What Is the Difference between ISIS and al-Qaeda?

Must ISIS be treated differently from the terrorist organizations of the past?

Five or ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable that al-Qaeda would hold such a small fraction of the discourse on terrorism.  Al-Qaeda was mentioned little – if at all – in an election cycle heavily concerned with combating terror. The group has been almost fully supplanted in our collective psyche by the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. However, the two groups operate in wholly distinct ways, each posing a completely different sort of threat to the U.S.

Considering ISIS to be simply a newer group in the same vein as al-Qaeda – as it seems that many politicians and Americans have been so far wont to do – is fundamentally inaccurate and could lead to significant errors of judgment in our attempts to combat these groups or prevent attacks.

The West seems to view ISIS attacks – or, more accurately, attacks carried out in ISIS’ name – as though they are simply a replacement for al-Qaeda.  They are fundamentally dissimilar. Though ISIS evolved from an arm of al-Qaeda, the groups share little. ISIS and al-Qaeda have philosophical and moral differences, of course, with al-Qaeda going as far as to publicly distance itself from ISIS in 2014.

ISIS – which after growing out of al-Qaeda in Iraq has gone on to capture significant areas of Iraq and Syria – declared itself a caliphate in 2014 a move signaling that it considers borders invalid and itself the only true nation of Islam.  It has carried out truly horrifying acts, from beheadings to a complex and codified system of sexual slavery, all of which it considers to be not only allowed but also necessary under its literal reading of Islam.