We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways.
Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.
The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham ( ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle that it hungers for genocide that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival and that it considers itself a harbinger of-and headline player in-the imminent end of the world. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom few have gone there and returned. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations-upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom.
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