The attack claimed by ISIS on a concert hall in Moscow left dozens dead and wounded (Anatolia)

The "Islamic State" organization, whose name has become synonymous with terrorist operations, appears once again, after it claimed responsibility for the attack that targeted the "Crocus City Hall" shopping center on the outskirts of Moscow, on Friday evening, leaving dozens dead and injured.

The broadcast images, and the testimonies of survivors, confirmed the attackers’ keenness to cause the greatest possible number of casualties, by shooting randomly and indiscriminately at the goers of a rock band concert, setting fire to the theater with a bomb, or throwing highly flammable materials.

The incident was described by Russian analysts as a new September 11 attack, but this time against Russia, which is waging a fierce war against Ukraine and its allies, led by the United States.

The organization adopts it, but Moscow is skeptical

ISIS was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, shortly after it occurred, as Amaq Agency, which is close to the organization, published a statement attributed to a “security source” confirming that ISIS fighters had targeted a gathering of “Christians” on the outskirts of the Russian capital, and that they They withdrew to their bases safely.

But Russia, which experienced the organization well in Syria, and knows how it was employed there; To strike the Syrian people's revolution, she questioned the statement and said: It does not reflect the truth.

Moscow realizes that the organization, even if it was actually the executor, is security infiltrated by the global intelligence services, and is mainly and fundamentally employed to serve global agendas, as happened in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others.

A few days ago, the organization claimed responsibility for a suicide attack near a bank in the Afghan province of Kandahar, which left twenty-six people dead.

The Moscow attack raised legitimate questions about the organization’s goals behind that operation, or the goals of those who hired it to carry it out. But before that, let us take a quick look at the organization’s ideas, and how they turned into cross-continental ideas in a short period.

Journey of organizing ideas

Perhaps many people do not know that the intellectual load with which the organization moves began to take shape in the small village of Kahk in Fayoum Governorate, where a person named Shawqi Al-Sheikh founded an organization that sought to extort people’s money. Under the pretext that their Islamic contract was not proven. However, in 1990, the Egyptian security services were able to kill him and a group of his followers after storming the village, and arrested others, in what was known in the media at the time as the “Al-Shawqiyyin” case.

With the departure of Shawqi Al-Sheikh, the intellectual and theoretical leadership went to Hilmi Hashem, who had previously worked as an officer in the Ministry of Interior, and reached the rank of colonel in the Prison Service, before his matter was exposed, and he was arrested in 1982 under the supervision of the Jihad Organization, after which he was dismissed from service.

After leaving work in the Ministry of Interior, Helmy Hashem established a bookstore in Cairo, and began publishing his books under the pseudonym: “Shaker Nemat Allah,” which included his new intellectual orientation, as he is considered the actual and most important theoretician of the group, which was known in the media as “Stop and Decide.” He developed its ideas and expanded the complexity of its issues.

Hilmi Hashim’s thoughts focused on stopping the ruling on people’s Islam, even if they were born and raised in Muslim societies and from Muslim parents, until their acknowledgment of monotheism and the excommunication of “tyrants” and those who frequent shrines, etc., become clear.

Here, he contradicts the ideas of the Takfir wal-Hijra group founded by Shukri Mustafa in the 1970s, which ruled that Muslims were considered infidels by insisting on sins and supporting rulers who refused to implement the laws of Islam.

These Takfiri ideas were the intellectual burden of ISIS after its separation from Al-Qaeda, as press reports indicated that Hashem had a distinguished “legitimate” position in the organization, and was close to its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and through that position he was able to spread his ideas. Within the organization.

Despite this “Egyptian” intellectual presence in the organization, whether from Hashem or some other legal scholars, the irony is that the countries that provided the organization with the most men were those that were classified as secular, such as Tunisia, the Islamic countries in Central Asia, the Muslim republics in the Russian Federation, and the new generation of Muslims. Europe, who was born and raised there, especially in France!

But do such deviant ideas allow the organization the opportunity to spread and expand across a geographical area extending from Asia to Africa to Europe and the Middle East? of course not.

Here, it is necessary to have global intelligence levers that have the ability to provide the appropriate environments for spread, whether they are virtual environments on social media sites or real ones, and then employ the organization to serve its agenda and achieve various goals that differ depending on the place, and perhaps the issue of the giant cement company “Lafarge” and its relationship with financing the organization in Syria. With the knowledge of French intelligence, which was revealed in 2017, it explains a lot to us in this regard.

This brief presentation of the organization's ideas leads us to talk about its goals behind claiming responsibility for the Moscow attack.

Attack objectives

Despite the organization’s claim of responsibility for the attack, and the success of the Russian authorities in arresting the perpetrators of the attack as they attempted to flee to Ukraine, Russian officials, led by President Vladimir Putin, are convinced that the organization is nothing but a “pawn” on the international “chessboard,” and that it has been employed by other countries to carry out the attack.

The Russian Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement that all of the perpetrators of the attack were foreigners and that none of them were Russian citizens.

The confessions of one of the accused also strengthened these doubts, as he confirmed that he participated in the attack in exchange for money, and that he was recruited through a group on the Telegram application, without knowing the identity of the person responsible, adding that he found the weapon hidden in one of the places to which it was directed, pointing out that He arrived in Russia from Turkey earlier this month.

Hence, those parties that hired the organization to carry out the attack wanted to achieve the following goals:

First: Bringing the phenomenon of Islamophobia back to the forefront, to besiege the widespread sympathy that Muslims have gained. Because of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, and the severe damage to the Zionist movement; Because of the massacres against civilians, especially women and children. Over the past months, we have followed how hostility and rejection of the Zionist movement has escalated in its traditional strongholds in the United States and Europe.

Second: Striking stability within Russia and making it appear as a weak and fragile state in terms of security, and implicating Muslim elements in carrying out the attack could contribute to striking social stability within the Russian Federation, where there are more than twenty million Muslims who enjoy their religious and civil rights without discrimination. Especially since the Muslims of the Chechen Republic play an important role in fighting alongside Russian forces in their war against Ukraine.

Third: The relationship between Turkey and Russia worsened, as one of the detainees admitted that he came to Russia from Turkey. There were previous attempts to drag the two countries into confrontation, the most famous of which was when a Russian warplane was shot down in November 2015 by a Turkish fighter, in addition to the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in December 2016 by a Turkish policeman.

Such crises have been contained by the two countries, but Turkey's neutral position on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not acceptable to its allies in NATO, who are interested, at this advanced stage of the conflict, in creating a new crisis between the two countries and forcing Turkey, which shares the Black Sea with Russia, to To leave neutrality and participate in strengthening military efforts against Russia.

Confirmation; The investigations will reveal how the operation was carried out, and were the elements of the organization actually employed in this operation, or was its name used afterwards to camouflage the original perpetrator?

In any case, the Russian response will not stop at the organization’s borders, but will include the parties behind it, and the Ukrainian arena is wide open to such responses.

As for the threats of ISIS, they will continue to haunt Muslim countries, whether on the intellectual or security level, in light of the insistence on confronting political opponents rather than the real enemies.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.