The New Threat from Islamic Militancy. By Jason Burke. The New Press; 304 pages; $24.95. Bodley Head; £16.99.
ISLAMIC STATE (IS) poses a terrorist threat that is greater than any before or since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, at least according to the British home secretary, Theresa May, speaking last November as she sought to justify extensive new counter-terrorist powers for the government. Barack Obama, also seeking greater powers to attack the group, made a similar assertion three months later: that IS threatens the American homeland itself. With the fall of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria in May, IS has shown that it is still on the march. How much ought the West to fear the self-styled “caliphate”?
Perhaps not as greatly as politicians make out, according to Jason Burke. In his latest book, “The New Threat from Islamic Militancy”, he usefully divides the dangers into three main sources, and readers may gain a degree of reassurance from each; so long, that is, as they are not living in the Middle East or parts of Africa.
Into the first category of threat fall the two main organised groups, al-Qaeda and IS. Much of the book consists of a detailed (if somewhat familiar) account of their history and progress. Al-Qaeda, Mr Burke rightly notes, has been constrained and degraded by punishing drone...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1NCBPSJ
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