172 CHAPTER FivE ■ The STaTe
although its successful terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have made it one of
the most widely known. But, since 2007, Al Qaeda has steadily lost popu lar sup-
port, and public- opinion polling in Muslim countries shows high rates of disap-
proval.^25
What few commentators would have predicted is how the Sunni- Shia divide
within Islam would become politicized and violent, affecting virtually all the conflicts
in the Middle East today. Theologically, the divide is over who was the legitimate suc-
cessor to the Prophet Muhammad. The divisions have existed for centuries, but vio-
lence among individuals was not significant. The 1979 Iranian Shiite revolution and
the 2003 invasion of Iraq empowered majority Shiites over the Arab Sunni minority
and caused the sectarian division to become po liti cal. It is the Islamic State which
took the Shiites and moderate Sunnis to task. Announcing the formation of a new
caliphate in 2014, the IS captured territory in Iraq and, joined by foreign fighters from
more than 80 countries, established a capital in war- torn Syria. The IS has become a
power ful force, hoping to bring grandeur, authority, and stability through the caliphate
by capturing territory, exploiting resources in that territory to gain economic support,
and establishing governance— with a strict legal system bringing swift justice to
offenders and an educational and social ser vice system. Instead of achieving these
goals, however, it has killed those who oppose strict application of Islamic law, Shiites,
and “infidels,” nonbelievers from the West.
Although extremist Islamic fundamentalists, exemplified by the IS, are only a very
small proportion of the more than 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, theirs is still a
power ful transnational movement and a challenge to states from Iraq, Syria, Saudi
Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, to Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Algeria, and Libya,
to the Philippines and Indonesia. Other extremist religious groups have also posed
prob lems for state authority, though their small numbers have not meant a direct chal-
lenge to the state itself. These include both Christian extremist groups operating in
the United States, like one affiliated with Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the Okla-
homa City Federal Building bombing in 1995, and ultra- Orthodox Jewish extremist
individuals and groups in Israel and the West Bank. The latter are motivated by sev-
eral factors: some by the actions of the Israeli government, which has forced them to
abandon illegal settlements; others seeking revenge for Palestinian killings of Israelis;
and still others to voice opposition for social trends, exemplified by the 2015 stabbings
during the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade.
Not all transnational movements pose such direct challenges to the state. Indeed,
many movements, rather than forming around major cleavages such as religion or
ideology, as discussed earlier, develop around progressive goals such as the environ-
ment, human rights, and development, or around conservative goals such as opposi-
tion to abortion, family planning, or immigration. Often spurred by nongovernmental
organ izations that frame the issue and mobilize resources, these social movements