Book Reviewed: After the Caliphate by Colin P. Clarke

The Dark Wave: Islamic Caliphate and the New World Order

In the liberal media and politically correct environment, Islam is treated as a peaceful religion, and terrorism is a product of the economic and political ferment of the twentieth century. If one looks at 1,400-years of Islamic history and its rise in Asia and Europe, it becomes obvious that terrorism results from the Islamic teachings.

In the summer of 2014, three years after America’s full troop withdrawal from the Iraq War, President Obama authorized a small task force to Iraq to stop rapidly emerging terrorist threat. A plague of brutality that would come to be known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had created a foothold in northwest Iraq and northeast Syria. It had declared itself a Caliphate, an independent nation-state administered by the Islamic law, and it was spreading like a newly evolved virus. Most of its fighters were foreigners who were influenced by the Islamic teachings. In ISIS controlled areas, Islamic laws were rigidly applied. Homosexuals were hanged or pushed from high-rise buildings; adulterers were stoned, religious minorities were reduced to dhimmitude, a form of second-class citizenship, they were denied civil rights, and specially taxed via the Islamic Jizya. Young men were abducted as conscripted soldiers and young women as sex slaves of ISIS soldiers. What ensued after this was the battle to defeat ISIS, which was ferocious and brutal. The U.S troops and Iraqi army with cooperation of local militia had to break it down village by village to a final victory when ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who once controlled a vast territory with tens of thousands of jihadist fighters died in a recent raid by U.S. Delta Force.

The fight against terrorism and global jihad is unending since it did not go out of existence completely. It is back to a focus on local and regional conflicts to fragmented groups with same ideology as ISIS. These splinter groups are waiting to be taken over by a new Caliph who can offer leadership. Then a new generation of Muslim men and women from across the globe move forward with the belief that Islamic Caliphate is attainable and desirable objective. This would result in a relentless pursuit of global jihad.

The track record for preventing another mass mobilization of jihadist movement is not promising. As of 2018, there were 230,000 jihadists prepared for suicide missions. A 247 percent increase from 2001, and this threat is not new. The aftermath of Soviet-Afghan war in 1980s; Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s, Iraq in the 2000s or Syria in 2014. Most defining moment for these Muslims is the establishment of the Caliphate. In chapter 3, the author focuses on Europe which has the prospect of turning itself into next ISIS-building project. It has become fertile for the incursions of sharia law and other Islamic practices that is totally alien to Western civilization. No-go zones created by Muslim communities provides opportunities for radicalization which has become a normal way of life. Most European citizens have liberal and leftist tendencies, they have supported the immigrant population which makes it all to comfortable for the next jihadist sanctuary. ISIS or its equivalent is waiting to happen, but this may occur in an Islamic country in Asia or Africa, but much of the fighters will be young men and women from Western hemisphere.

Author Colin Clarke’s work is critical to understand what is ahead in terms of terrorism. This is an excellent book of scholarship and highly analytical in contemporary literature that is already filled with radical and leftists’ writings that is too sympathetic to Muslim ideology. This work should prove useful to scholars and policymakers alike.