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Chapter 4 focuses on Turkey and the Kurdish question particularly in relation to the country’s neighbors. It highlights the 1998 Öcalan incident when hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens joined mass nationalist mobilizations to protest against third countries (Syria, Italy and Greece) (allegedly) supporting the PKK (Kurdistan’s Workers Party). It examines how Turkish elites framed foreign governments and the PKK as the parties solely responsible for the Kurdish uprising, making any potential compromise unimaginable for the next two decades. At the same time the chapter examines the progress made by Turkey in reaching better relations with Greece leading to the Helsinki compromise in 1999. The chapter looks at parliamentary records and political discourse in the years preceding this crucial 1998-9 period to identify the framing of Turkey’s foreign policy, explain variation in foreign policy outcomes and Turkey’s subsequent reactions to the civil wars in Iraq and Syria.

Excavating the Future concludes with a discussion of two real-world archaeological events: ISIS’s destruction of artefacts at Palmyra and Nimrud and the reaction by heritage preservation organizations to simulate destroyed artefacts through 3D printing, stereoscopic modelling, and crowdsourcing projects. The envoi contends that these reproductive countermeasures to the world-wide media dissemination of terrorist attacks on material history serve to perpetuate a desired future born from the very logic of globalization and progress that has made World Heritage sites such irresistible targets for Islamic extremists. The envoi argues that SF’s response to the material conditions of history in the post 9/11 world invites attentive audiences to remain suspicious of such iconodulist claims upon the past and future.

The secular state, the church, and the caliphate are associations that each hold universal aspirations, at least implicitly. While the universal aspirations of the church and caliphate may be obvious enough, every state seeks dominion over the whole world. (“Secular” describes states that limit their vision to this world, as opposed to the transcendence to which both the church and caliphate appeal.) As an essay in Catholic speculative theology, Griffiths asks two questions: Whether Catholic theology supports or discourages the variety of political orders, and whether these orders could be ranked in terms of goodness from a Catholic perspective? In response to these questions, Griffiths appeals to two aspects of St. Augustine’s political thought: Political rivalries serve the common good; and the principal indicator of the degree to which a state serves the common good is its explicit service to the god of Abraham. The United States (a secular state) is compared with ISIS (an attempted caliphate).

Chapter Seven: Intervention and State Obfuscation, begins by arguing that the inclusion of the responsibility to protect (R2P) in the United Nations World Summit Outcome of 2005 marked a decisive shift in the evolution of interventions for humanitarian purposes. While the phrase “manifest failure” corresponds to the “unwilling or unable” standard previously used by the R2P-defining Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), author Ivi Bode admonishes that the “unable or unwilling” standard has also been used to justify military intervention in a counterterrorism context. She explores recent examples where state’s have used this standard as a legal justification for military intervention for self-defense against terrorist/non-state actors on the sovereign territory of ‘host’ states. The chapter argues that the evolving prominence and, arguably, relevance of the “unwilling or unable” standard warrants a more thorough examination of its legal foundations and policy practice. In adding to existing literature which considers either the counter-terrorism or the R2P context only, Bode’s chapter offers a critical examination of its usage across both contexts, and concludes with a summary of what these developments might indicate in terms of evolving intervention standards.

This chapter outlines the context within which various iconoclastic incidents have taken place in various parts of the Islamic world in recent years. After focusing on ISIS and the massive destruction of funerary monuments for which they have been responsible in Iraq and Syria, with a particular emphasis on Mosul, we deal with similar incidents, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Africa and central and south Asia.

The chapter explores how, despite earlier counterterrorism failures and two bitter wars in Chechnya, terrorism in Russia has declined in the 2010s. The Islamist-separatist terrorism problem that used to dominate national politics was degraded to a relatively peripheral issue that hovers at a level of persistent, but low-scale and increasingly fragmented violence, primarily in the North Caucasus. However imperfect, interim and incomplete, a ‘solution’ that has worked out in the Russian case was not ‘war’. This ‘solution other than war’ was made possible by certain developments outside Moscow’s direct control, such as the internal split within the insurgency catalyzed by its increasing jihadization, and resulted from a combination of the policy of Chechenization, shifts in federal security strategy towards smarter suppression and prevention, and massive reconstruction and development assistance. While this solution is no substitute for addressing the underlying structural causes of violent extremism and has involved enormous security, financial, human rights and governance costs for the nation, these costs are much lower than the cost of war. This is seen as one of the key broader lessons to be gleaned from Russia’s response to terrorism. It also explains why Russia has a genuine interest in ensuring that this degree of stabilization and decline in terrorism of North Caucasian origin is not distorted or reversed by new destabilizing factors, including transnational influences and connections.

This chapter extensively develops considerations related to what could be metaphorically called “an apocalyptic topography of Syria and Iraq”. In such a context, we should be aware that both countries, currently struggling with ISIS inspired violence, are, at the same time, a crucial arena in relation to Muslim apocalyptic cycles. The chapter concisely introduces the natural starting points in the form of the narratives belonging to the historical apocalyptic cycles, as well as reviewing the attitudes of Muslim apocalyptists towards various cities and territories. In this respect, the discussion will also be based on the collection of “praise traditions” (fadaʼil) devoted to particular regions in contemporary Syria and Iraq. The analysis focuses on both the search for the supposed “apocalyptic qualities” of given toponyms, but also, primarily, on placing the current struggles and strategic ambitions of ISIS within the context of Muslim traditions devoted to the Last Days.

This chapter addresses in detail the role of the millennial agenda within ISIS propaganda. Using their primary sources (both in Arabic and Western languages), the discussion analyses, step by step, the specific segments of Muslim apocalyptic heritage that have been utilised in ISIS propaganda as a tool for the justification and metaphysical legalization of their struggle. The main objective of this chapter is to carefully discuss the way ISIS has instrumentalized chosen apocalyptic pointers, either events or trends, which, from their own perspective, have already been fulfilled. They have sought to use these claims as a tool to prove the accuracy of their interpretation of contemporary affairs.

This chapter is in its own way also devoted to providing a certain kind of “apocalyptic chronology”. The discussion systematically introduces the proclaimed ISIS expectations (both public announcements and various commentaries) in the form of the portents of the Hour that remain to be fulfilled, either the lesser or the greater ones. The ultimate goal of all millennial Muslim predictions is undoubtedly the final victory of the powers of good, as embodied in the redeemer, al-Mahdi. Let us add here that the apocalyptic expectations of ISIS also clearly reflect their deeply-rooted hatred of Shiites (whose millennial ideas are, in many respects, considerably different from the Sunni mainstream view) and it is precisely this point, as well as an analysis of related sectarian violence associated with the Last Days, that will be the subject of attention.

This chapter provides the reader with a different perspective on the apocalyptic visions of ISIS. So far, most attention has been accorded to how ISIS has been able to exploit apocalyptic symbolism and rhetoric and the detail of what they expect to see in the future. However, this chapter entitled “A Feeble Folk to whom no Concern is Accorded” (this subheading is a borrowed quotation from Nuʽaym ibn Hammad´s Kitab al-Fitan, The Book of Apocalyptic Tribulations), illustrates how the activities of ISIS are placed in an apocalyptic context by their opponents (i.e. the vast majority of Muslims). It is perhaps no wonder that such opposing perceptions can be mainly found within the outputs of those Muslim groups and strands that currently feel mortally threatened by ISIS inspired terror, namely Shiites, Sufis, liberals, etc. Let us remind ourselves that the apocalyptic imagination always reveals, at least to a certain degree, the nature of the thinkers and that the millennial content can often implicitly reflect their worldly worries and concerns within the eschatological framework.

This final chapter cannot be called an epilogue in the correct sense of the word since we are still not in a position to answer some of the key questions, e.g. whether or not ISIS protagonists really believe their own pronouncements. Of course, reaching to attain the higher (i.e. the millennial) goal can make any earthly suffering more bearable. Islamic apocalyptists have sought to console and encourage, while, at the same time, to warn and frighten. Nowadays, exactly as at the very beginning of Islam, a substantial part of Muslims believe that they are living in the Last Days. However, until now nobody is certain as to the future results of such a widespread apocalyptic conviction. Nevertheless, despite the above mentioned limitations in our knowledge, the stormy terrain of ISIS apocalyptic manifestations enables us to formulate a set of concluding remarks.