Bloomberg quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Mohsin Khan on plans by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham to produce the group’s own money:
In issuing coins, the group is making its latest pitch for statehood, said Mohsin Khan, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. “One of the attributes of a state is that it issues its own currency,” he said by phone from Washington. “That defines you as a state at least in the eyes of your own people and perhaps in the eyes of others.”
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Khan said minting coins instead of the cheaper option of issuing paper money was also symbolic of the group’s desire to replicate early Islam when “coins were issued and they were either gold or silver.”