Isis could not have emerged without support from western powers and their regional allies. These facilitated the travel of jihadis from 80 countries into Syria, funded them, and then trained and armed them. So long as these jihadis were committing crimes in Syria against Syrians and Assad’s regime (which, to be clear, bears responsibility for the ongoing disaster there), western governments turned a blind eye. After all, at the time Isis was doing the bidding of the same neoconservatives and liberal interventionists who had decided that the overthrow of Libya’s despot, Gaddafi, should be followed by the overthrow of Assad. This would then enable them to go for the main prize, the Iranian regime. However, Isis became a problem for the west when, following the pattern established by al-Qaida and the Taliban, they turned their guns against western interests in the region and tried to capture the oil fields of the Kurdish region, which was not part of the plan.

Although Isis is a product of the west’s policy of domination, it is also a Sunni version of Iran’s Khomeinism. It was Ayatollah Khomeini who sanctified and glorified violence under the garb of religion, and the heinous crimes committed by his regime set precedents for Isis.

Khomeini, Iran’s one-time supreme leader, implemented a doctrine of victory through terrorisation (al-nasro-be-rob), and his regime’s ideologue, Mesbah Yazdi, has said that “if violence is the only way of achieving the Islamic goal, then it is necessary to use it”. He also said that “if, in a place like the desert where the police are not accessible, and if somebody insulted God, the prophet and Islam, then the sentence [hokm] for insulting Islamic sacred is execution and if there is no possibility for a trial, then it is the duty of any Muslim to personally carry it out”. This is exactly what Al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, is doing. Needless to say that Khomeini could not justify his crimes with even one Qur’anic verse, and neither can Isis. I challenge them to cite a single verse from more than 6,600 in the Koran which tolerates, let alone permits, such savagery.   »»» Isis is a monster created by many countries. It requires an international solution | Abolhassan Banisadr | Comment is free | theguardian.com

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