as second-class citizens.

Muslim rulers enforced the jizya,

for over a thousand years.

It was only finally abolished in the

19th century.

But now, obedient to the letter

of the Koran,

Isis have brought it back.

But it's outside in the streets that

you can most clearly see

how the Koran's attitude to other

religions has left its mark on Isis.

Every house has been painted with

a sign.

This house is Sunni.

This one, Shia.

And this one, Yazidi.

Sinjar had a large population of

Yazidis, a religious minority who,

unlike the Christians, are not a

people of the book.

And it is what happened to the

Yazidis that revealed

the very cruellest face of Isis.

This is where the old women from the

village of Kocho met their fate.

Old women don't sell in the

slave markets.

And so 78 of them were brought

here and killed.

Muhammad said "avoid injustice".

The vast majority of Muslims would

never hesitate to condemn this

as a monstrous crime.

So how could Isis possibly believe

that this was justified?

When Isis explain their actions,

they appeal to one thing.

Not conscience, not human rights.

They appeal to the law of God.

Sharia.

But Islamic law fills whole books,

and there are many interpretations.

So how do Isis interpret it?

Jordan was the birthplace of

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

the Jihadi credited with

founding Isis.

His interpretation of Islamic law

was so bloody

that even Al-Qaeda disowned him.

Abu Sayyaf was also a Jihadi,

and with al-Zarqawi in jail.

Freed under an amnesty,

he is now the leader of Jordan

Salafists, hardliners who take

their interpretation from the

example of the earliest Muslims.

How central is Sharia to Islam?

In the West, um, our laws are human.

We do not derive our laws

from a God.

Does that make them inferior?

So what is it in Sharia that

suggests to Isis

that the Yazidis deserve death?

What is it about the Yazidis

that has always made them such

objects of hatred?

Under the Ottomans, there

was a fatwa,

giving Muslim rulers a complete

right to kill their men

and capture their children and

women.

Lalish, the holiest Yazidi shrine,

is full of clues.

This is a place of traditions, older

by far than Islam.

The lighting of fires derives from

the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia.

Like the Jews, the Yazidis have

their stories of Noah.

This room is holy to a saint,

whose name echoes that of the sun

in Babylon.

Threads of different cults

and religions

have been woven seamlessly

together here.

This, for instance, is where Yazidi

say Adam was created.

Adam, who is a Muslim prophet.

To Muslims, it can hardly help but

seem simultaneously pagan

and blasphemous.

Step-by-step, the case against the

Yazidis mounts up.

But it's in here that we get clues

to what, for most Muslims,

is the ultimate blasphemy.

These different-coloured cloths

symbolise the seven angels

that the Yazidis believe are the

greatest servants of God.

And if there's a kind of

peacock shimmer to them,

then perhaps that's not entirely

a coincidence.

Because the greatest of the Angels,

Yazidis believe,

is the Peacock Angel, Melek Taus,

who, right at the beginning of time,

ascended from the heavens and came

here to Lalish,

and shed the radiance of

his feathers

over the colourless void of things.

But for Yazidis, there's a problem.

Stories they tell of Melek Taus echo

stories that Muslims tell

of the devil.

And so that is why there has always

been this calumny

against the Yazidis that they are

devil worshipers,

that in honouring Melek Taus,

the Peacock Angel,

they are, in fact, Satanists.

When Isis justified their slaughter

of Yazidi men

and their enslavement of

Yazidi women,

they did so by quoting a verse from

the Koran.

"And when the sacred months

have passed,"

"then kill the Mushrikun where

you find them,"

"and capture them and besiege them,"

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