Islam and the Islamic State

Abstract This book 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 efforts to prevent the formation of a unified national resistance movement. It then goes on to position the West efforts to reveal the putative Caliphate’s ‘true nature’ within established narratives on the relationship between Islam and violence. This campaign of ‘ideological delegitimization’ lay at the heart of the military campaign to denude the so-called Caliphate and was, I argue, central to a global attempt to downplay its quintessentially political motives. With this context in mind, the book seeks to understand what the Islamic State says about itself. Attempting to get beyond the moral opprobrium that characterizes many other studies, it looks in detail at its flagship English language publication, Dabiq/Rumiyah. The objective here is to analyse how this vital corpus of literature engages with Islamic exegeses—in terms of references to the Qur’an, classical scholarship, and contemporary Muslims intellectuals. This reveals a complex and highly instrumental approach to the faith that was fundamentally driven by a determined claim to statehood.