August 6, 2014 - ISIS fighters attack the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, home of a religious minority group called the Yazidis. More than 30,000 Yazidi families are stranded in the Sinjar Mountains. read more
“ ISIS, by contrast, is really reliving the early period.” Early Muslims were surrounded by non-Muslims, and the Islamic State, because of its takfiri tendencies, considers itself to be in the same situation. read more
With ISIS having lost its most populous city of Mosul and clinging on to only about half of its de facto capital of Raqqa, leading academic Dr. Vali Nasr said the idea of sustaining a so-called caliphate is dead, but that the global risk posed by its supporters will likely remain for some time. read more
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL / ˈ aɪ s əl /), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS / ˈ aɪ s ɪ s /), Islamic State (IS) and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh (Arabic: داعش dāʿish, IPA: [ˈdaːʕɪʃ]), is a Salafi jihadist terrorist organisation and former unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi/Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. read more
Once a street-smart and risk-taking youth, he had become a true believer in what Isis was fighting for – though he freely admitted to me that his affection for western trappings like cars, technology and weapons was sometimes difficult to reconcile with the frugal ways his leaders demanded of him. read more
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. read more