Ed Husain

that motivated him, but then he developed an entire ideology.

And I'll say this, Constantine, that the best way to approach the Muslim Brotherhood is to see it as an ideology.

So if we talk about something called the MBI, Muslim Brotherhood ideology, and then we're onto something, then we're fighting the true battle of ideas.

Just saying we're going to shut down their bank accounts, although helpful, is really putting a Band-Aid, as they say here in America, or a plaster back home in England.

with the bleeding problem that the Muslim Brotherhood have sought to create across the world.

Correct.

And it's correct because if you take away the argument for creating what they call an Islamic state, then you end up in accepting the status quo, modernity, multiple nation states, and working within these sovereign jurisdictions where you have the rule of law

As the late great Roger Scruton used to put it, the rule of law has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction is the nation state.

That's why some of us have reservations about something called international law.

Well, who's going to enforce it?

So that's the way of the modern world.

Now, those who believe in the Islamic State believe ultimately in creating some kind of Islamist empire.

And while they call it an Islamic state, what they mean is their state, their interpretation of Sharia, their form of law, and they or their allocated leaders are in charge for this supranational state.

And it's a confrontational state.

It's an expansionist state.

So it's much like, say, I don't know, the Soviet Union, or at its heyday, the Ottoman Empire,

The Chinese weren't really expansionist in those days.

So the question is, what is a caliphate or what is an Islamic state?

The hallmark of their understanding of the Islamic state is that it must have one leader and it must have frontiers and not borders.

In other words, frontiers are temporary and they can expand.