The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); Islamic State (IS); and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh; is a Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist; Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam.

The group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many individual countries. ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians; including journalists and aid workers; and its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes; and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq.