Mia Bloom encourages us to take a more nuanced approach to understanding the demographics and ideology of foreign fighters emigrating to join ISIS. Franck Salameh challenges the claim that ISIS is anomalous in the political and social history of the modern Middle East, which has been dominated by secular nation-states and only in recent decades witnessed perennial appeals to so-called 'fundamentalist' groups that espouse radical ideologies grounded in religious claims.

Happy New Year from Mizan! It has been three months since our launch in October 2015. Exciting developments are in store here for 2016...

Islam was born out of the imperial struggles of Late Antiquity, a period during which claims of political authority were commonly intertwined with assertions of religious truth. Islam was unusual in this period in that it recognized the partial authenticity of the Jewish and Christian messages while asserting its superiority as the final revelation to humanity, as well as establishing a world empire aiming to restore God's rule on earth...