I think the outfit illustrates precisely my point; it's a while back that we were doing this sort of stuff. The guy who quoted me is surely not suggesting ISIS are seeking revenge for acts committed nearly 1,000 years ago?
Sorry, I'm a fan of a strategy game called "Crusader Kings 2" and one of the memes coming out of that is a
Deus Vult meme that I enjoy posting and always brightens my day. I meant no serious point by it.
But in terms of ISIS, yeah he's pretty close. Really whacking the ISIS belief system on the head is difficult because ISIS doesn't really exist as we think of it. There's hundreds of small terror groups across different regions and different countries that have flocked under the ISIS flag. It's better described as an idea like Communism - although there's a ground zero and a small force behind it, the idea that everybody who flew the hammer and sickle was all affiliated, shared the exact same beliefs or had a decent Command and Control structure is somewhat far fetched. With ISIS it's absolutely ludicrous.
However, what can be said is that they're an offshoot of Salafist Jihadism which is an offshoot Salafism which is a sort of offshoot of Wahhabism which is an offshoot of Conservative Sunni which is an offshoot of Sunni which is a sect of Islam.
They belief that Islam was in its most perfect form when it was first conceived and that everything that has happened to reform it since then has been done due to corruption by the infidels. So yes, the Crusades does play a big part in that as do many other events. This is also why they smash up historical sites - they think that they stand as monuments to the corruption of the purest form.
Their goal is to create a war between themselves and a coalition of more than 80 countries. That number is important, 79 is not enough. They then will take over, in order, Dabiq (a northern Syrian town), Damascus, then Jerusalem then Rome. This will then lead the countries to fight against them in a battle that they will lose but during the loss they will set off a chain of events that will bring about the end of the world.
This is why they suicide bomb. Their goal is to create anger towards Muslims who they hope will then join them, and to encourage the countries to start bombing them to get that coalition moving.
This is also why I'm pretty irritated by people playing directly into their hands on this thread and elsewhere.