Islam and the Islamic State

At its zenith, the Islamic State was one of the most developed and powerful of the various militant organisations that have emerged within the Middle East in recent decades.Not limiting its objectives to organising mass casualty attacks, it constructed a complex system of administration, including an outreach department, which produced a large body of film, social media and literature.Of these, its flagship publication, Dabiq (later renamed Rumiyah), has been its most significant English-language output, and has the potential to tell us a great deal about its ideas and those of other non-state armed actors that claim to maintain some kind of relationship with Islam. Islam and the Islamic State begins by tracing out the emergence of the Islamic State.It locates its separatist appeal within the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion and the early years of the occupation--particularly the Coalition's successful efforts to prevent the formation of a unified national resistance movement.It then go