What You Need to Know About ISIS: Terror Religion War and the Caliphate

I decided to write this book – much to the affable chagrin of some friends and colleagues who wondered why I would tackle a topic so complex – because the story of ISIS continues as one of the more important narratives now occupying our thoughts and our media. I wanted to go deeper than the restrictions of tonight’s newscasts would allow. As a career journalist and broadcaster, I have nothing but the greatest respect for the professionals who report in these newscasts on the ISIS insurgency. Most of them provide valuable chronicles under incredible and dangerous pressures, including threats to their personal safety. But I hope to underpin and complement their reports with insights drawn from expert sources located around the world as a means of understanding this evil that seemingly appeared out of nowhere in 2014 but whose beginnings I trace back to 632 A.D.

Where did ISIS come from? How did they escape our notice for so long? How are they bankrolled? How can we understand their nation-state? Do we have to worry about them on a day-to-day basis? If so, how much? Have they redefined terrorism? Why are they so seductive and appealing that would-be jihadists slip away from their comfortable homes and try to join them?

In other words, what matters is not just “what happened?” What matters includes how and why it happened, what happens next and perhaps most importantly, why we need to take all of this very seriously.

And we do have to take it seriously.

This book is the first in a series.