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Interpreting ISIS: Four Recent Works on the History and Strategy of the Islamic State

Review products

Brian H.Fishman. The Master Plan: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. xi + 354 pages, preface, acknowledgments, notes on sources, spelling, and names, key characters, appendix, notes, index. Cloth US$30.00 ISBN 978-0-0300-22149-7.

WilliamMcCants. The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2015. xi + 242 pages, acknowledgments, transliteration, appendixes, notes and index. Cloth US$26.99 ISBN 978-1-250-08090-5.

JessicaStern and J.M.Berger. ISIS: The State of Terror. 2nd ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2016. xvii + 398 pages, glossary, timeline, note on sourcing, appendix, afterword by Jessica Stern, acknowledgments, notes, index. Paper US$15.99 ISBN 978-0-06-239555-9.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2017

Anthony R. Byrd*
Affiliation:
Emory University

Extract

Since Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, under his nom de guere Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of a worldwide caliphate on 29 June 2014 from the Nur al-Din Zenki Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, dozens of books have been written seeking to explain the rapid rise and breathtaking brutality of the Islamic State group. There is a certain “all hands on deck” feel to the flood of commentary on ISIS—journalists, academics, policy wonks, military figures, analysts, and politicians all have had their say. The visibility of the group, augmented by the rhetorical use to which they have been put by unrelated political debates, have perhaps made this inevitable. The four books reviewed here are part of this trend, and their collective strength is in their breadth and factual detail. There is information aplenty, and all the books included in this review do an admirable job, each in its own way, of detailing the history of the organization. The Islamic State group's deft use of online propaganda, its place in the post-9/11 jihadi landscape, its territorial gains and losses, and its prodigious ability, until recently, to draw large numbers of recruits into Syria or online support roles, have all received detailed treatment.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2017 

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References

Works Cited

Bunzel, Cole. 2015. “From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State,” Analysis Paper, The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-ideology-of-the-Islamic-State.pdf Google Scholar
Pregill, Michael. 2016. “ISIS, Eschatology, and Exegesis: The Propaganda of Dabiq and the Sectarian Rhetoric of Militant Shi'ism,” Mizan 1 (1): http://www.mizanproject.org/journal-post/eschatology-and-exegesis/ Google Scholar
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