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[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]
The debate goes on and on but I don't think it is useless.      For myself, I am trying to understand where the barbarism of ISIS comes from.        The simplistic explanations -- they are just lunatics, it is the nature of Islam, it is a reaction to years of Western imperialism -- might each have a very tiny bit of truth, but none of them come close to being sufficient.

For me the subject is academic, but I sometimes need to remind myself that for my Muslim friends, neighbors and co-workers, the subject an be a painful one.    I do try to be careful with my language but I am sure that I don't always succeed. [/quote]

The origin of ISIS can be addressed in several different dimensions. Here are several aspects:

1) the history of IS/ISIS/ISIL/al-Qaida in Iraq/Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad
2) the development of the religious/political thought that forms the basis of the group's ideology originating with Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab
3) the characteristics of its political agenda that reject the nation/state and harken to a period preceding the Treaty of Westphalia
4) the movement as a reaction to colonialism, imperialism, and foreign hegemony.

Books can be written on this topic and I am sure many will be -- most of them lousy. But, I think the difficulty in explaining IS is our inherent need to simplify things to make them understandable. The world view of IS is so radically different from what we are used to that we are on different intellectual planes. They don't just reject colonialism, but the entire nation-state system that made it possible. In many ways, the Islam practiced by IS attempts to be more pure than that practiced by Muhammad himself. Certainly it is more extreme than any of the previous Islamic empires. For instance, IS routinely destroys cultural icons that existed under Muslim rule for centuries. They are not trying to return to the past, but to a time that never existed. And, when it's all said and done, you really have to wonder if they really came up with all of these ideas or are just on the back of a tiger and making things up as they go along. There are times that you can't tell serious political thought from the drunken ramblings of a guy in the bar. 
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