The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS (3 page)

1938

Oil, which will enrich the Saud family and finance their $100 billion worldwide campaign of Wahhabi propaganda instrumental in the resurgence of Islam in the late twentieth century, is discovered at Daharan, Saudi Arabia.

1966

Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah, who will become internationally famous as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the precursor organization to ISIS, is born in Jordan.

1979

The Islamic Revolution in Iran and the seizure of the U.S. embassy there bring resurgent Islam to the attention of the West.

1989

In the first effective attempt to apply Islamic blasphemy law in the West, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa calling for the death of novelist Salman Rushdie; Rushdie goes into hiding. Zarqawi travels to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen fighting against the Soviets.

1992

Zarqawi, having returned to Jordan and founded the Jund-al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant) jihadi group, is arrested when firearms and explosives are found in his house.

1999

Zarqawi is released from prison in a general amnesty. Upon the Jordanian authorities’ discovery of the “Millennium Plot” to bomb a luxury hotel and tourist attractions, he flees to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan, where he runs a training camp funded by Osama bin Laden and founds Jama‘at al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad (the Party of Monotheism and Jihad), the forerunner organization to ISIS.

2001

Al-Qaeda strikes New York and the Pentagon, and the U.S. invades Afghanistan.

2002

Party of Monotheism and Jihad members are arrested for plotting to kill Jews in Germany, and Zarqawi goes to Iraq, where he expects a U.S. invasion.

2003

The U.S. invades Iraq, and Zarqawi takes a leading role in the bloody insurgency. His Party of Monotheism and Jihad serves as a hub for foreign jihadis flocking to Iraq.
¹
Their terror attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqis who cooperate with the Americans (or who have religious differences with Zarqawi’s brand of Sunni Islam) will kill thousands of people.
²

2004

The First and Second Battles of Fallujah, after Blackwater contractors’ burnt bodies are hung from a Euphrates River bridge. The Nick Berg beheading video is released, bringing international attention to Zarqawi’s leadership in the insurgency in Iraq and to his gruesome tactics. Zarqawi formally aligns himself with Osama bin Laden and changes his group’s name to Tanzim Qai’dat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers, which will become infamous as al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI.

2005

The U.S. puts a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi.

2006