IS: The New Terrorism of Daesh and the Downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood

Daesh'
That's what the Arabs call IS. An acronym that also means 'trample'.

In the summer of 2014, the world was stunned when Iraqi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took the podium of Mosul’s main mosque and declared himself caliph of a divine state that spanned Iraq and Syria. ISIS came out of nowhere, but was soon on everyone’s lips.

During the unstoppable advance of IS, the Arab world was in turmoil. Syria and Iraq sank into anarchy, the breeding ground for terrorism. Yemen, Libya and other North African countries were in a state of disintegration and Turkey quickly became alienated from the West. In Egypt and Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood lost the power they had gained during the Arab Spring. They became the stake in a bitter struggle between the oil monarchies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the nuclear agreement between the UN and arch-enemy Iran further increased the tension between Sunnis and Shiites. Old alliances made way for new ones, borders became fictitious. The European one too. The Mediterranean Sea became a sea of ​​death. With the new terrorism, Islamophobia grew and anti-Semitism returned to European cities.

Who let the genie out of the bottle? What is ISIS and why is the West unable to contain the new terror? And how can the spectacular rise of ISIS be explained? Art and Middle East expert Jef Lambrecht, former VRT journalist, provides a sobering insight into the origins and nature of this poisonous fruit of the Arab Spring.