Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

THE MIND OF THE ISLAMIC STATE

Robert Manne

Milestones Along the Road to Hell

So often in history, it is ideas that kill

How did the Islamic State arise? What are the ideas that define it? How does this movement of apocalyptic violence justify its actions?

THE MIND OF THE ISLAMIC STATE offers a condensed and gripping history of political jihadism – from its birth in the 1960s prison writings of Sayyid Qutb all the way to IS's glossy magazine of horror, Dabiq. Along the way Robert Manne considers such terrifying texts as The Management of Savagery and such diabolical figures as al-Zarqawi, who devised the strategy of pitting Sunni against Shia in Iraq, thereby helping to pull the country apart.

Manne traces the way ideas and events have intersected to produce the Islamic State, and shows that many in the West have failed to understand what we are dealing with.

Robert Manne is one of Australia's leading public intellectuals. He is professor of politics at La Trobe University and a regular commentator with the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC radio and television. In 2012 he was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-10-01 by Redback (Black Inc.)

Comments

USA: Prometheus

A deep dive into how the ideologues behind salafi jihadism shaped the global menace that we now know as Islamic State. If you want to understand how it all began, this is an essential read. – Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent for The Guardian, winner of the 2015 Orwell Prize for journalism