Summary: Just as communism arose out of the contradictions of imperialism a century ago, Islamic revolution is the inevitable result of today’s version of imperialism. IS may be harsh and uncompromising, but it should be treated with respect, not vilified. The caliphate project, implementing sharia, the determination to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, the rejection of fiat money--these are legitimate goals and deserve serious analysis. 

IS continues to confound. Not only negatively for its restrictions on women and its grim revolutionary justice, but because on many fronts, it is spot on.

*It has put the caliphate project back on track after almost a century of Muslim humiliation

*It has made sharia (at least its version) the basis of its social order

*It has (correctly) targeted Saudi Arabia as the font of corruption and decadence, the Muslim world’s ‘enemy at home’

*It is set to become the only ‘state’ to back its currency with gold coinage. ISIS says the new currency will take the group out of “the oppressors’ money system”, and return control over the money supply from bankers to the state.

In recent weeks there has been a spate of articles about western youth flocking to Syria and now Iraq to join the IS “caliphate”. An estimated 11,000 such fighters have already made the leap. Up to 130 Canadians have joined them, including Hamiltonian York University student, Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, a Somalian Canadian, known to his friends and family as sociable and well-adjusted, wearing the latest fashions, listening to pop music and watching teen movies like all the rest of Canada’s multicultural happy family.

The 2nd conference “New Horizon: the International Conference of Independent Thinkers” was held in Tehran, September 29–October 1 2014, including over 30 journalists, writers and academics from around the world presenting papers and arguing issues of world geopolitics, with a focus on the Middle East. I represented Canada, along with University of Lethbridge Globalization Studies Professor Anthony Hall, author of Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism (2010). It was greeted in western media by hysterical denunciations, in the first place by the American Jewish Committee which accused it of “promoting hatred of Jews and Israel” and the Anti-Defamation League which accused it of “promoting anti-Semitic propaganda”.

The conference almost didn’t take place at all, having been officially cancelled, supposedly as a gesture to the West, after the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected last year. But after a flood of criticism at Iranian websites sympathetic to the organizers, the Iranian Foreign Ministry reversed itself. Nader Talebzadeh, the principle organizer, had had to lobby hard to reinstate the conference, calling the cancellation of the conference “a major mistake on the part of our government”. “Have our leaders given in so much to the world that they are even afraid of a conference that might hurt Mr Obama’s feelings?” asked one blogger sarcastically.

Tehran (FNA)- Eric Walberg, a Canadian journalist, believes that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group will continue to flourish as long as the US continues its aggressive policies to dominate the Middle East.

Q: What role do you think the United States has played in the creation of the ISIL. Is this another plot orchestrated by US and its allies? If so, why?

A: Re 9/11, this and other such spectacular terrorist events are the result of manipulation by the geopolitical schemers of the oppressed peoples' humiliation. It looks like we will never know the full story on such events and to what extent the imperialists actually created, trained and armed groups such as the ISIL.

The declaration by the Islamic State (IS) leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, of a new Islamic civilization on lands where Islam flourished over a millennium ago is a heady call, and has been welcomed by many frustrated, angry Muslims, anxious to see the end of US-Israeli hegemony in the region. This reminds one of the excitement generated by the Russian revolution of 1917, where a small band of revolutionaries seized power and declared a communist state, soon to become a world united under the new selfless creed.