The ISIS Apocalypse Quotes

“What to Do From 2012 to 2014, the wait-and-see approach of the international community emboldened the Islamic State and filled its ranks, making it a real threat to vital U.S. interests in the Middle East.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“The Islamic State’s leaders proclaimed the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, called the caliphate. Prophecy was fulfilled, they said, and Judgment Day approached.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“In 2004, the inhabitants of Fallujah and the local insurgents who represented them were among the first to resist al-Qaeda, which controlled much of the city. Among their list of complaints were al-Qaeda’s religious requirements that were at odds with local Islamic customs, such as full-body veiling.19 Beatings and broken bones brought reluctant citizens into line but bred resentment. The same happened a year later in 2005 in the city of Qaim on the border of Syria. Islamic State fighters burned down a beauty parlor and torched stores selling music; men who drank alcohol were lashed.20 By September 2006, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki had received pledges of support from over a dozen Sunni tribal leaders, prompting al-Qaeda to issue a statement threatening their lives.21 In October 2006, just days before the establishment of the Islamic State, a masked jihadist going by the name Abu Usama al-Iraqi released a video addressed to Bin Laden.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Perhaps the Islamic State will modify its doctrine as it has modified others in the interest of self-preservation. Or perhaps this is the one doctrine it can’t let go because it believes it is destined to be a world-encompassing state. If the latter, it would go against the argument that these are mere thugs who want power. Criminal gangs aren’t suicidal.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Their apocalyptic and puritanical religious rhetoric is designed to appeal to people who are interested in that sort of thing, but the Islamic State’s leaders don’t really believe it themselves. They’ll dress their actions up in prophecy and adopt the trappings of an austere Islamic caliphate but it’s not from conviction. They see religious symbols and laws as useful vehicles for realizing their ambitions, which is not an irrational viewpoint,”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Religious convictions and political benefit are not always antithetical.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Second, the Islamic State’s desires: The Islamic State’s politics differ profoundly from that of most Wahhabis, who view the Saudi kingdom as a legitimate Islamic government. As the State sees things, no Muslim-majority state in the world deserves to call itself Islamic, which is why it set up its own state and declared a caliphate. To achieve that end, the Islamic State had to wage an insurgency, which it justified with scripture.”
― 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

“To be sure, many of the Islamic State’s foot soldiers are ignorant of their own scriptures. Islamic scripture is vast, encompassing not only the Qur’an but also the ahadith, the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by his followers. Collections of ahadith run into the hundreds of volumes, and that’s just the Sunni variety. The Shi’a have their own collections, adding more volumes to the pile. Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They’re in there. Want to find passages justifying violence? They’re in there too. Medieval Muslim scholars spent their whole careers trying to reconcile the contradictions between them. It’s extremely difficult to do, which is why early Muslims called the effort ijtihad, or “hard work.” People chuckled at the news of two men buying a copy of Islam for Dummies on their way to join the Islamic State.14 But having spent two decades studying the intricacies of Islamic scripture, I empathized with their bewilderment.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Islamic scripture is vast, encompassing not only the Qur’an but also the ahadith, the words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by his followers. Collections of ahadith run into the hundreds of volumes, and that’s just the Sunni variety. The Shi’a have their own collections, adding more volumes to the pile. Want to find passages justifying peace and concord? They’re in there. Want to find passages justifying violence? They’re in there too. Medieval Muslim scholars spent their whole careers trying to reconcile the contradictions between them. It’s extremely difficult to do, which is why early Muslims called the effort ijtihad, or “hard work.” People chuckled at the news of two men buying a copy of Islam for Dummies on their way to join the Islamic State.14 But having spent two decades studying the intricacies of Islamic scripture, I empathized with their bewilderment.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“most of the Islamic State’s hudud penalties are identical to penalties for the same crimes in Saudi Arabia: death for blasphemy, homosexual acts, treason, and murder; death by stoning for adultery; one hundred lashes for sex out of wedlock; amputation of a hand for stealing; amputation of a hand and foot for bandits who steal; and death for bandits who steal and murder.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Nevertheless, Masri understood that running a state is nothing like a running a war. Governing makes the jihadists more vulnerable to military attack and risks angering the population. “Every monotheist knows . . . that the change from jihad to the stage of ruling—the rule of God on the earth—and the return of the Islamic caliphate is a dangerous matter.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“It is no great exaggeration to say that Sunni political Islam began as an effort to restore the caliphate. Several world congresses were convened in the 1920s and 1930s to name a new caliph, but political discord led to deadlock. No Muslim country wanted to see its rivals get the office.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“Although the Qur’an sanctions slavery, Muslim countries formally forbade the practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”
― 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

“Anticipating Jesus’s descent and executing his followers probably strikes most readers as odd. The Qur’an portrays Jesus as a messenger of God and his followers as those “nearest in love to the believers” (5:82). But the prophecies attributed to Muhammad outside the Qur’an foresee Jesus returning to fight alongside the Muslims against the infidels. As in the Bible, the appearance of Jesus heralds the Last Days. But instead of gathering the faithful up to heaven, he will lead the Muslims in a war against the Jews, who will fight on behalf of the Antichrist, called the Deceiving Messiah. Jesus will “shatter the crucifix, kill the swine, abolish the protection tax, and make wealth to flow until no one needs any more,” says one prophecy attributed to Muhammad and quoted by the first emir of the Islamic State.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“As for Muslims who leave infidel lands, Awlaki invited them to come to Yemen. The Prophet had prophesied the appearance of an army of “twelve thousand” men who would “come out of Aden-Abyan” in the south to “give victory to Allah and His Messenger,” Muhammad. Awlaki believed the fulfillment of the prophecy was fast approaching.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“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

“As Plato observes in the Republic, the tyrant “sprouts from a protectorate root.”124”
― 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

“We’re used to thinking of al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama bin Laden as the baddest of the bad, but the Islamic State is worse. Bin Laden tamped down messianic fervor and sought popular Muslim support; the caliphate was a distant dream. In contrast, the Islamic State’s members fight and govern by their own version of Machiavelli’s dictum, “It is far safer to be feared than loved.” They stir messianic fervor rather than suppress it. They want God’s kingdom now rather than later. This is not Bin Laden’s jihad. In what follows, I will tell you why the Islamic State’s jihad is different and why that difference matters.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State

“When the Islamic State decided to set up shop in Syria, it already had a network in place. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had funneled hundreds of jihadists into Iraq to fight against the United States. According to the U.S. government, in 2007, 85 to 90 percent of the foreign fighters in Iraq had come through Syria.95 The Islamic State had received many of those fighters96 and had maintained its facilitation network in Syria after the end of the Iraq war.97 When Syrians began peacefully protesting against their government in 2011, the Assad regime released an unknown number of jihadists from prison.98 The release was calculated to foster violence among the protestors and give Assad a pretext for a brutal crackdown. It worked. As a Syrian intelligence officer would later reveal, “The regime did not just open the door to the prisons and let these extremists out, it facilitated them in their work, in their creation of armed brigades.”
― William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State