Is it really different this time with ISIL?

Turkey is at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but did you know that this has happened before? Twice, actually. ISIL might be a new organization, but what it represents has been around for a few centuries. Our Ottoman forefathers squashed the menace before. Yet Selim Koru of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) noted that this third time is different. Why?

Lesley Hazleton wrote in her book ?After the Prophet? that following the fall of Arab empires, ?Arabia would not exert political power again for more than one thousand years, until the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect emerged from the central highlands in the eighteenth century to carry out violent raids against Shia shrines in Iraq and even against the holy places of Mecca and Medina.? The Arabs? comeback was ISIL. 

Except back then it was called the ?Ikhwan.? Note that this group bears no relation to the Ihvan ul Muminin of Egypt, but are an elite force of Arab tribesman known for their religious zeal. In the late 18th to the early 19th century, it was the Ikhwan that started the raids against Shia villages, destroyed shrines and historical artifacts and killed women and children. They followed the Salafist cleric Ibn Wahhab and a tribal chief, Abdul Aziz. 

The Ikhwan was successful at the outset and Abdul Aziz entered the Hijaz as a victor. That was in 1803, mind you. The Ottoman army then had to retake most of the territory that is today Saudi Arabia. Turkish soldiers arrested and punished all the mutineers. In 1818, Amir Abdullah bin Saud, who had dared to declare the Ottoman sultan an unbeliever, was executed in Istanbul. The Ottomans were so offended by the insult that they forced him to listen to music, which Salafis considered a sin, before...