Rise Of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
What a disgusting and poorly written piece of drivel. I honestly thought that this book would be informative when I picked it up."Hey. A book on ISIS. something nice to read over the weekend and read up on some current affairs. "But I was surprised when it turned out to be a diatribe on Hamas, a group which the author equates with IS. The accusations and allusions to the UN and the "international left" are so comical and shoddy, one might mistake it for a Stephen Colbert like satire on modern pro-israeli Conservatives.Not worth the read, instead I advise any reader to pick up "The Islamist Phoenix" by Loretta Napoleoni. I think this small book would've been better served (though it certainly would've sold much less) with a completely different title. Perhaps "In Defense of Israel's (and maybe the US given the frequent comparisons and discussions of the US government and military policies) Right to Defend Itself Against Terror" or "A Brief History of the World's Deadliest Jihadist Terror Groups and international Law of War". Because had one of those been the title, as a former Middle East Studies scholar, I still would've read the book and granted it perhaps a 4.5 stars. I can get that people are upset there was not more focus on ISIS though I don't agree that Hamas somehow has absolutely nothing to do with ISIS. Perhaps part of the problem too is the admittedly fascinating but maybe overdone type of human interest pieces websites like Buzzfeed have done about ISIS on subjects like why young people from the West have gone to Syria to join the fighting or what their everyday life is like. While some would say such articles shouldn't be written as they perhaps legitimize or glorify the life of Jihadist, I'm not sure I agree as from what I can tell it's done a considerable amount to wake up Americans to what goes on outside if this country and that can't be a bad thing. But I do suspect at least some people picked up this book expecting something else or even something more along the lines of those types of news articles. This book is a collaboration of authors affiliated with the Oxford University Oxford Centre for the Study of Law and Public Policy. It's a fairly easy to read book for one of scholarly nature and backed by tons of research. However the acknowledgements mention that this book was compiled over just 6 weeks by combining a handful of research papers. So it's not a very drawn out or in depth look though I don't think it ever makes claims to be so. Perhaps because I have spent many years reading scholarly texts of this nature I'm not so much feeling the annoyance at there not being more on ISIS. Frankly a good Internet search should turn up almost anything the average person would care to know (unless people somehow expect books to magically be less biased than the Internet? Sounds like a few reviews did...) but the thing that I know about virtually any subject that relates to contemporary Middle East History is that so much is always in flux in the region and things can change so quickly. This makes it very hard for someone to compile and extensive history of ISIS and that would never be possible without also discussing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the region because ISIS didn't begin in a vacuum and these groups often spring out from one another- which ISIS itself did having originally been the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda. I'm not so sure the authors did the best job here by focuses more on Hamas than Al Qaeda but I guess I rather enjoyed the book despite it not being quite what I expected going in. As far as the subject of bias goes- good luck finding any book on the contemporary Middle East that doesn't have one. I, however, do not think bias is inherently wrong. I actively seek out different perspectives on the region because I'm personally convinced the truth is generally somewhere in between the extremes. Would it harm someone with more leftist views on international and Middle East relations to read this book? No, not unless your mind is too firmly closed and you somehow think you know all there is to know. I don't think the problem to those who rated this book so low is the bias though, I think the problem is that it wasn't written from THEIR bias. Or that Americans tend to cling so hard to their own party line that they can't dare disagree on any action of their party. For me and frankly I suspect many others I've known within the fields of international relations and Middle East affairs- where we stand politically in terms of socially and on US soil tends to differ from where we stand in how we think the US should handle international affairs. And I can't say I've ever been particularly happy with how either party has handled the Middle East. But okay, I get it, this is my field of study and a huge interest in my life. That's not the case for the majority of readers. I have to say I've been surprised by how well this book has sold and how I've seen it everywhere lately because frankly I can't recall the last time the general public cared much about a book published on anything going on in the Middle East. Gosh, as a student my friends so often asked why I got so wrapped up in Middle East politics or even stated it didn't really matter. And I've been jaded enough about it myself (though never as much as US politics has jaded me, frankly). So I think though that to begin with, this book was never going to have as broad of an appeal as it or the publishers tried to make it have. Did they capitalize over the US FINALLY paying some attention to ISIS? Perhaps. But can you discuss ISIS without criticizing how the US handled leaving Iraq? Probably not. Should the author have talked so much about Israel though? Again probably not though gosh with a different title I would buy this book (as using read a library ebook copy) and perhaps keep several on hand the next time another wave of war between Israel and Hamas happened because Americans tend to just blindly repeat what they hear on tv without actually understanding the rules of war and the Geneva convention, etc. So I sort of had to applaud the way this book defended Israel's actions. Not to say I'm a blind follower and Israel never does any wrong but to make Israel into the bad guy while sympathizing with Hamas is something I will personally never understand and if we want to talk bias I don't know of an issue with larger bias and most US news media is anti- Israel. But alas, I don't think this necessarily belonged in this book. With that said though it would appear this book was written during the time period of Operation Protective Edge so perhaps the authors were expecting things to go differently or for Hamas and Israel to be a bigger and longer lasting story line? I'm not sure but given what I did read and the way it was discussed it does seem this was actively occurring during the time the research papers that became this book or even the compiling of the papers into the book happened. But perhaps while the authors discussed Americans being tired of war, they overlooked that most are also tired of this particular conflict in Israel and have latched on to their black and white views and do not care to revisit it. Even so and even if that's largely true perhaps the book would've been better titled, especially given discussions of Egypt, the Hamas- Fatah agreement, Kurdistan, etc- "A Brief Look At What The Hell Went on in the Middle East During the Summer of 2014"? I really don't know. That's where I'm confused on what this book was trying to be also. So I will absolutely agree with others there. I don't understand why so many very low ratings because by no means even despite the apparent confusion on what the actual subject matter was supposed to be, by no means was this a poorly written book. It was quite readable, quite interesting in many parts, though it suffered from too much repetitiveness, and a major lack of focus. I would probably rate it 3.5 stars. If the title were different, as I mentioned I may give it a higher rating. And that's rating it as a book geared towards laypeople not so much as a scholarly work- as arguably despite the Oxford connection, a book geared towards interested laypeople was likely this book was ever intended to be. I also do not know of any other quality book published yet about ISIS and I think it'll be awhile before any such book does come out. So while I wouldn't probably recommend this book to most I also wouldn't say it was bad. Worth a shot if you've got a more general curiosity about the Middle East and terror. Maybe also if you're curious about the international laws of war and how it pertains to both terror groups and countries that fight terror. It's a decent quick read on those subjects.
What do You think about Rise Of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore (2014)?
I now have much better understanding of who ISIS is and what they are all about.
—nishaboo123
All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
—Roseben031
I would have preferred a few more chapters about ISIS
—RebelHero
