Here from PBS Newshour is an interview of historian Will McCants by Margaret Warner. McCants works for the Brookings Institution, a respected think tank in Washington, D.C.; his page there describes him like this:
. . . .a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy and director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and has served in government and think tank positions related to Islam, the Middle East, and terrorism, including as State Department senior adviser for countering violent extremism. He is the author of “Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths from Antiquity to Islam”(Princeton University Press, 2011) and “The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State” (St. Martin’s Press, 2015).
In this short 6½-minute chat, McCants discusses his new book, which is doing well on Amazon, and Warner queries him about the motivations of ISIS. She seems taken aback that their motivation seems to be largely religious, even for the organization’s recruits who, while not religious themselves, appear to be swept up in ISIS’s “apocalyptic vision”—a vision derived directly from Islam. They are, he says, intoxicated by “fighting an End-Times battle and absolving their sins.” Is religion at all culpable here? You be the judge.
h/t: Leon
