I think of them as reversionist, though. Slavery was a big part of Islamic culture from 700 through, in some places, into the 1900s. Slaves were taken from southern, SE, and central Europe, from S. Asia, from Africa. It weakened Kievan Rus' before the Golden Horde's onslaught, terrorized western Europe, and the total number of slaves from Africa exceeded, almost certainly, the total number in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Russian poet Pushkin's grandfather was a black slave from, IIRC, Ethiopa given to Peter I by the Ottoman sultan in the early 1700s. There was a subgenre of English-language literature in the mid-late 1700s that dealt with Brits (and Americans) taken hostage or enslaved by Muslims in N. Africa.

They are to a large extent what a large portion of the faith community has been at times. Not always, not everywhere. But to be shocked at IS is to just show a lack of awareness of Islamic history. We focus on one extreme and mis-generalize based on that narrow focus; that's as big a mistake as focusing on the other extreme.

We wouldn't make that mistake with Xianity. We often seem to insist on that mistake when dealing with Islam.

In Yemen

"The conflict has produced another bitter legacy: a new branch of the Islamic State that has quietly grown in strength and appears determined to distinguish itself as Yemen’s most disruptive and brutal force, carrying out attacks considered too extreme even by the country’s branch of Al Qaeda."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/world/middleeast/islamic-state-gains-strength-in-yemen-rivaling-al-qaeda.html?_r=0

Saudi and Yemen tried for years to ethnically cleanse the Shia from Northern Yemen... doing horrible things in the process, like killing MANY women and children. Many of those bombs dropped we supplied to SA by the US.

This failed.

The Houthi, once just a minority, became rebels (you'd probably be one too if people kept trying to kill you and your family based on nothing but your religion). Those rebels attacked the capital - as you would - and took it over, and launched a campaign of installing Shia where Sunni was once dominate (mosques for instance) and ferreting out government corruption.

Saudi wouldn't let this stand, so they asked Britian and the US to help them bomb the crap out of the capital of Yemen, and the largest port. They also set up a naval blockade, mostly enforced by the US, which is responsible for - literally - starving millions of women and children. It is ongoing.

The Sunni elite that were expelled from the capital have dumped their money into al Qaeda and ISIS, who the Houthi are fighting daily. Every bomb we drop on the Houthis helps al Qaeda and ISIS.

But if it makes you feel any better, we at sold them the bombs we're helping them use... we sold billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi just this year...

And the reason most American's don't know any of this, is because SA has spent millions on Lobbying and PR. Their main lobbying/PR firm is Podesta Group, which is owned by Tony and John Podesta. Tony is one of the biggest lobbyists in DC. He's also one of the biggest Democratic fundraising bundlers. His brother John is the Chairman of the Clinton campaign.

Good times.

without money, these guys won't hold on to power long, and that approach wouldn't end up killing the slaves, rape victims, and others we'd supposedly be trying to liberate.

When we overthrew Saddam, we removed the Sunni from power in the area. ISIS now represents them, and the split between Sunni and Shia (who now govern Iraq) and the Sunni Arab and the Iraqi Kurds has become toxic.

ISIS is the point of the spear. Attack them en masse, you attack all Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. They are Fundamentalists; but they're abetted by the remnants of Saddam's Baathist military. Who were the Sunni resistance against our Occupation. Its a sticky wicket.