Islamic State

Also known as: ISIS · ISIL · Daesh · IS · Islamic State of Iraq and Syria · Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant · Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham · ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah

Society

Definition

The Islamic State — widely known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh — is a transnational Sunni jihadist organization that grew out of Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (founded 1999), became al-Qaeda in Iraq in October 2004, declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq on October 13, 2006, adopted the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on April 8, 2013, and on June 29, 2014 proclaimed a caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the territory it had seized across Iraq and Syria. (Wikipedia) At its height the group ruled millions of people under a harsh administrative regime; its territorial state ended with the fall of Baghouz in Syria on March 23, 2019, al-Baghdadi died in a United States raid on October 27, 2019, and the organization — listed on the United Nations’ ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List and led since 2023 by Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi — persists as a covert network with provincial affiliates across several regions. (Wikipedia)

This entry treats the Islamic State through its Philippine record, the corpus of this wiki. Filipino militant groups pledged allegiance to the caliphate from 2014 — Isnilon Hapilon of the Abu Sayyaf Group by video of July 23, 2014, and the Maute group in April 2015 — and the network was recognized as the Islamic State’s East Asia Province, with Hapilon named emir of its forces in the Philippines in April 2016 and for Southeast Asia in a June 21, 2016 video. (Wikipedia — Isnilon Hapilon, Wikipedia — Maute group) The alliance of Hapilon and the Maute brothers seized Marawi City on May 23, 2017, provoking Proclamation No. 216 and the five-month Siege of Marawi, after which the Philippine record continued as a history of remnants — clashes in Lanao del Sur, suicide bombings in Sulu, and the documented attrition of the network’s emirs — recorded below strictly as the public file states it. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	Islamic State	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State
Wikidata	Islamic State (Q2429253)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2429253
DBpedia	Islamic_State	https://dbpedia.org/page/Islamic_State
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	Islamic State	https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Islamic_State
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A (no authorized heading located in this entry’s verification)	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Islamic State ISIS ISIL Philippines East Asia Province Marawi Hapilon Maute Abu Sayyaf caliphate	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

ISIS
ISIL
Daesh
IS
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham
ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah

Examples and Analogies

A state project that outlived its state: the caliphate of 2014–2019 worked as an actual administered territory — courts, taxation, oil smuggling — and when Baghouz fell in March 2019 what collapsed was the state, not the network, which reverted to insurgency under successive caliphal successors. (Wikipedia)
The province model: the Islamic State’s wilayah system worked like a franchise: local groups swore bay’ah (an oath of allegiance), were recognized as “provinces,” and traded local autonomy for the brand and direction of the center — the mechanism by which the Hapilon–Maute alliance became the East Asia Province. (Wikipedia — Isnilon Hapilon, Wikipedia — Maute group)
Attrition as the post-Marawi pattern: after October 2017 the Philippine record reads as a rolling ledger — each emir killed (Hapilon 2017, Sawadjaan 2020, Hassan 2021) followed by a successor drawn from a shrinking bench — so that the network’s survival is measured less in territory than in its ability to replace leaders. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi, Wikipedia — Hajan Sawadjaan, Philstar)

Usage Scenarios

1. Counterterrorism Designation and Sanctions Practice

The group and its Philippine aliases are standard subjects of designation practice: the United States designated the Maute Group a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 by notice published February 28, 2018, under the names “Maute Group,” “IS-Ranao,” and “Islamic State of Lanao,” and the United Nations maintains the group on its ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List — instruments with asset-freezing and travel-ban consequences. (Federal Register, Wikipedia)

2. Studying the Siege of Marawi

The Marawi battle of May 23–October 23, 2017 — begun by the Hapilon–Maute force, answered by Proclamation No. 216, and ended a week after Hapilon and Omar Maute were killed on October 16 — is the central episode of the Islamic State’s Philippine record and the reference case for urban warfare, displacement, and reconstruction policy in this wiki’s separate entry on the siege. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)

3. Prosecution and Case-Building

The documented record — the 2019 Jolo cathedral bombing, the 2020 Jolo suicide attacks, the 2023 Mindanao State University bombing — supplies the factual base for prosecutions and for designations of the network’s remnants under Philippine counterterrorism law. (Wikipedia — 2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings, Wikipedia — 2020 Jolo bombings, Wikipedia — MSU bombing)

4. Monitoring a Remnant Network

The post-Marawi sequence of leadership killings and sporadic attacks is tracked as current status only: the network’s present strength in Lanao del Sur, Sulu, and Maguindanao is a matter of continuing military reporting rather than settled assessment. (Philstar, Wikipedia — MSU bombing)

Strategies

Periodize the Philippine record: the pledge-and-province era (2014–2017), the siege (2017), the remnants era (2018 onward), and the attrition record of 2019–2023 are distinct phases with distinct sources. (Wikipedia — Maute group, Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)
Distinguish core from network: claims by the Syria-based core about its “East Asia Province” do not automatically describe command-and-control over Filipino groups; the documented ties run through pledges, recognition videos, and claimed attacks. (Wikipedia — Isnilon Hapilon)
Prefer dated official records: military announcements, court filings, and designation notices carry dates and named aliases that journalism and scholarship can verify; unverified claims of responsibility should be attributed to the claimant. (Federal Register)
Track the aliases: the same Filipino network appears in records under shifting names — Maute Group, Islamic State of Lanao, Dawlah Islamiya, East Asia Province — and designation searches must cover them all. (Federal Register, Philstar)

Security and Safety Measures

Sanctions compliance: the UN listing and the U.S. designations freeze assets and criminalize support transactions involving listed names, including the Philippine aliases — a compliance baseline for banks, aid agencies, and businesses operating in conflict-affected Mindanao. (Federal Register, Wikipedia)
Public-record discipline: reporting and research on the network should stay within the documented public record — dates of clashes, announced deaths, filed cases — and avoid operational detail beyond it, both for accuracy and to avoid amplifying the group’s propaganda claims. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi)
Verification of attribution claims: the Islamic State’s claims of responsibility (Jolo 2019 and 2020, Marawi 2023) are assertions, not proof; Philippine authorities’ attribution, with named suspects and arrests, is the evidentiary layer that confirmation requires. (Wikipedia — 2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings, Wikipedia — MSU bombing)
Dealing with unconfirmed deaths: the death of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan was announced by the military in July 2020 but no body was recovered; such cases are recorded as announced, not as established fact. (Wikipedia — Hajan Sawadjaan)

Historical Context

The Islamic State’s rise to statehood ran from Zarqawi’s 2004 pledge to al-Qaeda through the Iraqi insurgency to the capture of Mosul in June 2014 and the caliphate proclamation of June 29, 2014; its decline ran from the loss of Mosul (2017) and Raqqa (2017) to Baghouz on March 23, 2019, and al-Baghdadi’s death on October 27, 2019, with successive successors — Abu Ibrahim, Abu al-Hasan, Abu al-Hussein, and since 2023 Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi — leading a diminished covert organization. (Wikipedia)

The Philippine chapter began with oaths: Hapilon’s bay’ah video of July 23, 2014, and the Maute group’s pledge of April 2015, followed by the Butig clashes of 2016 and the Davao night-market bombing of September 2, 2016. (Wikipedia — Isnilon Hapilon, Wikipedia — Maute group) Recognition followed — Hapilon named emir in the Philippines in April 2016 and for Southeast Asia in the June 21, 2016 video — and on May 23, 2017 the allied force seized Marawi, holding the city center for five months until October 23, 2017; Hapilon and Omar Maute died on October 16, Abdullah Maute on August 7, and the United States designated the remnants as the Islamic State of Lanao on February 28, 2018. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi, Federal Register)

The remnants’ record then runs through documented incidents and leadership losses: the Jolo cathedral bombing of January 27, 2019, claimed by the Islamic State and attributed by authorities to the Abu Sayyaf faction of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, twenty-two dead; the twin suicide bombings in Jolo of August 24, 2020, also claimed by the group; Sawadjaan’s death, announced July 10, 2020, after a July 6 clash near Patikul, Sulu, his body never recovered; the killing of Salahuddin Hassan — regarded as the top Dawlah Islamiya leader in the country, implicated in more than thirty bombings including Davao in 2016 — with his wife at Talayan, Maguindanao, announced October 29, 2021; and the bombing of a Catholic Mass at the Mindanao State University gymnasium in Marawi on December 3, 2023, which killed four, was claimed by the Islamic State, and was attributed by authorities to Dawlah Islamiya–Maute suspects. (Wikipedia — 2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings, Wikipedia — 2020 Jolo bombings, Wikipedia — Hajan Sawadjaan, Philstar, Wikipedia — MSU bombing)

Challenges and Controversies

Names, Structure, and Command

Whether the Philippine network was ever a single “province” under the core’s command or a set of allied groups sharing a brand remains analytically contested; the designations themselves hedge — the U.S. notice of February 28, 2018 lists “Maute Group, aka IS-Ranao, aka Islamic State of Lanao” as one designated entity, while reporting and prosecution documents variously use Dawlah Islamiya and East Asia Province for successor formations. (Federal Register, Philstar)

Casualty Accounting and Attribution

The published tolls of the siege and the bombings rest on official counts that shifted with events, and responsibility claims by the Islamic State preceded, and sometimes outran, the evidence; the 2023 MSU bombing’s attribution to Dawlah Islamiya suspects rests on the police investigation and arrests, not on the group’s claim alone. (Wikipedia — Siege of Marawi, Wikipedia — MSU bombing)

Announced Deaths and the Problem of Confirmation

Leadership attrition is the war’s most cited metric, yet its headline events are military announcements — Sawadjaan’s 2020 death was declared on intelligence reports without a body — so the attrition ledger must distinguish confirmed deaths (Hapilon, DNA-matched), announced deaths (Sawadjaan), and claimed deaths reported by security sources. (Wikipedia — Isnilon Hapilon, Wikipedia — Hajan Sawadjaan)