It seems that hardly a day goes by in which the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL,

doesn't appear in a newspaper on a TV news screen.

And the news is always bad, hideous death and wanton destruction of a type rarely seen in modern

history. So what is the Islamic State? Where did it come from? What doesn't want? And why?

Let's try to answer these questions in turn.

First, ISIS is the illegitimate child of Saddam Hussein's regime, An al-Qaeda.

Saddam's former military intelligence officers hold many of ISIS's most senior positions

and have overseen the group's rise to prominence. In 2002 and early 2003,

some al-Qaeda members relocated from Afghanistan to Iraq, where they prepared to fight the Americans,

who toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in March 2003. These jihadists became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq,

when their leader, Abu Mishab al-Sarqawi, swore his allegiance to a Sam bin Laden in 2004.

Sirqawi, a murderous psychopath, was finally killed by US and Iraqi forces in June 2006.

Following his death, al-Qaeda and Iraq was rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq.

In 2010, a new leader took control of the group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the complete US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011,

and the Syrian Civil War that began that same year. Baghdadi and his lieutenants greatly expanded

the size and scope of the organization. At first, Baghdadi was loyal to al-Qaeda's senior leadership,

but in 2013 he defied orders from his superiors, and declared that his group was now the Islamic

State of Iraq in Syria, or Levant, known by its acronyms, ISIS and ISIL. It's worth noting that ISIS

continues to market Osama bin Laden's endorsement of them to this day. What does ISIS want and why?

ISIS is attempting to resurrect an empire, similar to those that arose in Islam's early history.

These empires refer to as caliphates, and led by a caliph, the Muslim's chief ruler,

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