Why did 5,000 Europeans join the jihad in Syria? The volunteers who left between 2011 and 2014 displayed a form of religious solidarity and a desire for revolution, which were later exploited by Daesh.
Is the Islamic State a state, as it claims to be? Or does it designate a new form of imperial sovereignty? Matthieu Rey traces the history of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, starting with European colonial rule and the two Gulf wars.
