On the ISIS Apocalypse

This is just going to be a quick write-up with a couple quips and thoughts, I apologize for not offering a ton more depth here.

What sets this one apart from other works on ISIS is the amount of time McCants spends on the distinctions between other jihadist groups and ISIS. Moreover, he continually comes back to these distinctions.

Although he admits there are a number of differences between ISIS’s strain of Islam and Wahhabism, he notes that “Wahhabi scholars might reach different conclusions from Islamic State scholars, but they start at much the same place.”

McCants even spends a great deal of time dissecting what separates ISIS from al-Qaeda: “Bin Laden and other jihadists found plenty of scriptural support for waging a hearts-and-minds campaign in the Muslim world. The Islamic State’s scholars acknowledge these passages of scripture but look for ways around them or find other passages that fit their views. Thus, the Islamic State’s disagreement with al-Qaeda’s leadership isn’t scriptural, it’s strategic.” That being said, I don’t think it’s exclusively strategic. ISIS is forced to pay lip services to al-Qaeda, but as McCants mentions, it seems that nearly anything can be justified using the Qur’an and Hadith: “Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They’re in there. Want to find passages justifying violence? They’re in there too.” If ISIS refused to even pay lip service to peaceful passages, nobody at all would take it seriously.

Another notable thing about McCants book—which differs considerably from other publications—is how little the West plays into it. The goal of ISIS is to create an Islamic State the grows to encompass all Muslims, and eventually to bring about the end of the world. Does the West play a role in Islamic eschatology? Sure, if you associate the meaning of “Rome” with the Western world (which at the time referred to Constantinople/Istanbul). Moreover, ISIS did come to engage more closely with the West as a whole in the latter half of 2014 and after, in large part due to debates about refugees, Western involvement, and ultimately the series of terrorist attacks that took place in France and the United States above all—but elsewhere as well.

Yet, without the destabilization of Iraq in 2003, apocalypticism of the sort that ISIS thrives on would not exist. McCants himself agrees with Jean-Pierre Filiu in that “most modern Sunni Muslims viewed apocalyptic thinking with suspicion before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It was something the Shi`a or the conspiracy-addled fringe obsessed over, not right-thinking Sunnis.” I think this shift in attitude towards apocalyptic thought is the turning point in the history of the Middle East that allowed this to take place. Yet, this shift towards eschatology is not unique in the Arab world, or the Islamic world more broadly. Whenever there is catastrophe, there is apocalypticism. Take the case of Algeria after the French invasion, for instance. Or China during the Taiping Rebellion, for another. Or, if you really want to go back further, think closely about the end of the Heian period in Japan or the history of Black Death sweeping across Eurasia. As with those cases, this too will pass, but it may take some time.

Anyways, this book isn’t outstanding, but McCants does approach his subject in a manageable way for those who don’t know a ton about the Islamic State.