Patience

This chapter examines a speech given by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then-caliph of the Islamic State, in August 2018. After four years of intense, unrelenting pressure from the anti-Islamic State coalition and a variety of local actors across the Middle East and North Africa, by 2018, the movement was a hollowed-out shell of what it had been at the peak of its second resurgence. It now held only two per cent of the territory it controlled at its high point, and it was in this context that, after a year of silence, Baghdadi delivered this hour-long address. In it, Baghdadi seeks to persuade his movement to remain patient, committed, and unified during this time of ‘purification,’ pointing as he does to historical precedent and divine promise, assuring his listeners that only unwavering commitment to the movement’s manhaj (method) guarantees survival and, eventually, success.