On October 15, 2025, Islamic State–Wilāyat Khurāsān (ISKP) circulated The Divided Tents of Disbelief and Islam, a Pashto publication threaded with Arabic citations. Written in a sermon-like register, it revives ISIS’s core binary: humanity splits into two tents—īmān (faith) and kufr (disbelief)—with no gray zone. In this frame, moderation is theologically void, and any cooperation with non-Muslim authorities or with Muslim rivals ISKP deems apostate breaches the boundary of the “true believers” (walāʾ wa-barāʾ). The form serves the message: Pashto carries the argument to Afghan readers while Arabic Qur’anic and prophetic citations claim scriptural authority. Eschewing policy detail or battlefield reporting, the publication’s purpose is narrower—reset the moral horizon so later communiqués can present violence against named opponents as a religious duty.

The argument in the publication unfolds in four moves. First, it sets a moral test: true believers “fight in the path of God,” while opponents fight “in the path of ṭāghūt” (illegitimate sovereignty—states, constitutions, and rulers who legislate outside revelation). This isn’t description; it’s sorting. In practice, the path you fight on, the banner you carry, and the authorities you recognize become proofs of faith.

Second, the text uses scripture to police boundaries, fusing creed, law, and politics. Verses about loyalty and disavowal (walāʾ wa-barāʾ) appear alongside warnings against “mixing” belief with ẓulm (wrong/associationism). ISKP reads that “mixing” as any compromise with worldly power. The effect is to collapse a wide range of tactics—truces, power-sharing, non-aggression, intelligence de-confliction, even basic service provision under non-IS authorities—into one category: a breach of divine oneness (tawḥīd).

Third, the publication works to delegitimize gradualism. It adopts a question-and-answer rhythm—“Does necessity allow temporary cooperation?” “Can de-escalation be a bridge to future strength?”—and answers no each time, citing verses, ḥadīth, and precedent. By ruling out tactical accommodation, it seeks to shut the door on Islamist and insurgent strategies that blend violence with politics, and to stem defections to rivals promising order, recognition, or incremental sharīʿa through state institutions.

Fourth, the publication reasserts organizational exclusivism, only ISKP carries a licit banner for jihad in Khurāsān. Groups are to be judged not by their slogans but by their alliances and enemies. If a faction shares governance, courts, or security with ṭāghūt, it sits in the wrong tent; if it fights ISKP, it fights “the allies of God.” The doctrinal bottom line is operational: believers should separate from rival structures, withhold cooperation, and align materially with the ISKP banner.

Having built the binary, the publication then maps it onto contemporary Afghanistan, using the criteria it just established to push the Taliban beyond the bounds of īmān. Sharing ministries, courts, and security responsibilities with what it calls ṭāghūt is presented as decisive proof of fighting “on the wrong path”; diplomacy with foreign powers, participation in state institutions, and non-aggression arrangements are treated not as prudence but as apostasy. The reader is told to judge groups by alliances and enemies, not slogans: a faction that governs, liaises, or trades deconfliction with state actors sits in the tent of disbelief; a faction that stands apart from those structures—and does not fight ISIS—does not. On that test, the Emirate in Kabul is recast as an unbelieving authority and ISKP declares itself the only licit banner for jihad in Khurāsān, translating doctrine into a call to sever social ties, refuse cooperation, and align materially with ISIS.

Accordingly, in Afghanistan today, the publication is chasing three outcomes. First, it seeks to turn moral clarity into mobilization. Ambiguity is the oxygen of rival projects—especially rulers who blend sharīʿa-inflected rhetoric with pragmatic diplomacy and local governance. By collapsing the space between “necessary” engagement and apostasy, ISKP tries to strip those rivals of any gray zone in which to claim Islamic legitimacy. For fence-sitters, indecision is recast as hypocrisy; exit from rival structures is framed as repentance. This lands hardest with security and judicial personnel working under other authorities, whose daily justifications of cooperation on “necessity” grounds are reinterpreted as religious compromise.

Second, the publication aims at social sorting with risk transfer. By treating neutrality as hypocrisy(nifāq), it pressures clerics, tribal elders, traders, and small business owners to “choose a tent.” The consequence is predictable: those who remain inside rival governance networks become pre-identified, licit targets; those who defect are promised moral safety and, implicitly, protection. In this way, the rhetoric doubles as pre-authorization for violence not only against foreign or sectarian enemies but also against local Muslim rivals and the community ties that sustain them.

Finally, the text intensifies intra-jihadist competition. The sharpest polemic is reserved not for distant “Crusaders” but for nearby actors who claim Islamic credentials while exercising state power and international diplomacy. It insists these are not merely mistaken Muslims but unbelievers. That shift matters, disagreement among Muslims may permit debate or, under certain conditions, rebellion; war against unbelievers demands elimination or subjugation. The publication thereby primes cadres and sympathizers to absorb the high costs of targeting co-Islamists and to view accommodationist jurisprudence as a slide into kufr.

Policy Implications

The publication is designed to turn a sermonized binary into operational guidance. Three near-term indicators merit close tracking:

• The “two tents” frame paired with action cues: When calls for hijra (migration) to ISIS zones or for individual operations by sympathizers inside rival institutions appear alongside this binary, it often signals an escalatory turn. The theology supplies the justification; relocation or lone-actor guidance supplies the pathway.
• Verbal hardening with finer target naming: As doctrinal temperature rises, labels such as ṭāghūt, “apostate,” and “Crusaders” tend to be used more broadly and tied to specific nodes—ministries, court circuits, checkpoints, liaison offices. This tightening of language frequently foreshadows target selection.
• Cross-genre diffusion: When the same frame shows up in eulogies and attack claims—celebrating martyrs who “refused the tent of hypocrisy”—it indicates organizational prioritization and lowers internal barriers to violence.

Beyond these immediate indicators, the question is how far this template travels. While the Pashto register points to a primary Afghan base, the criteria the publication advances—alliances, banners, and fields of combat—are portable. Watch for repackaging in Urdu, Dari, or Tajik, for adoption by regional amplifiers in Pakistan, Central Asia, and Iran, and for repetition across genres (sermons, eulogies, communiqués). Those signals would suggest the template is being localized to justify separation, excommunication, and attack planning beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

Read as a whole, The Divided Tents of Disbelief and Islam is neither a policy brief nor a tactical manual; it is a boundary-making instrument. Its core argument is that a sharpened binary—īmān versus kufr—can flatten messy politics into a moral map that converts fence-sitters into partisans. By ruling out gradualism, delegitimizing truces, and branding rival Islamists apostate, the publication renews ISKP’s claim to sole custodianship of jihad in Khurāsān and recasts cooperation with other authorities as a test of belief.

For policymakers and practitioners, the takeaway is operational: this rhetoric lowers cognitive and social barriers to violence against proximate rivals, widens the pool of permissible targets, and primes audiences to accept attacks on institutions that occupy the “gray zone” of legitimacy. That is the strategic purpose—and the risk signal—embedded in this sermonized text.