Between ISIS and Taliban: Unknown allegiance and obedience to hidden leader

Allegiance is considered one of the most important pillars upon which extremist groups that consider themselves a state are built, and therefore these groups try to take measures that have well-known religious references, especially with regard to matters of state or central leadership. It is known that Islam sets certain controls for choosing a leader, as well as dealing with him after he assumes power, and since these groups consider themselves to take the place of the state in the Islamic system, they have adopted the system of allegiance in choosing the leader, who must be obeyed by the group, and none of the elements may fail to pledge allegiance even for one day or disobey his orders. This is similar in all Islamist groups such as ISIS and the Taliban movement, except that there were circumstances that occurred to them that added something new to the pledge of allegiance, which is the pledge of allegiance to an unknown state and obedience to a hidden imam.

ISIS and the pledge of allegiance

At the beginning of November 2019, after the death of late-ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the terrorist organization quickly announced his successor, Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurashi, and the its media channels began publishing pictures from the various states of its elements pledging allegiance to the new leader.

These pictures came the day after an audio recording was broadcast by the organization’s media arms in which it mourned Baghdadi and confirmed that the senior leaders had chosen Qurashi, whose identity remained unknown until his death, despite the assurances that he was Abdullah Qardash, one of the well-known leaders in the organization.

After ISIS acknowledged the killing of Qurashi on Thursday, March 10, about a month after the operation in which he was killed in northern Syria in February, the terrorist organization announced the name of its new leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi. In its statement broadcast by the Al-Furqan Foundation, the organization confirmed that this name is just a nickname and that the organization will not reveal his true identity in order to preserve his life.

The statement pointed out that the central leaders of the organization had agreed to choose him based on the will of the former ISIS leader. In the audio recording, the speaker, who appears to be Abu Umar al-Muhajir (also an unknown figure), demanded that members of the organization all over the world urgently pledge allegiance to the new leader.

On the evening of Thursday, March 11, ISIS forces began broadcasting pictures showing the pledge of allegiance by the organization’s elements to the unknown leader in a number of Asian and African countries. This is considered an unknown allegiance in the organization’s literature of the matter that has a basis in Islamic history and has its legitimacy in the appointment of leaders in the Islamic caliphate, which depends on the special allegiance that is represented in the pledge of allegiance to the people of resolution and covenant who know the leader closely and are able to directly choose and compare between him and other candidates to take the position. Then comes another stage, the pledge of allegiance, which is represented in the rules of the organization in the different provinces and is based on their confidence in the senior leaders choosing the new leader, which is what happened with Ibrahim al-Qurashi.

Hidden leader

As for the pledge of allegiance to a hidden leader, it is somewhat similar to the idea of the hidden imam among the Shiites, as the imam does not appear in public and gives his orders to specific people known among the Shiites as “the door”, and they are the only ones who can communicate with the imam in his absence. There are only doctrinal differences between the sectarian affiliation of these groups, but they share that the common people do not have the right to deal with the leader or his vision, and his orders continue to come to them through “the door” or those close to the leader, which causes major problems and schisms within these organizations due to the attempts of some leaders to pass orders in his favor, considering that they come from the hidden leader in his absence.

Such a large problem occurred with the Taliban movement, whose leaders kept speaking on behalf of its hidden leader, Mullah Omar, in his absence for two years, until they revealed the truth of his death much later, which caused deep divisions within the movement. Orders continued to come to the movement’s central leaders, led by Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US airstrike in 2016 and who was in essence the actual leader of the movement. Mansour faced a big problem that caused deep schisms within the movement because of his concealment of the killing Mullah Omar for two years.