Sharia Goldbugs: How ISIS Created A Currency For World Domination

In 2015, the dinar was made compulsory for civilians living under ISIS control.

At its peak, ISIS controlled 10 million people across Iraq and Syria - making the ISIS dinar among the most ambitious economic experiments in modern history.

In a 2015 propaganda film announcing its release, called the 'The Return of the Gold Dinar,' ISIS's monetary experiment is described as a sequel to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center - and a new weapon in an all-out war against the US economy.

Enter the dinar - or, as ISIS propaganda describes it: "The return of the ultimate measure of wealth for the world: gold - as the [caliphate] surges into the financial sphere."

ISIS then introduced the dinar to civilians within the Islamic State, slowly at first, with merchants giving change in the new dinar as opposed to banknotes.

The Islamic State was littered with exchanges, he explained, which would swap ISIS dinar for dollars and other currencies, allowing people and businesses to trade with one another.

That's notable because, in propaganda, ISIS describes conventional banking practices as "Satanic," and proposes the dinar as an antidote to the "Fraudulent and riba-based financial system of enslavement orchestrated by the Federal Reserve in America."

Despite the successful launch of the dinar, ISIS remained vulnerable to economic attack.

Najjar says the dinar worked better as a means of exchange in the oil industry than an everyday currency for ISIS residents and businesses.

According to Najjar, the failure of the dinar - and Islamic State more broadly - was because it failed to implement Sharia correctly.