Just as the Caliphate of ISIS seems to be crumbling in Iraq and Syria, it has opened a new front in the Philippines, where it has sacked a Catholic Church and uploaded a video which contains threats directed at Pope Francis himself. Even if ISIS is wiped out in Raqqa and Mosul, the franchise, one fears, will continue elsewhere. Recently Channel Four produced a drama entitled The State, shown over four nights, which I have just seen on catch-up. It is excellent, as far as dramas go, most would agree, but it fails to answer the question we all have: why does any western-raised Muslim make the journey to Syria to join ISIS? Peter Kosminsky’s drama told the story of two protagonists, one male and one female, who join ISIS only to be bitterly disillusioned. The nice young chap from Wembley and the very good-looking doctor with a young son both find that beheadings, beatings, slavery, forced marriage, child rape and other such things are not to their choice. But could anyone honestly think that life under ISIS would be any different? After all, ISIS itself has provided us with videos of its punishment regime; all the nasty things that go on there are not claims made by western propaganda. So why do people join ISIS? They are not starry-eyed idealists who do not know what they are doing, surely. It is most unlikely too that they are driven by political concerns, as very few westerners know much about the internal politics of a country like Syria. What draws them is something far more visceral, and would draw them to wherever the black banner is raised, be it Syria, Iraq or the Philippines. My guess, and it is no more than that, is that young people are attracted to ISIS by its focus on cruelty and iconoclastic destruction. George Orwell, our greatest political writer, might well have done ISIS justice, but what he writes in 1984 surely applies to the Caliphate: