Find out more about them without the medias take. Interesting look

Loved this book. Great to read about a subject im interested in and find out things i didnt know before. very informative and well put together

An in depth analysis of the ISIS movement and how they evolved and mutated into the horror that we see today. The author gives an insightful view into the founding members and how the US prison camps in Iraq became a fertile breeding ground for complete radicalization.

Black Banners is a dense and extensive examination of Islamic State's ideological roots in medieval Islamic history and teachings with the aim of better understanding their present day objectives.

There is a clear ideological distinction in the West's separation of church and state and the age-old integration of Islam and politics. In other words, "just as religion can easily be politics for Muslims, so politics can easily be religion". David Wasserstein argues that this is crucial to the  understanding of Islamic State's behaviour and ambitions, in particular within the context of a specific form of Islamic apocalyptic messianism that IS ardently subscribes to.

The Islamic State only formally came into being on 29 June 2014 and rapidly spread into controlling a territory the size of the United Kingdom with a population in excess of eight million.

Clearly it is a grave mistake to simply classify IS as an anarchic violent terrorist group that acts with a criminal indifference to laws. Rather, IS is subscribing to and operates under a particular set of laws and rules with the express intention of recreating the medieval caliphate.

There is a great deal of speculation and conjecture regarding the financial sustainability of IS and whether IS is the richest and most successful terrorist outfit in history. There is even more openly admitted unsubstantiated conjecture regarding the living conditions and day-to-day activities of IS as the author does not have firsthand verifiable and authentic sources in this regard.

Whilst there is an exhaustive examination of the historic record in Black Banners, there isn't much substantiation of the present and that leaves this reviewer knowing more about IS as an organisation steeped in the past, but very little about what is really happening on the ground.