Town during the great recession. Look at some of the events book tv will be covering this week. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air in the near future on book tv on cspan2. Shame on you. [inaudible conversation] were going to get started. So if people could take their seats, that would be terrific. So welcome to hoover dc, my name is ben witness. Im sorry, okay. My name is ben witness, and the cochair of the working group on technology and National Security and law. My other life, im a fellow at the Brookings Institution and im run law fair with partners with hoover on these high events. For those of you who have been to these before, i just want to give you a little heads up. Were going to do this one a little differently which is that neither i nor jack smith will be conducting an interview and the reason for that isthat when i reached out to grant , to come talk about his book, the way of the stranger, he informed me that sam had already reached out to him and invited him to hoover to talk about my book so its an example of that one arm not knowing what other arm is doing so we said just join forces and sam is going to be our guest post of what we law fair call the hoover soirce. With that, i will turn it over to sam and graeme wood. Sam is a fellow at hoover and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and teaches as well. And graeme wood, this is a Remarkable Book and the only thing i will say about the book. I couldnt recommend it more highly and i am exciting he is here tonight. National correspondent at the atlantic and teaches in the yale Political Science department. With that, i will turn it over to sam and thank you all for coming. Moderator well, thank you ben, for this introduction and the opportunity to organize this event together. We are there to discuss a fascinating book that i cannot recommend it enough. It is an excellent book that takes us to a deep journey to the world of the Islamic State. Not just in the battlefields of iraq and syria, not just with the affiliates and the philippines but a journey that takes the author to japan to meet the Islamic State supporters there, australia, the United States to meet a key group in america, to the united kingdom, to norway to egypt which is my home country. Latin america is the only place so far that the Islamic State hasnt forced you to go search there. None of the frequent fliers i participate in had any roots that go there. That is the only reason. You do mention in the book there is a potential to the future for the Islamic State maybe there. We will get to the future of the Islamic State later. I think the best way is to start by asking you what broughtia brought you to this book . Guest first, i am honored boy the double invitation to speak here. Very honored by that. I started writing the book in the same moment of confusion when the Islamic State took mosul and started explaining in ways that were not legible to any people reading about it in the newspaper who were perhaps getting a glimpse of its magazine. And finding the claims it was making, the nature of the Islamic State was mysterious. I found it confusing but it echoed the things i had heard from jihadist and islamists i had spoken to previously. What i really wanted to do was produce something that would explain the origins of the ideas of the Islamic State and to do that in a way that would also illuminate the psychology, the characters of the people who were attracted to it. I wanted to produce something sort of like an Islamic State or islamist version of to the fin land station where it would show where these ideas came from and the idea, the variations on them, that were reflected in the Islamic State. As you say, it meant that i had to look for people who could speak to one degree or another in the voice of the Islamic State and to my surprise these people they walk freely along us, they are especially when i started looking for them, they were in places like melbourne, tokyo, oslow, london. That was not possible to speak to the operational leaders of alqaeda but with isis, because of the radical openness and the way it had tried to pull people in from many difference places. That is what the book is; me going to spokes men and asking them the basic questions like who are you . Where did you come from . How do you believe . How did you get so far outside the orbit of normal behavior and thought . Why are you so weird . To my surprise they were in most cases really chatter boxes. They just went on a great length and invited me into their lives and this is an account of the conversation. You describe you were looking for the origins of the Islamic State and where it came from. We have had a long history of jihadi groups locally and five particularly countries. The Islamic State is it different. It is propaganda. What about it makes it so different in a jihadi universe full of different groups . I think there a lot of things. The emphasis it has on the caliphate is shared by groups we could name. The emphasis on secretarian difference especially the influence on hatred of sufi is highlighted. The intolerance is something that is cranked up to a notch that hasnt been seen before. But there is something about the wide net the Islamic State could cast that i think really differ differintiates. It has been intolerant of different types of interpretation but tries to say all muslims are welcome to join and obligated to come. So it is this vicious intolerance and open door policy toward muslim everywhere that makes it different from groups that came before it. And yet we didnt take it seriously initially. It took the fall of a major city to try it is not for me. The jayz team and the commonly quoted line from president obama. Why were we so blind in recognizing the danger that the Islamic State would pose that were different from the dangers of alqaeda . I think as a journalist and member of my profession i can say many of us took our eyes off the ball. The reporting from mosul in particular, the last time i was in mosul was in 2013. Mosul fell in the middle 2014 and i am not aware of any other journalists that were in mosul between the time i was there and the fall of the city. This is incredible. There is a group of 500 fighters in a week or so. Simply inattention i think was part of it. Also, the fact we were getting used to a particular mode of attack that we associated with alqaeda. It is a feeling of comfort that we had learned to deal with the enemy and as a result there was a tactic that needed to be met in a different way. Moderator one of the perhaps more dangerous ideas we encounter in the book outside of the violence and the blood and suffering is this idea that the muslim cannot see complete, cannot live a normal life from society. The australian doctor which you quote says i have finally returned home. It was ruled by the banner of islam as proclaimed by the Islamic State. This idea is hardly knew throughout the middle ages. We find in the it text of the j Juris Prudence argument. Palestinians were obliged to leave the state of israel so they are not ruled by muslims. How doo y you deal with this . It is a dangerous idea you cannot be a complete muslim without living under the law of sharia. I cannot say how one who is a muslim does that without being a muslim. This is a conversation that has taken place over hundreds of years; the obligation of a muslim in terms of migration to places where you would be ruled by an islamic government. I think that speaks to one of the difficulties of dealing with the attraction of the Islamic State. It is not an idea that has been c conjured by the Islamic State and supporters in the last few years that muslims have a religious obligation to live in a country where the religion where the religion is reflected in the government. It is something they can look to do is look for a long discourse. The fact this australian doctor who had lets just say no long personal history of piate or interest in this long discussion the fact isis could point to that discussion and say to him look, historically muslims have been concerned about the temptations of living in sin full societies, nonmuslim cites. If you are muslim dont you want to be part of the tradition that is part of your patrimony. And that is a persuasive argument for certain parts. Everyone i spoke to who is an Islamic State supporter said some variation of this. They felt empty inside and somehow unfulfilled. Fortunately there are very few remedies to the feeling of existential emptiness that can be proposed by outsiders like myself. Moderator it is striking this sentiment is increasing at a time the world is becoming more tolerant to muslims. It is understandable a shiite would try something in the 16th century given the experience of muslims in spain after the conquest but it is more striking the growth of such sentiment compared to the 1960s and 70s when the wave of immigration began from countries in nort africa and turkey to europe and now it is a major theme of alienation. You cannot be a complete muslim without living under that banner. Guest yes, it is ironic if you that, i think, most muslims who are living in a nonmuslim country they would say they feel perfectly free to practice their religion and that is fine. When the Islamic State invokes this long discussion of where muslims are allowed to live they will look to the examples you point to. They look to where there was a clear difficultty of moving borders that represented the fron tears of islam and a real question about where one places ones self as the border shifts. They had to look it a point where that distinction is more applicable in order to have that conversation and articulate that. There has been discussion on the role of the internet and radicalization and recruitment of the Islamic State. You dismiss that sentiment and say recruitment rarely happens primarily online. There is a local guy there. She is someone that you look up to and that leads the way that ends with you in the Islamic State. If that is the case, why have we been so unsuccessful in stopping this . Let me spell out why i am so dismissive of the social media aspect of this. It is important but not what people think. Many people have a sense that if you read the wrong tweet you start getting pulled in and next think you know you are on kayak booking for tickets to turkey and despite never meeting anyone who said anything about the Islamic State social media c contaminat contaminated. That is not what seems to happen. Usually what happens is you know someone who went there and that person individually said to you this is what you should do too. Stresses that obligation. And the internet is a way for you to selfeducate on the issues after having been told it is something you need to be thinking about. It is not an unimportant aspect of the process but not the original contagion in what i have seen or anyone else has tracked. There is one way it seems to be very important which is the recruitment of women. It has been much more difficult in the past to recruit conservative women who have less ability to leave the house to meet strangers and so forth whereas on line that has been important and part of why 1520 percent of the recruits to the Islamic State who travel have been women. Moderator interesting. This appeal of the caliphate. You describe there was a cal fight of the imagination to which all of these people belonged to long before they actually made the journey and went into turkey. Of course, the collapse of the caliphate created the existe existential crisis for iran. Aft afterwa afterwards we had many claims like the king of egypt and caliphate providers in indonesia and india but that appeal died or dwindled. Earlier on, immediately after turk abolished it we had have facing of criticism of the need for the idea for the caliphate by the egyptian chief. Why has this returned . What makes the caliphate so appealing to muslims living all over the world today . Guest that is a great question. I would make one quick observation about isis view of the caliphate and maybe one comparison that would be helpful to the movements you just mentioned. They were looking back to 1924 as to the point where they were picking up. Isis viewed things a bit differently. There has been some mention as propaganda of 1924 and extinction of the caliphate being a key date but you often see them looking much further back for the last caliphate validity. 1258 is sometimes mentioned. Moderator the egyptian version doesnt count you are telling me . Guest sorry to break it to you, yes. It mentioned in their magazine we have not seen a caliphate since 1828. This means most of the people who historically if you go to the wiki ped oia page most are t chaos according thoothe Islamic State. To the. They can revise this concept that has been attractive to other groups in the past in what they consider the most rigorous, most in tolerant way. A caliphate in a robust sense that hasnt existed in a long time. That flatters the caliphate obviously and it allows them to say that they are doing something of historical universe importance. I mean the key thinker of this struggle. We are talking about seven guys before more were considered to be part of the change chain. The fellow you mentioned, a cleric who has been one of the more interesting intellectual forces behind the Islamic State he has a really inventive essay you just mentioned that takes this famous narration of the prophets saying there will be 12 imams and that is it. And says usually shiite are more interested in this naration but it appears in sunni questions as well. He said if that is the case how do we deal with the alleged ones throughout time and we have to figure out who qualifyequaquali. If we apply this intolerance who comes out appearing to have fulfi fulfilled all criteria . Decent . Propriety and application of law and he comes down to there have been seven. B baghbadi is eight and prepare your heart with check boxes before we get to the last one. Moderator despite it calling itself the Islamic State many opponents have refused to call it that. It is neither islamic or a state. We refer to them as a derogatory term, daesh, and you point out they dont quote mark or st. Paul in the propaganda. It relies on the koran. It is not the distance from the islamic label some would like. Why is there a desire to distance . One who is a muslim doesnt want to be associated with a Group Calling themselves muslim and will try to strip that label from them. I think there is something deeper. There is a reluctance to see isis as having any intellectual or political geonology whatsoever. I think especially in the early days of our collective shock at what isis is doing. This fed in with a general prejudice against them as barbarians. They are cutting off heads . They might not have an ideology or thought what they are doing. If you take the first i in isis seriously they are in fact looking to a contested tradition and this tradition is one that we call the islamic tradition. They are asking questions muslims asked themselves and come up with many different and incompatible answers over the centuries. I think the desire both simply to denigrate the movement and to perhaps also just the aspiration they might be easier to deal with because they are just crazy people i think both of these fit into the desire to deny the islamic nature of the Islamic State. Of course, there is also the matter of prejudice and hatred and you dont want to allow the antiislamic sentiment in general to reflect that the Islamic State if we acknowledge it has something to do in islamx others will portray it as the manifestation of islam. Yes, that is a regrettable interpretation of what isis is doing. To say that isis is the only way to be islamic. What this really points too, though, is the meta conclusion that we find and that is if by calling them islamic we are saying we understand it to be implied they are the right kind of islamic we evidently have a few of islam that is different than the view of christianity in that islam can only be one thing. If we said that the group was christian we would not be impliing implying we would call a crazy Christian Group a crazy group and leave it to the imagination how diverse the label christian is. We call it the Islamic State and in no way is that the only version of islam or the correct version of islam. Moderator it is striking you brought up the difference with christianity because there is an interesting line in the book. Islam is not christianity on a five century delay and its reformation may take a different shape. That is a frightening line. We have heard calls for islamic reformation from intellectuals and from people in the west and even from the eegyptian leaders. No, we are using the reformation in the same sense as christianity than no. We should have no expectation it would be non violent. Reformation nonchristianity was extremely violent and my goodness the number of times in my discussions with supporters of the Islamic State that they would say things that had exact parallels. Then its possible that it could have the same kind of trajectory met s martin looper, thats an interesting talk. One could think of baghdad he as a Martin Luther but Martin Luther also found there were over enthusiastic supporters that were going crazy and putting people in cages and doing things that he thought his movement had gotten away from. So i think we might think of baghdad he as perhaps more i can to the leaders of the monster rebellion or other truly far out reformation figures. One of the most fascinating things i found in the book, islamism by its nature and the jihad he world is in various competing groups but has more hatred towards each other than they actually sometimes hold toward the rest of the world many, a few too many of the sikhs are criticizing new islamists than they spend criticizing the west and yet in the book we find this one incident where in egypt, there is an attempt to convert you by a solidstate chief there that had originally been a taylor in new york , became a official there and they then were sent to alexandria and you discover part of the group working on a conversion basically went to doll up which is a completely, they usually hate each other. Why was this cooperation when you describe such diverse views about this dynamic in the world of islamism between its various components . Youre right, these are in some ways this can inconsistent. They believe theyll body and they adhere to a school of jurisprudence that is certainly not the one associated with solipsism so it was odd that someone who viewed himself as a purist who was teaching other people how to be giovanni, that he was sending me to someone who was going to be teaching me the wrong thing. Now, i think the resolution to that paradox is purely practical. He was exhausted with me. I dont know how tiresome in general i am to be around but if you spend days and days with someone trying to convert them, eventually you need to tag out and have someone else work on the guy and thats what he did, he sent me to alexandria because he said there are people there who will pick up where i left off and they wont be the end of your education but on basic matters of what you need to believe, what books you need to read, theyre good enough for now and i think what this shows to and this is before the existence of the Islamic State, by the way but there is kind of an impulse toward having a big tent toward jihad is him for versions of conservative versions of islam where isis, its not a totally key organization. It would happily accept a doubly key in its midst, possibly viewing that person as a deviant or in need of correction but unlike some others, theyre very happy to bring in people of many different muslim stripes. Why the weather shiite or baghdad he or any of that, he was Listing Groups that would be acceptable in islam a state territory. Under these express conditions, that you were, your deviance is to be corrected and it listed a remarkably wide list of groups including sufi, it included shia. I made inquiries and killing shia onsite, why is it that she artistically prohibited and i was told the society is prohibited and our societies are a subset of shia that sometimes is considered a sunni school in itself. In other words, they didnt really mean the shia part but they were casting a wide net of other types of muslim that were acceptable because once you get there, we will take care of the details later and im sure theyre really happy to be accepted by the Islamic State. A noticeable trend that you described is the impact of the local on the transnational. All of these are islamists committed to the idea that there is no difference between an indonesian and a 5y as a hobby that claims in their own understanding of the caliphate, is it shaped by their local conditions so a british guy is understanding of the caliphate is amplified by the healthcare aspect of it. The tension, how does the local and transnational operates, especially when you have this influx of foreign fighters from all over the world come to syria and the iraq population . Youre correct, the australians ive met who were in support of the Islamic State were supportive in an australian way. The japanese guy who had gone to the Islamic State, yeah them what are the virtues of the caliphate . He said japanese sounding things about respect for privacy and yes, the brits, they said the National Healthcare of the Islamic State will be really great. This is odd and i think you get raised some by some profound questions about how much we can escape our origins and there were people who were eager to wipe their slates clean and go to a place that they themselves would have said is a kind of year zero community where everything is different and yet, the things they were envisioning in this caliphate of their imagination were completely ordained by the places they were coming from. Thats part of it. Theres also i think with the islamicstate , the practical questions that turn out to be very interesting about what it means to have what is essentially a Cosmopolitan Society within this society that then everybody launders their culture and souls so they are all one. If we go by some of the reports of what the state actually is on the ground has become a very contentious issue. In some ways, when its successful, one that appears beautiful to the followers of the group, saying we come in from all different cultures and weare all now one and in other ways , a source of great annoyance so you will find this relatively few south asians have gone to the Islamic State. Some of them have gone there and come back and reported that they are treated when they go to dubai and they have tools of glorious battle like grenades or kalashnikov and had a toilet brush for a keyboard perhaps to do it work so theres i think some fissures within the group to be exploited whether ideals were not our reality. Someone cant escape his locality, i cant escape mine. I have to bring up egypt in the conversation. That egypt and cairo, as you described as the most inviolate religion compared but that city i have said completely agree but that city and that country, lumen extremely large. We need to egyptians, islam american but also to find the albanian, the american, the japanese. Make the journey to cairo and various locations, working there for, learning, teaching. Why is it so important and so insightful to the world of islamism and jihad. For reasons that would be of no surprise to you, there is the egyptian cultural dominance in the arab world being first among equals. And the largest of the populations. The center of culture in many different ways so that unsurprisingly is going to be , outside influence on the Islamic State. There is also though in more recent dynamics, i think the important influence that egypt had. After the tarry or square revolution, there were moments of life. In egypt where a lot of things could be discussed, could be planned, a lot of unities conformed that were impossible under mubarak, impossible probably today as well and that turned out to be important in the creation of this Virtual Community that eventually got together in reality and in an armed forum in syria and iraq you mentioned some of the figures who went to egypt. One of those was the top american in the Islamic State and i profile them, named otto hossein. This guy went to egypt the day after his parole expired in the United States for a cyber crime and once he got there, he was able to just plant himself in the rahall city and have people come to him and learned his feet. It was sort of like we talk about how that was a safe haven for islamist groups. It was an intellectual safe haven where you can find their teachers and get the message out so that the physical haven was profitable in syria. Then there was already making you that form of loyalty and they could just come together and have reality over there. All the structures, whats the counter message, what can be common caliphate to the Islamic States . If you go and meet caliphate background or you have muslims in america you also go and meet the sufi seeks. You described his arguments that they wouldnt have moved any of the Islamic State supporters. I raise this question because as we know theres been a constant question in washington about using various groups within the world of islam against the more radical ones. We discussed the sufis as a possible one, we then had the discussion about why the caliphate and you bring up these celebrates saying that in some ways they are the group positioned to have an argument with the Islamic State which might be the ones that are in a sense only disagreeing on findings. Whats the way to combat . First let me state why i thought that homicide use of could be shaped, tremendously learned guide. Someone who i would hope, i would hope would be persuasive but i happen to doubt that he actually would be. To the people who are part of the target audience of isis. The argument that he gave to me was that essentially to say look, ive been studying islam for 30 years. This is a religion like other great religions that required time to understand them and to correct itself properly and implied if only they would also spend 30 years studying and memorizing islamic texts in mauritania, in dubai, then they too would realize this. And you see the obvious problem here. Most people do not have 30 years to spend on thesetopics. Also, most isis people do not have the Attention Span that would make that an attractive proposition in any way whatsoever. So its unfortunate that theres no way, no shortcut in time and no shortcut in the kind of personality types of isis that would allow that to be useful or workable. What i think we should start looking at bo is what is it that has caused someone from a muslim to decide that isis way is the right one . Part of it is the radical democratization of interpretation that isis offers, saying that okay, maybe youve come to islam late in your life or maybe youve come to practice or observe islam late in your life. You dont need to feel though that you are forever handicapped by your late arrival. Instead, your arguments are right irrespective of whether you spent 30 years trying to cultivate them and perfect them. They would often say to me when i would ask if i talk to isis supporters i would say look, you disagree with most of the intellectuals from your tradition and certainly with most of the people who spent decades studying these topics. And they would say well, youve invoked authority from position, how akbar said youve invoked the authority of time. These things weve been told by our profits. You mustaccept the correct judgment even if it comes from a sixyearold boy. We are perhaps , we have the correct interpretation even if we dont have the pedigree or the time in grade that would make someone follow us so i think they are vulnerable to arguments that empower them as newcomers to observance or to islam as a whole. That doesnt give us a lot of tools to offer them projects. The reason i brought up that, which is to say that differs from isis only in that it says that now is not the time for the caliphate. Some days we will do this but youre jumping the gun. They at least share the view that interpretation is something that individual can do. That reading of scripture is not something that needs to be mediated by a three decade study, its something that a newcomer to the faith can do and there is a scholarly tradition that one can defer to the very fact that you can read for yourself empower you from day one. I think thats going to be the only type of condition that will be appealing to the target audience. I mean, its rather political democratization. Mohammed did not have, but its a particular school in which you can look but there are limits there. Guiding the person as the Islamic State expects them to do, basically. Yes but you mention these dollars, thats important in the thought of a couple people i was profiling. They are all, you ask why are you calling it tidy up were muslim, they would always say again, theyre kind of a self flattering way because this is how they say it. Right. They got these issues right, not because they are old, is not because a few generations that people also like, its because their arguments hold that rationality. One of the most were the hardest things to understand by westerners about the Islamic State is the importance of the end of time. You described it and you described the signs of the last days as they understand them and where theyve taken it to that narrative and you state that most of this can be helpful strategically about what they will do next and why they will do that and not that. Why dont we understand that . Why cant we utilize that. I wouldnt want to overstate the usefulness of this. They are not fools in this sense in that they will show up where the scripture says to show up and stand and be slaughtered, thats not how they think of it. Theyve shown currently as they lost territory in the last year considerable interpretive creativity when things have worked out the way they said they would work out. I think that all this apocalyptic strain as being in some ways the ultimate source of incredulity from people who like myself are essentially secular people and have a lot of hard times believing that someone could believe in literal terms that this is how history will unfold and how the geography of the conquest will appear. So i have to say when i first heard the Islamic State supporters bring up the fact that first this will happen and then name identifiable cities or times in the present day saying that after that, this. This will not happen before this and they said this will happen , this must be a put on. You cant be serious. You think all of this is going to unfold exactly like this. And my incredulity was, it was strained to be honest by how often i would hear it and with the seriousness that people would describe these prophecies. Every time i thought you dont really believe this, i would observe some taken the conversation that would make me think hes speaking to me with complete honesty about his belief that the Islamic State has done the following things to fulfill prophecy, will do the following things. Like i say, i dont think thats going to just open their playbook in a way that would allow us to destroy them at least having the ability to take seriously what they say i think can be better. Weve written these kind of books talking about the end of times, with the booksellers at every kid have to read basically muslim and nonmuslim alike, that the most available books on the market. Let me move to the future as we come to the end of the conversation. You say that these followers to the youth and this is what will mean that even if the physical caliphate would be destroyed, the Islamic State would live on. You suggest a new Geographical Center or take a trip to the philippines, looking at possibilities there, libya has been mentioned in fact twice also so a potential new base, new grounds for the caliphate. How do you see the future of this state. As falling, theyre being defeated in this instance as their territory in the center of iraq and syria continues to strengthen . The territories shrinkage i think is a given, that will happen at one speed or another over the next year. We will see most all fall completely, rocco fall as well and there are a few stages you should watch with interest. All of mosul will be different from the fall rocco. Mosul is more important but raqqa has been the de facto capital of the foreign fighters and that is where the family is in phase, thats where these tens of thousands of people have come to create a utopia so i think once that falls, we will see an explosion of information about what the Islamic State has meant to these people. It will be a horrific experiment, naturalexperiment in social psychology to see what does it mean for people who havedevoted their lives , given up everything , their families to a prophetic utopian community . What does it mean to see those prophecies destroyed in front of their eyes. It will be like the Branch Davidian compound except on the scale of the whole city. Thats something that we have to look forward to within 2015. Now, what does isis turn into after that . You mentioned the philippines. I went there not with any expectation that the philippines will be the new capital of the Islamic State or that it would be a tropical paradise version of raqqa that people could go to although some have already tried to do that. But instead to see what is the template of the Islamic State when it tries to move intoterritory that it has designs on but no Operational Presence in . And i think the philippines is actually a pretty good case for that with the Islamic State has found that has looked for places like libya, like nigeria, like the philippines where there is a preexisting political discontent. That it can parasitic we attack itself to an offer a few troubling preexisting jihadist groups there the ability to band together, to unify and to accept the Islamic State as the banner in which they will actually claimterritory. Unfortunately the philippines is not the only place where this can happen , we see in yemen, the poorly governed and wartorn areas of the muslim world its a fairly long list in the Islamic State and pretty much all such places. But it doesnt have the same appeal, this is not like egyptians or the eastern obsession but its one thing to have your caliphate in between the two brand capitals of that. And to have it in the pacific philippines which is nowhere mentioned in the koran or is in islamic history, it seems to me that you have to find somewhere in the middle east. In the heart of where its in. I agree that the caliphate doesnt have the white the same ring to it as the one in raqqa or baghdad. Sinai would be offered . Side i would be marginally more attractive but having been to the sinai, a very nice place in a way that rocca is, doesnt quite, doesnt have the traditions that i think are as nice as the ones you find in the southern communities. I agree though that there has been an attraction to the isis caliphate, both because of the geography that commanded riyadh the specific places, the lot shone mentioned by isis as being prophesied and i think its the greatest country, the place where these apocalyptic showdowns will happen so it matters a lot that happened there in syria rather than starting out in there. And the capos of isis having to admit that at this point we are reduced to elements in obscure islands in Southeast Asia or in, muslim areas of libya or yemen, i think that will severely erode the attraction. I hope a lot of people who are perhaps incensed about what they thought about going to rock up would not even consider instead moving off to some other horror or animosity. You all in the Islamic State, islam by its strength has been a constant strength for the methodology that can bring the dream to life. The savior of one methodology, of one group confers into the next one and in a sense we thought that the enemy that we were confronting before 9 11 was, had the johnny family only to waive contact and cover the transformation from the local transnationals. We continue to focus on this saying this is the face of the enemy only to discover the transformation from the transnationalist toward the caliphate of the United States. What do we think about the future . Is that model of Holding Territory and proclaiming the caliphate is no longer the successful one, what is the future of islamism . Whats the new trend, the new kids on the block that we will confront in the next decade . I dont see a movement that will succeed the Islamic State and try to outdo it in its persnickety nest about islamic law. It would be a very difficult margin to work on. So instead, i think we would want to look at how the Islamic State successors might try to rewind new strategies that were discarded by the Islamic State and perhaps claim that they were discarded prematurely so al qaeda would be the perfect example of this. Al qaeda has a moment right now where you can say we told you so. You build a caliphate prematurely and it will be destroyed. It will look good briefly and it will be destroyed which is actually exactly what isis told al qaeda about september 11. It will look good for a few days and then youve lost your traits so i think theres a moment now where al qaeda can say were still around, were still athreat. We will try to perhaps revamp slightly our strategy but it was discarded prematurely. Thats perhaps one of the directions it going. This was a fascinating discussion to say the least and i think it gives us a new glimpse into the depth of knowledge and information and discussion inside the book. One of the most striking things that you are reminding yourself as you read the book is how you control yourself in those interviews. Your meeting these people who are celebrating murder, slavery, all these things and yet you throughout the book dont even lose the sense. Top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Up next on after words, Washington TimesNational SecurityColumnist Bill gurts with the introduction of new technologies and what the u. S. Has to do to be successful in this new age in this book i wrvecion arvecion iwar