ISIS would need thousands of eunuchs to be a successful caliphate

If ISIS really wants to do the whole caliphate thing right, they're missing a couple things. Or rather, they're going to need to be missing a couple things.

So says a recent article co-authored for the Washington Post by two professors, one an anthropologist and one a research scientist whose specialty is castration. The professors note that historically, Islamic caliphates were marked by heavily fortified capital cities filled with thousands of women (to show the caliph's dominance) and also thousands of eunuchs (to run the caliphate without availing themselves of the women).

ISIS, the terrorist organization whose stated goal is to establish a new caliphate in the Middle East, has none of these things. The professors conclude that "if the Islamic State doesn't build a deeply fortified city and start producing eunuch bureaucrats, it will never have the stability and endurance of historic caliphates."

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