Book Title: The Caliphate State: Advancing Towards the Past, ISIL and the Local Community in Iraq

Author: Faleh Abdel Jabbar

Date of publication: 2017

Publisher: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies

No. of pages: 463

This review presents a reading of the book The Caliphate State which, firstly, revisits Abdel Jabbar’s previous works, some of which are considered an intellectual and methodological introduction to his latest book and others of which represent turning points in his intellectual history, such that we may become acquainted with his intellectual biography. It then explores the book’s structure, stopping briefly at the methodology he employed in dealing with the topic of the Islamic State [ISIS] and what sets him apart from other scholars who have previously taken up the issue. We then examine the historical and local realities he attempted to probe. We deal in particular with his examination of the Islamic State’s experience dominating people and their surroundings through its violent administration – which Abdel Jabbar termed “a rentier penal colony” – thereby casting light on the brutal authority exercised by ISIS in the areas it was able to occupy.