Messrs Haykel and Bunzel, the "caliphal claimant, the Islamic State’s emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi", is Middle East's modern day Joseph Stalin. Although he invokes "the Promise of Allah", the caliphate he aims to build is not going to turn the clock back to a bygone era in the Middle Ages. Instead it is based on a vanguard of modern terrorism in a chaotic Middle East. What is unprecedented is that he rules a 21st Century totalitarian state under the banner of Islam.

He may have in mind grassroots movements and anarchism that history had seen during the French and Russian revolutions. The ISIS militants remind of Robespierre's Jacobins, Lenin's Bolsheviks, Pol Pot's death squads or Mao's Red Guards. They justify their systematic violence as a means of cleansing believers from "sin" and decimating infidels.

Under al-Baghdadi his caliphate is a regime of terror and it will probably be even more oppressive than the Taliban in Afghanistan before 2001. He firmly believes that his utopic realm would "flourish". In fact he is trying to recruit technocrats to run the territory for him. There are conflicting interests among the disparate elements ISIS has recently assembled. It is doubtful whether it can govern a state on any long-term basis.

Baghdadi's claim to speak for all Muslims has been widely rejected as absurd by the entire Muslim world. Since he is trying to eradicate every trace of Islamic tradition, he will not win support from meanstream Muslims, despite the appeal he has on "young people", who are tech-savvy and "have signaled their support for the caliphate". He is already facing strong opposition from many sides - not only from Shia militias but also rival Sunni jihadists like Al Qaeda, from which it split.

"Jihadism is clearly alive and well across the Arab world". Yet the US-led invasion in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein had provided the ISIS a chance to emerge. While Saddam was in power, there were no jihadists operating in Iraq. The "decades of unjust and ineffective rule" had prepared a breeding ground for "disenfranchised and frustrated citizens for organizations like the Islamic State to recruit" The demise of the autocratic regime had unravelled a secular state and the Iraqi state itself.

"Whether this new caliphate succeeds or not, religious violence in the Arab world will likely get worse before it gets better". No doubt ISIS poses a real danger - and not just in the Middle East. Let's hope that Al-Bagdhdadi's dream of a caliphate may just be a mirage.

