Caliphate: The History of an Idea
by Hugh Kennedy. Basic Books, 309 pp., $27.99
Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea
by Shiraz Maher. Oxford University Press, 292 pp., $29.95
The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory
by Brian H. Fishman. Yale University Press, 354 pp., $30.00
On July 4, 2014, as Americans were preparing to celebrate Independence Day, an event of comparable symbolism took place in the Grand Mosque of Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which had been taken over by the so-called Islamic State on June 10. Slowly mounting the pulpit on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month of penance and fasting, Ibrahim al- Badri, also known as Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, solemnly proclaimed himself caliph of…
