ISIS has released a new video over the weekend which discusses the self-proclaimed “caliphate’s” long-standing plans to release their own currency, including both gold and silver coins.
The video is a combination of the usual military bellicosity of ISIS videos, a call to global Islamism, and perhaps most unusually, a fairly straightforward call for hard money and an attack on the US Federal Reserve System.
While most of the talk in the past of this “gold dinar” stemmed from religious interpretations of this as the only permissible currency under Islam, ISIS seems to also be piggybacking on the usual talking points of the flaws of a fiat money system and the credit-driven global banking system.
The gold dinar, in this sense, is being presented as a uniquely sound currency, making the Islamic State the lone state in the world with a primary currency that is backed by precious metals, by virtue of being minted out of them.
This could be a shrewd tactic for ISIS, as particularly in oil-dependent Middle Eastern countries the local currencies have been fluctuating pretty wildly of late. The prospect of a more stable currency might make ISIS money more accepted abroad, even in nations overtly hostile to ISIS themselves, than it otherwise would be.
There has been talk of ISIS coming up with these gold dinars virtually since they seized Mosul, as the capture of the city netted them a massive banking complex and a large amount of gold from which to mint currency. There is, however, still no firm date for when this money is actually going to happen, despite the mock-ups being out for so long.