Everything you need to know about ISIS

Flush with cash, the ruthless jihadist group is threatening to redraw the map of the Middle East

ISIS
(Image credit: (REUTERS))

What is ISIS?

It's an ambitious Sunni jihadist group that has fast become one of the world's most feared terrorist organizations. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, shot into the global spotlight in June when 800 of its fighters seized Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, sending an estimated 30,000 Iraqi government soldiers fleeing and raising the specter of full-blown civil war. The militants now control an area roughly the size of Massachusetts, stretching from Syria's Mediterranean coast to the outskirts of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and this week declared the creation of a caliphate, or Islamic state, on the territory. ISIS has imposed a brutal form of sharia law on its new subjects, and ruthlessly punishes locals who fail to adhere to its religious edicts with beheadings, crucifixions, and public floggings. "We no longer have to imagine a terror state," said Beirut-based political analyst Kamel Wazne. "We have one."

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Frances Weaver is a senior editor at The Week magazine. Originally from the U.K., she has written for the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and Standpoint magazine.