Knowing What Not to Know About Islamic State
Terrorism Studies and Public Secrecy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11262835 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah G Phillips (0000-0001-5116-0854), Daniel J Tower |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 9-45 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Security (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2889 • E-ISSN: 1531-4804 |
| Publisher | MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1162/isec.a.4 |
| OpenAlex | W4413350531 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 9 |
This article identifies key differences between mainstream and Iraq-based understandings of Islamic State (ISIS) and how it rose to power in Iraq. The conventional wisdom in English-language discourses focuses on the group's organizational capabilities, particularly its military capacity, ideology, propaganda, and governance/state-building apparatus. Iraqi discourses suggest that in addition to these capabilities, the state opponents of ISIS enabled the group's growth because they benefited from its violence. The differences between these two broad narratives about ISIS matter because they reveal what is generally unsayable in mainstream discourses about the drivers of terrorism, which is that terrorist groups can reproduce through and alongside state power rather than in simple opposition to it. We conducted more than sixty in-depth, semi-structured interviews across Iraq with Iraqi and Western security analysts, journalists, humanitarian workers, and diplomats. Our interlocutors suggested that state actors had facilitated ISIS, at least at times. We argue that this facilitation is an example of what Michael Taussig refers to as a “public secret”—something that experts widely discuss but seldom document. The Iraq-based view that we detail suggests that states maintain power by enabling, and profiting from, unpredictable and plausibly deniable violence in the periphery—something that ISIS supplied in abundance. We argue that by obscuring how states can help make terrorist violence possible, mainstream understandings of terrorism create space for groups like ISIS to emerge in the future
Islam · Political economy · Political science · Secrecy · Sociology · State (computer science · Terrorism · Theology · Computer Science · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |