Cult of Isis

“I don’t know about you, but this whole ISIS business in Iraq has got me confused. I mean, just what are Islamic jihadists doing getting involved with ancient Egyptian goddesses?” asked junior Foreign Minister Hugh Gripe in a recent interview with the Daily Excess. “Surely true Muslims would see that sort of thing as blasphemous, wouldn’t they? I’d always assumed that, much like us Christians, they took a dim view of these old pagan religions. But, all of a sudden they’re apparently in bed with the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, nature and magic!” Amid the chorus of voices condemning the Minister for his ignorance of the current situation in Iraq, one academic has spoken up in Gripe’s defence. “It really should be no surprise to anyone that these extremists have formed an alliance with Isis – she is, after all, friend of the downtrodden,” Dr David Starkers, formerly a Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Staines University, told The Daily Norks this week. “Obviously, these jihadists don’t seem so downtrodden now, sweeping across Iraq, driving all before them, but it is clear that their overnight success is down to the patronage of Isis – their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, far from being trained by the CIA, as some sources have claimed, was in the desert, penniless and despondent, on the run from the Iraqi government, when he stumbled upon an ancient temple of Isis and called upon her for help. At that moment, ISIS was born, its disparate bands of psychopaths stitched together as Isis put back together the body of Osiris!”

Starkers has also claimed that the British public aren’t being given the full facts about events in Iraq. “Let’s be honest, we don’t really believe that a bunch of religious fanatics armed with AK-47s and home made equipment like pick up trucks with machine guns stuck on the back, can defeat trained army units armed with tanks and artillery, do we?” he asked in the Daily Norks. “Of course not. It’s all down to those ancient Egyptian mummys revived by the priests of Isis. That and those animal-headed gods in chariots which have been reported as leading the insurgent offensives – no tank could withstand their supernatural powers.” Critics of Dr Starkers’ claims have pointed out that news coverage from Iraq hasn’t shown any supernatural interventions on the insurgents’ behalf. “That’s just because Western governments don’t want to set off mass panic in the non-Muslim world,” the academic retorted via the newspaper. “They’re running scared of both Isis and ISIS – they don’t want people to realise that our own defences would be powerless in the face of their divine powers!”

Although most political commentators have been left speechless by Starkers’ claims, Sunday Bystander Middle Eastern Correspondent Don Thackett has poured scorn on them in print. “These are are the ramblings of a mad man! Why is anyone giving this lunatic publicity by printing his delusional fantasies?” he asked in his most recent column. “It is offensive on so many levels: quite apart from trivialising a serious situation in which thousands of people are dying, the idea that Muslims would worship an Ancient Egyptian deity is both insulting and utterly ludicrous! Not only that, but ISIS has nothing to do with Isis – it stands for the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’! In fact, they don’t even call themselves ISIS any more: they’re just IS or ‘Islamic State’ now!” Starkers has responded by claiming that ISIS are, in fact, part of a breakaway Muslim faction, pointing out that they have been disowned by other Muslim extremists like Al Qaida. “The question we should be asking is ‘What’s in it for the Cult of Isis’? (Apart from making her name a global phenomena for the first time in several thousand years),” he opined in the Daily Norks. “ Well, I think that’s obvious. In return for her support, the jihadists are going to rejig the Muslim faith to include her, perhaps as the consort of Mohammed. The aim of her priesthood is to turn the Cult of Isis into the new global religion, displacing all others. Just look at how ISIS is massacring all other religious communities in Iraq -it’s a foretaste of what’s to come for the rest of the world.”

According to the maverick historian, this isn’t the first time that an extremist organisation has called upon the gods of Egypt in an attempt at world domination. “The Nazis’ interest in the occult is well known – what is less well known is that Hitler had Rommel excavate several tombs and temples during the Desert War and send the contents back to Berlin,” he has claimed. “Hitler had a shrine to Isis set up in his bunker, along with the mummified remains of several of her priests. During those last dark days of the Third Reich, he spent hours trying to invoke the gods of the Nile. He believed that Ancient Egypt and Nazi Germany could be united through their common hatred and persecution of the Jews.” Believing that he could revive the mummys and unleash them on the advancing Red Army, Hitler and his top aides, dressed as Ancient Egyptian priests, finally engaged in an ancient ritual at the altar of Isis. “It was May 1945 and represented their last roll of the dice,” Starkers explained in the Daily Norks. “Before being driven out of Africa, the Afrika Korps had recovered the Scroll of Thoth – the document which, when combined with a potion derived from Tana leaves, is vital to the mummy-reviving ritual. With the Reich’s top botanists having finally cultivated sufficient Tana leaves to attempt the revivification process!”
However, the whole venture went awry, Starkers claims. “The first mummy to be revived ran amok, throttling Josef Goebbels and his entire family to death before it was finally destroyed by fire,” he wrote. “Three more were brought back to life and sent against the Russians, but were chased into a swamp by a platoon of Soviet soldiers with flaming torches – they’d recently seen The Mummy’s Ghost, courtesy of lend-lease – one of them took Eva Braun down with it, after it had carried her off from the bunker.”

In a final bizarre twist, Starkers has claimed that, despite this debacle, Hitler was still able to use the mummy fiasco to his advantage. “It wasn’t his burnt remains the Russians found – it was the mummy the Germans had been forced to burn in the bunker,” he explained. “The Fuhrer himself was last seen paddling down the Spee river, using one half of a mummy case as a canoe. There are rumours he made it all the way to Argentina. Of course the Russians destroyed all trace of the temple of Isis when they entered the bunker, but it is said that they took the Scroll of Thoth and the remaining Tana leaves back to Moscow, where they were used to prolong the life of President Brezhnev.” Foreign Minister Hugh Gripe has consequently called upon President Putin to release the Scroll of Thoth. “One of the incantations it contains can be used to make the living mummys destroy themselves,” he claimed. “It is the West’s only sure way of defeating ISIS!”