Since the Islamic State (IS) has secured control of large parts of the Iraqi and Syrian territory, scientists and pundits have discussed its raise and character. This article asks how the regime of the IS in Iraq and Syria can be typologically categorized. Is IS an organization? Is the IS regime a state? And is the IS regime a totalitarian dictatorship? In answering these questions the article considers the current state of knowledge about the IS’s organization, ideology, and regime. In doing so it becomes evident that IS is a “bureaucratic organization” which was quite successful in establishing a state-like political system, and that displayed the characteristics of ideocratic and totalitarian dictatorship, both in its ideological claim and – albeit to a lesser extent – the actual empirical patterns of ist governance. The article concludes with consideration of possible dilemmas of IS and scenarios of its future development, both as a state in Iraq and Syria and as an organization.

Just like other actors involved in conflicts around power in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State regularly destroyed cultural properties. However, the movement deliberately puts these destructions on display and frames them as a pivotal element of its efforts to purify the sociocultural landscape. We argue that the Islamic State seeks to make its iconoclastic actions meaningful by interpreting them as characteristics of a permanent struggle between monotheism and its antipodes. Furthermore, the movement uses the destruction of ancient architecture and various sites of religious practice to enforce its regulative authority and prevent nonconforming behavior. In this sense, ist iconoclastic actions not just target cultural objects, but even more so local communities and their sense of identity, which the Islamic State seeks to eradicate and replace with ist own vision of a ‘genuine’ Muslim community.

Narratives, that is narrations handed down among an ideological group or movement, play an important role for mobilising followers. There are considerations to challenge extremist narratives by creating counter-narratives or alternative narratives to counter militant extremism. Under certain circumstances this may be reasonable. However, this requires to deal intensively with the narrations and arguments of the ideological opponent. In the field of jihadism, an analysis of the quarrels between the so called Islamic State (IS) and other jihadists provides an opportunity to gain insight into ideological frictions, and to develop arguments against the IS which may look particularly authentic as they come from fellow jihadists. This text gives a short overview of inner-jihadist conflicts, then present some basic topics of IS criticism and contextualizes them under considerations of counter-measures.

Die vergleichende Analyse islamischer Phänomene, die meist extremistisch genannt werden, muss sich verschiedenen Problemen stellen. Ein zentrales Problem ist ein angemessenes Verständnis des Unterschieds zwischen islamischem Denken und der Praxis in verschiedenen historischen Perioden. Moderner Islam ist deutlich von älterem islamischem Denken und islamischer Praxis zu unterscheiden. Im vorliegenden Artikel wird ebenfalls ein anderes Problem behandelt. Ein Vergleich zwischen Salafismus, Wahhabismus, Dschihadismus und politischem Islam ergibt strukturelle Ähnlichkeiten, zu denen Überschneidungen in der Praxis treten. Insgesamt bilden diese modernen Formen ein Milieu, das als exklusivistisch bezeichnet werden kann.

In Europe in the past few years an orthopraxy of the Salafist kind has become a disputed phenomenon which is most of all considered a security issue. Many experts from the sciences and the security services assume a – still hardly proven – nexus between Salafism and Islamist terrorism, which is why the members of this milieu, who themselves believe to walk on the trail of their “pious ancestors”, are considered a danger and their worldviews are considered an “intellectual breeding ground for terrorism”. In contrast to this, the author supports the following thesis: Indeed the phenomena of Salafism and jihadism or jihadist terrorism are connected by a common “historical matrix” – the paradigm of an original Islamic community as a reference – as well as by a similar way of understanding normative Islam. However, the instrumental rationality and logics of the legitimising frame-script selections of the two strands are different.

The differentiation between monarchies and republics is hardly relevant anymore – both systems of government may be democratic or autocratic. Nevertheless, the institution of the monarchy – independent of the type of system – shows some particularities and a number of common features: being a consensus-based institution, the monarchy creates social integration and supports political compromise – this way it contributes to settling conflicts by way of mutual agreement. However, cause and effect may not be confused. The longevity of many monarchies is not a result of the system of government. On the contrary, the institution of the monarchy has been able to survive until today because it has shown stability for a number of reasons (sufficient resources, low degree of social conflicts).