[user104658]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

But they're so intermingled. Doesn't Koran call for a creation of a caliphate, like Isis tried to do?

Yes but that's why it's been ripe for manipulation. Religious texts are all full of rhetoric that's easy to frame in the context of War.

The tidal political forces in the middle east have frequently been western, right back to the middle ages, with Islam being used as a tool in that (just as Christianity has been used in the west, many times).

Whether or not there's still anyone at the wheel is another debate. ISIS was basically the result of deliberately created militant Islamic groups, funded, armed and promoted by the West and Russia throughout the 20th century. They then were "cut loose" and reformed as something different that DOES have religious motivation. But it's not a group that formed naturally.