dolanbaker wrote:Maybe they were, but this ISIS one is an extreme implementation of such a system. In the same way that fascism is an extreme version of an autocratic government.
ISIS isn't much different then prior Caliphates and in some ways is less horrible and less threatening then the old Caliphates because it was never very powerful.
Prior Caliphates commonly attempted to terrorize people just like ISIS-----the Ottoman Caliphate, for instance, used impalement as a punishment for captured enemy soldiers----something even ISIS didn't attempt. The Ottomans also used to cut off the noses and ears and lips of enemies and skin people alive--- things that are too horrible even for ISIS. And Ottomans were particularly famous for forcing their defeated enemies to build enormous "mountains of skulls" and huge towers of skulls with the decapitated heads of thousands of their leading citizens. In Hungary they cemented the skulls into a big wall---that still exists today, where its a tourist attraction. ISIS never carried out mass murders on this scale--- Imagine how terrifying it was for children to go to market each friday and see beloved old uncle Bob's head in the mountain of skulls, slowly decaying away over several years.
And speaking of children, the Ottoman caliphate forced subject people to give their own children to the Caliphate, where they were raised as mercenary soldiers known as Janissaries. Then, if anyone rebelled, the Caliph would send the Janissaries so people had to fight against their own kidnapped children.
Nope---ISIS isn't much different from prior Caliphates.
Cheers!
"Skull Tower" built in Serbia by the Ottomans in the early 19th century with thousands of decapitated heads of Serbs