Ahmad Dallal on ISIS: from Jadaliyya (interview by Bassam Haddad)

"AD: You know, one of the reasons that I think one needs to study ISIS, the Islamic State, they would not like me if I called them Dacsh, although I still somehow like to call them Dacsh. There is always the assumption that this is a reaction and this is something that will not last and it will not survive. However, when you start digging and reading the material, there is a lot of intellectual continuity. This is not a movement that was created yesterday. There is a strain of thought. There is an ideology that is thought and rethought and is has been perpetuated for a significantly long period of time. The adherents to this ideology were defeated, they were underground, and they resurfaced. So it is not even defeating them politically that will make the ideology disappear and that to me signals to me there is an intellectual continuity. They are not just a bunch of crazies going around killing people, which they are doing of course, but there is a very consistent ideology at work. It is something that needs to be understood."