Thread by @ScholarAkassi1

The new Crisis Group report on #ISWAP "Facing the Challenge of the Islamic State in West Africa Province" is comprehensive and well-researched but there are important analytical gaps overlooked in the report.
#Thread

crisisgroup.org/africa/west-af… via @crisisgroup

According to the report, the success of #ISWAP's Jihadist Proto-State or the symbiotic relationship between the group and the inhabitants of the Lake Chad Area is hinged upon the Governance and Public Good ISWAP delivers to the local communities. This claim is reductionist.

The local communities do not accept ISWAP simply because they dig wells, police rustling, provide healthcare, and discipline its members. Rather, they accept to live under ISWAP because of their belief in the obligation of living under 'DAR AL-ISLAM' not DAR AL-KUFR (Nigeria).

The people migrating from Kogi (especially), Niger, and Kaduna States to live under #ISWAP are not migrating to benefit from the latrines built by ISWAP. They are migrating away from DAR AL-KUFR to live in a DAR AL-ISLAM that has a less extreme interpretation of Takfīr unlike JAS

This conflict is beyond economic terms. Even when the government competes with ISWAP's service delivery, the nomadic Fulani family that returned the Dapchi girls to #ISWAP would still scold the girls from "wanting to go back to the land of unbelievers"
theguardian.com/world/2018/mar…

Muslim scholars in Hausaland and Kanem Bornu have written extensively on 'DAR AL-ISLAM' and DAR AL-KUFR such as Muḥammad Bello مفتاح السداد في أقسام أصل هذه البلاد `Abd al-Qādir al-Ṭūrūdī's مجموع بعض أخبار البلاد and Abū Bakr Kiyarī's "قصص المقتول وذي الآثام محمد القاتل"

Some Muslims (Jihadi and Non-Jihadis including members of Darul Islam Mokwa, Niger State) still believe in the categorization laid out by the early Muslim scholars and according to them, the Nigerian State is a 'DAR AL-KUFR' established through Colonial Terrorism.

Beyond service delivery, @VincentFoucher the report also did not highlight the ideological education #ISWAP provides in its areas of control where all the books published by Maktaba al-Himma of ISIS are taught to the communities including the book "English For the Islamic State"

Muhammad Abu Sayyaf, one of the leading clerics of #ISWAP, still delivers Ramadan Tafsir to the communities while other members produce Hausa and Kanuri poetry to convince the communities of the essence of living in an Islamic State as opposed to an infidel state.

Lastly, the claim that Abu Mus`ab al-Barnawi left #ISWAP is debatable. Habib and his brother, Abaa Yazeed, are still members of #ISWAP and they still contribute to the group's proto-state albeit the weakening of their authorities.