Baishakhi Anjali 2015

ISIS: An Impending Apocalypse Soham Kar, Grade 8 The acts of terrorism that are carried out by extremist groups are a major issue in today’s world. The terrorist group, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has posed impending problems for not only the United States, but for nations around the world due to its extremist ideas of proving its religious supremacy. Compulsion of their religion, Islam, is the foundation of ISIS, believing they have the duty to carry out their God’s wishes to improve mankind. Such groups feel convinced to punish those who fail to comply with their God’s orders. Some countries, however, have hesitated to take action against this terrorist group, as it has recently been shown as more active. America and its allies should combat ISIS due to the terrorist group’s rapid growth, influence, and the threat it can pose to the free world in the future.

To begin, ISIS has only recently been noticed by the world population and is already growing to be more powerful than other immense terrorist organizations. “’The organization itself was also carrying out an explicitly clear step-by-step strategy...that would feed its accelerated rise”’ (Baker & Schmitt). This is mainly because ISIS has a large amount of resources ready for use. It is one of the most funded terrorist groups in the Middle East, being largely funded by wealthy Saudi Arabian businessmen. The majority of its wealth comes from activities such as smuggling oil and weapons, taxing local business within their regime, and crimes such as robberies and organized heists. The terrorist group also has many members, with more joining every day. ISIS can use more men in its attacks and hatch larger terror plots using these men. “...the strength of ISIS relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq” (Ackerman & Jalabi). ISIS is indeed one of the most powerful terrorist groups heading its operations from the Middle East today.

Furthermore, The Islamic State has one of the strongest influences of all the terrorist groups stationed in the Middle East today. The terrorist group uses various forms of propaganda including videos, pictures, posters, and the social media to influence and radicalize both adults and youth to believe in their ideology. One particular example of ISIS propaganda is a video in which a child executes two grown men on camera. These forms of propaganda display the Islamic State as a mighty and dominant organization, capable of changing the world. This leads to more radicals being recruited

by ISIS and youth being brainwashed by this ideology. Young people are more easily influenced by these forms of propaganda as they are naïve and do not understand what is justified and what is evil. Although some may say that only people from the Islamic world are joining ISIS, this is proven to be false as people from Europe and even America are joining the Islamic State every day, and people originating from different races are