Ruby Khaja

“There are striking parallels between the Abbasid revolution and the Islamic State revolution. They share a name (dawla), symbols and colors, apocalyptic propaganda, clandestine networks, and an insurgency in Syria and Iraq. They also claim the right to rule as the Prophet’s descendants. The Abbasids had provided a blueprint for how to overthrow a Muslim ruler, establish a new caliphate, and justify both. Apocalypse, caliphate, and revolution were inseparable, just as they are for the Islamic State.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“There is one prophecy about the Antichrist that the Islamic State and its fans have studiously avoided, even though it is in a collection of prophecies they revere: The Antichrist will “appear in the empty area between Sham and Iraq.”49 That, of course, is precisely where the Islamic State is located.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Legends of the black flag and the Muslim savior, the Mahdi, first circulated during the reign of the Umayyad dynasty, which ruled the Islamic empire from the ancient city of Damascus in the seventh and eighth centuries AD.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Although the Islamic State’s soldiers might not know Islamic scripture very well, some of its leaders do. The caliph has a Ph.D. in the study of the Qur’an, and his top scholars are conversant in the ahadith and the ways medieval scholars interpreted it. There are many stupid thugs in the Islamic State, but these guys are not among them.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State