Early notes on McCants’ The ISIS Apocalypse

November 29th, 2015 by Charles Cameron

[ by Charles Cameron — a couple of grace-notes while I’m working on my review of Will McCants‘ book, The ISIS Apocalypse ]

.

One:

My first note concerns the elegant way in which McCants‘ view of the changing state of IS eschatology as it has developed in practice conforms to Max Weber‘s theory of the routinization of charisma:

SPEC DQ Weber McCants

Toth, Toward a Theory of the Routinizationnof Charisma

McCants, p 147

**

Two:

There are four sentences that fall in series in Will McCants’s Conclusion — three of a kind followed by one with a different quality to it. Each one ends a section, and the last ends the Conclusion as a whole:

  • This is not Bin Laden’s apocalypse.

  • This is not Bin Laden’s insurgency.

  • This is not Bin Laden’s caliphate.

  • This may not be Bin Laden’s jihad, but it’s a formula future jihadists will find hard to resist.

    • The relevant pages respectively are pp. 147, 151, 153, and 159.

    Posted in Apocalyptic, bin laden, book, Charles Cameron, Doublequotes, IS, ISIS, islamist, Religion, sociology, Uncategorized, will mccants | 2 comments

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    1. dave:

      November 29th, 2015 at 10:59 pm

      completely disagee with mccants that IS are not the true inheritors of bin ladens legacy
      if you look at bin ladens comments about AQI/ISI historically, they are full of praise

      if OBL praises AQI/ISI when under zarqawi and abu omar baghdadi, and IS is the inheritor of zarqawis legacy as these analysts concede, then it follows IS in the inheritor of OBL legacy

      failure of analysts including mccants is rooted in fundamental bias against objectivity

    2. Charles Cameron:

      November 30th, 2015 at 5:03 pm

      I’m digging around in the letters of ‘Atiyah, bin Laden, Zawahiri and Zarqawi for the raw materials of a response, Dave, but time presses on.. I hope to get back to you in the next day or two.