New Document Cache Shows the Real Roots of ISIS Are as Much Secular as Religious

Spiegel has quite a fascinating report this week about the origins and growth of ISIS. It's a great counterpoint to Graeme Wood's Atlantic piece from February that focused on the Islamic and theological roots of ISIS and the territorial ambitions of its self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But it turns out that this is far from the whole story. According to Christopher Reuter, a recently discovered cache of documents shows that the founding architect of ISIS was actually Haji Bakr, the p...