Question: What is your opinion of Da’ash?
Answer: It is not possible to have a single opinion about any group or any individual. Every group and every individual may be correct in some matters and incorrect in others; so it is more useful to evaluate actions.
By and large, I do not agree with their strategy, nor their tactics for achieving their lofty goals. I do not see any positive realistic outcome from the strategy of expanding provocative actions across the region in order to ignite turmoil and war.
I understand the theory: create chaos and instability, bleed the resources of the regimes, so that your group can step into the void and establish a new order.
This gamble here is whether or not your group will actually be the strongest one at the end of the disaster. When all of the destruction is local, and losses will all be from the local population (and from your group), the only way you could be sure that your group will be the strongest contender for supremacy at the end of this process, is if there are no external powers at all interested in dominating the region; because external powers will not have suffered destruction or loss, and will be in the strongest possible position to step into the void your group created. So no, I don’t think the strategy is reality-based.
The seizure of territory in Iraq, relieving the Muslims from the bigotry and oppression of the Rafidhah regime, no doubt, was a good thing, may Allah reward them for that.
On a side note, the speculation about whether Da’ash is or is not a creation of western intelligence is not important. Furthermore, this question is not a useful question about any group or individual. Any person and any organization may sometimes take actions from which our enemies benefit, or which our enemies can exploit. That does not necessarily mean that the person or group is actually collaborating with our enemies.
What we have to analyze are actions and their predictable results. Ultimately, it does not matter if someone is an agent of our enemies or not, if they consistently endorse actions and policies which predictably benefit our enemies, this is sufficient for us to dismiss their recommendations in the future, and we can still maintain Husn adh-Dhann about them, while simply recognizing that they do not contribute usefully to strategy.