Publication

This paper both highlights and deplores the misconceptions that surround the criminal behavior of militant Islamist groups. Too many analysts, the paper's author argues, interpret this particular link through a “profit-versus-ideology” filter. The truth is that militant groups both ally themselves with transnational criminal organizations and pursue their own criminal enterprises regardless of the "ideological commitments" they might have. While demonstrating this general point, the author also 1) investigates the current role of ideology in Islamist terrorist organizations; 2) identifies the reasons why individuals join groups such as ISIS; and 3) demonstrates how ISIS’s calculated exploitation of Salafist-Jihadist ideology effectively dismantles its status as an ideologically pure group.