Ever since Islamic State (ISIS) spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani announced the establishment of a caliphate on June 29, 2014, analysts have been busy trying to explain its aims and origins.
Much of the discussion has concentrated on ISIS leadership’s theology—an apocalyptic philosophy that seeks a return to an imagined pristine Islam of the religion’s founders. But this focus has led to a neglect of the group’s self-declared political aims.
For all the importance of religion in the way ISIS functions and justifies itself, we can fully understand the caliphate only if we pay close attention to the public explanations—the modernist manifestos—of those at the helm of its overall political purpose.
