Less than three years later, Iraq is on the point of collapse, with the al-Maliki government unable to mount effective resistance against the Islamist fanatics making their way towards Baghdad, once the capital of the mighty Abbasid Caliphate. Their stated ambition is to storm the capital and restore it to its former Islamic glory. As an imam for the ISIS fighters remarked yesterday, Iraq has experimented with secular governments during the Ba’athist era, as well as during the monarchy that was overthrown in the Fifties. “Now the time has come for us to return the country to a truly Islamic state,” he said.