You cannot understand ISIS without understanding al-Qaeda and the history they share, as well as the differences, there at the beginning, that would ultimately divide them.

ISIS' second-in-command is killed by a U.S. airstrike in Aleppo. October 2016: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the beginning of a major offensive against ISIS' stronghold in Mosul.

ISIS’s meticulous use of language, and its almost pedantic adherence to its own interpretation of Islamic law, have made it a strange enemy, fierce and unyielding but also scholarly and predictable.

So ISIS had been here, had done their damage, had burned their books, and this kind of destruction of the building that we're looking at would have happened right at the end. Liberation brings a ...

ISI/ISIS: First Iraq, then Syria By 2011, when the U.S. troop withdrawal was complete, AQI was being run by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and had morphed from a largely foreign to a largely Iraqi operation.

The early Arab conquests were nowhere near as consciously brutal as what we are witnessing in ISIS’s 21 st-century rampage.Of course, seventh-century atrocities did happen routinely.Sources ...

Watch FRONTLINE's documentary on the creation of ISIS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, and U.S. failures to stop the group's brutal rise.

David M. Perry: Calling ISIS "medieval" is a serious mistake. The claim that there's an inexorable conflict between Islam and "The West" is not based on history, but rhetoric used by extremists to ...

Fighting ISIS: Former CIA deputy director on call to send U.S. troops to Iraq, Syria 02:58. But instead of compliance, Iraq's second largest city has - at least so far - responded to the Sunni ...

ISIS’ cleansing of rich, plural history is meant to trap those under its sway with enforced ignorance. World’s response must be education to keep history alive.