My advice to Abu, the new caliph of the Islamic State

Dear Abu:

About that new title of “caliph” that you’ve given yourself — well, who am I to stop you from shooting for the stars? But look here: A little humility wouldn’t hurt.

I’ve just taken another glance at the video of you that was shot last month, when you topped off the success of your jihadi army’s latest military campaign by proclaiming the creation of a new caliphate. Yeah, I get that the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” was a bit of a mouthful. But isn’t proclaiming the “Islamic State” as a worldwide caliphate getting a little ahead of yourself?

The history of past attempts to create Islamic states is not particularly inspiring. The Iranian revolutionaries managed to do it, but they, of course, are Shiites — whom you don’t even really consider to be Muslims. The Saudis and some of the other Gulf Arab states try to live by strict fundamentalist rules, but they’re all monarchies, which you don’t like, either. (Only God should rule over humankind, amiright?)

The kind of system you’re trying to set up now is closer to the ones established by the Afghan Taliban or Ansar Dine, the North African jihadists who imposed their version of sharia on northern Mali for a year starting in 2012 — essentially a military dictatorship founded on a superstrict interpretation of Islamic law. So far, this doesn’t look like a recipe for enduring stability.

You aren’t even the first one to claim the founding of a new caliphate since the original one ended back in 1924. Muslims in India and Africa have declared their own caliphates over the past 150 years only to end in ignominious failure. More recently, nascent Islamic states have foundered on their striking urge to offer safe havens to terrorists, which has ended up putting them in the cross-hairs of well-armed Western governments.

During my travels around the Islamic world I’ve sampled the views of people who have lived under these experiments in extreme Islamic rule — and what I’ve heard is mostly a lot of complaining. So if you’re really determined to push ahead with plans to build an Islamic state, there are a few things you might want to keep in mind:

1. Think twice about wearing a Rolex. One of the major reputational advantages that puritanical jihadists enjoy around the Muslim world is the perception that they’re idealists, resistant to worldly temptations. By wearing a flashy watch during your speech in Mosul, you’ve given a gift to your enemies. If people begin to get the impression that you’re just as corrupt and blinged out as the rulers in Baghdad, you’ll have a hard time gaining traction.

2. Don’t ban music. Afghans and Malians have treasured musical traditions. But their respective Islamist adventurers decided to prohibit music as “un-Islamic” (a highly debatable interpretation of the holy texts — though I know you couldn’t care less what I think on the matter). Needless to say, the prohibitions tended to be deeply unpopular and made the jihadists look like ignorant outsiders.

3. Think twice about punishing girls for alleged immodesty. Soon after they took power in northern Mali, the jihadists sent patrols around Timbuktu to detain any young women seen outside their homes wearing anything other than full head-to-toe chador. That didn’t go over well. Halle Ousmane Cisse, the mayor of Timbuktu, told me how he had complained to the Ansar Dine leaders: “I told them, ‘You want to change our religion into another religion. You throw our wives and daughters into our houses and beat them in front of us. And then you want us to love you?’ ”

Predictably, you and your buddies have started doing the same thing in the territory under your control. Nobody ever likes the Vice and Virtue Police.

4. Don’t vandalize ancient cultural relics. The jihadists who ruled in Timbuktu decided that some of the items in the city’s famed collection of ancient manuscripts didn’t conform to “proper” Islamic teachings, so they tried to destroy them. Locals took that as a serious insult to their own cultural traditions. (It also helped to destroy Timbuktu’s reputation as a tourist destination, one of the main pillars of the local economy.)

The Taliban notoriously destroyed the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas, which probably blotted the group’s international reputation more than any other thing they did in the pre-9/​11 period. Now you seem to be on the same track, if your appalling destruction of the Tomb of Jonah in Mosul is any indication.

5. Don’t include too many foreigners in your army. Most Syrians and Iraqis consider themselves to be Syrians and Iraqis just as much as they do Muslims. One reason the Iraqi tribes rose up against al-Qaida in the 2006 Anbar Awakening was because they resented the foreign jihadists telling them how to live. Residents of Timbuktu found it equally hard to bond with the non-African, non-Arabic-speaking jihadists who were part of the Ansar Dine contingent that took over their city.

Some reporting from Syria suggests that you’re already having problems with this — like the story about Omar the Chechen, a big, bloodthirsty dude from Russia. You might want to get a handle on this.

6. Don’t alienate local notables. That’s another big lesson from the Iraqi tribal revolt against al-Qaida, when influential tribal leaders finally decided they’d had enough of you guys lording it over them. Modern-day Islamists don’t tolerate challenges to their power. But such attitudes invariably inspire a backlash from local elites that your enemies can exploit. Now it looks like some of the sheikhs in northern Iraq are already tiring of their alliance with you against the hated government in Baghdad. Good luck with that.

7. Don’t prohibit little pleasures. The Taliban prohibited the Afghan pastime of kite flying. The Iranians crack down on TV satellite antennas — with the predictable effect of making them even more desirable. And now you’ve decided you’re going to ban smoking? Smart.

8. Don’t spread disunity among Muslims. Islamist militias in Libya have made themselves unpopular by blowing up the tombs of Sufi saints, who are denounced by ultraconservative Salafists as examples of “false Islam.” Unfortunately for the Islamists, it just so happens that many Libyans feel more at home with the Sufi brand of Islam than with the severe and alien Salafism that 21st-century holy warriors want to ram down their throats.

Your own crew managed to earn a rebuke from al-Qaida itself for, in part, the attacks you staged on Shiite shrines in Iraq. No less than Ayman al-Zawahiri scolded you and your friends: “In the absence of popular support, the Islamic [holy warrior] movement will be crushed in the shadows.” Exactly.

9. Don’t declare yourself a caliph. That’s a highly polarizing move that will alienate many other Sunni Muslims. Sure, everyone wants to see the caliphate restored — OK, not everyone — but even zealots, as it turns out, have very different ideas about how to do that. So, proclaiming a caliphate is a great way to anger people who might otherwise be on your side.

Oh, but wait. You already did that.

So where does this leave us?

No doubt many Muslims around the world approve of the idea of an Islamic state. Most of them associate the idea with law and order, high standards of justice and a strict moral code that all contrast sharply with the corruption and viciousness of many leaders who currently rule in the Islamic world. Yet most of those who’ve claimed to make this dream a reality chose to impose it on subject populations by brute force — usually inspiring chaos and mayhem.

By declaring a caliphate, you apparently thought you were going to rally the globe’s Muslims around your cause even while demonstrating your resolve to the rest of the world and deterring action against you. But your actions may have the opposite effects. (And yes, your persecution of Mosul’s indigenous Christians hasn’t helped your global PR effort.)

The gap between high Islamic ideals and what actually ends up happening in places like ISIS-controlled Iraq is wide. So, Abu, one final bit of advice: Maybe you should actually try listening to what the people you’re supposed to be ruling actually want. You might be surprised to hear what they have to say.

Christian Caryl is a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute in London and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, where this article first appeared.