Raymond Tanter

Islamist Movements Raymond Tanter

The photo on the cover depicts Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, forefather of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in 1979. The back cover shows Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, 2014 founder of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He is only one of the protégées of Khomeini, whether he realizes it or not. Without success of the founder of the Islamic Republic in creating a terrorist state, organizations like ISIS would not have been inspired to seize land for their own states. The Islamist Revolution in Iran also spread to Sunni Hamas in Gaza and Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. ISIS split from its parent, al Qaeda (formed in or about 1989 as the base); it refrains from state-building for an incremental approach to world domination; ISIS competes and cooperates with al Qaeda. Frenemies suggests they are friends and enemies. Iran, the Islamic State, and al Qaeda are friends and enemies and collude against common enemies as in an old Arab Bedouin saying: I, against my brothers, I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.