ISIS: A History
FAWAZ GERGES
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, $62

Under the Black Flag
SAMI MOUBAYED
TAURIS, $33.95

What little we know about everyday life inside the so-called Islamic State we mostly find out second or third-hand. The savage beheading of American James Foley in 2014 and the killing of other foreign and local journalists put an end to almost all independent news reporting from the territory under the sway of the extremists.

This is hardly the first time the "fog of war" has inhibited the reporting from a conflict zone, but an especially dark cloud has blanketed Syria and Iraq. The territory dominated by Islamic State, or ISIS, has been home to between six million and nine million people, according to Fawaz Gerges in his impressively detailed ISIS: A History, marking this an extraordinary blackout for humanity.

We hear of mass executions, widespread rape, and vicious punishments. The absence of independent reporters, permitted to travel freely, observe, interview witnesses and verify claims of atrocities or damage, has meant most information must be gleaned from within an intense propaganda war.

It's not that information is scarce; allegation and proclamation spills from all sides. But it's a question of what to believe. Social media is the preferred battleground for Islamic State, and Sami Moubayed's Under the Black Flag credits this savvy online campaign as the reason it has eclipsed any other Islamist group, even the once feared (or revered) al-Qaeda.

There is no ready counterpoint for local information from Islamic State. Patchy contact by foreign activists with opposition groups in Syria is arrayed against the heavily controlled state media pumped out by the Assad regime in Syria. In the political shambles of Iraq, reporters must be careful of anything that might upset one armed faction or another, with regular self-censorship a consequence of this climate of fear.

Meanwhile, Western governments and Russia provide only a glimpse of the fighting through careful official briefings.

As Gerges explains: "we know very little about the complex relationship between ISIS and the population under its control, and most of the reports are fragmentary and offer contradictory synopses of life under the caliphate."

So it is a measure of courage that German author Jurgen Todenhofer decided to risk travelling to the territory controlled by Islamic State, after seeking permission from the extremists through online channels, with the stated intention of reporting what he discovered.

His book, My Journey into the Heart of Terror, is a frustrating read, mostly the result of Todenhofer's cloying and self-referential style, inserting himself as a would-be peacemaker. He is almost evangelical, preaching the need to listen to all sides, having previously reported on insurgent conflicts and winning a wartime interview with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.

Yet although his ego can be a distraction, it should not obscure the gutsy effort Todenhofer made to navigate even a 10-day assignment in what must surely rank as the most inhospitable of political and security climates.

Todenhofer was reckless. He travelled alongside his photographer son, Frederic, and friend, "Malcolm" (an assumed name), even trying on an apparent suicide belt during one encounter with extremists soon after crossing into their territory. Having survived the dangerous trip, Todenhofer has produced a compelling story.

Of these three books, his is the most revealing, an accessible and on-the-ground illustration of the careful research and historical context that dominate the work of Gerges and Moubayed.

Doubtless, Todenhofer's sanctioned presence was also exploited by Islamic State - or at least that was the intention. Towards the end of his trip, one extremist reminds Todenhofer of the reason he was invited to visit: "they wanted to demonstrate the 'Islamic State' isn't a state in name only but really is a state."

Todenhofer saw the dismantled border between Syria and Iraq where this new "state" has been carved. The formal trimmings of officialdom are also readily displayed in a fascinating collection of photographs from his visit to Mosul, where the ubiquitous black flag adorns number plates on cars, street signs and police, all to give the impression of order.

But remember this boast of supposed statehood as you go on to read about Todenhofer and his two companions, sprinting across the border back into Turkey, fearful of being shot. Or the cynical offer by one extremist to stage an execution for the journalists to observe. Or the tense and persistent attempts at intimidation.

Todenhofer suspected the masked man shepherding their movements throughout his trip to be the notorious killer "Jihadi John", the British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi who cut the head off journalists and aid workers in gruesome videos. (Emwazi was subsequently killed in November 2015 in an airstrike.)

Islamic State may aspire to have a national soccer team - at least, so said one fundamentalist Todenhofer encountered - but the key ingredient for sovereignty, that of international recognition, is missing. Another Islamic State adherent believed the West would eventually negotiate with the extremists. To date, armed drones are deployed instead of peace doves. It is a reason why many political leaders have adopted the term "Daesh", to rob the Islamists of their pretension to legitimacy.

But even if Islamic State fighters are corralled, pushed back and killed, the simple appeal of this resurgent caliphate will be very difficult - if not impossible - to eradicate.

Gerges describes this "messianic ideology" at length, its strength stemming from effortlessly twisting to accommodate or refute fact and logic. He traces Islamic State as it morphed from the Islamists fighting the US occupation forces in Iraq after the 2003 invasion (Moubayed steps back further, to the 1980s). What emerges is a potent narrative of sustained oppression of supposedly "true" Muslims, where any inconvenient history or challenge to religious teaching is easily dismissed as blasphemy.

This modern history is awkwardly welded to the time of early Islam. Western democracy is rejected as putting human laws ahead of religious precept, and the Shi'a branch of Islam fiercely condemned. It was the sectarian attacks on the Shi'a - a majority in Iraq - that led to a rift between the forerunner to Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

What is clear is that a religious debate will not win over the zealots to ideals of Western freedom and liberty. (Todenhofer concludes his book with a rather silly open letter to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his fighters, invoking Gandhi, and debating the finer points of Islamic theology.)

But there is hope that the appeal of Islamic State and its vicious ideology is vastly exaggerated by its supporters and ultimately self-limiting. The attacks in the West, including in Paris and Brussels, as well as earlier smaller scale assaults inspired by Islamic State in Australia, Canada and the US, are a signal of failure more than strength.

Gerges explains well what he calls the primacy of politics in the battle to deligitimise the Islamist ideology, sparked by long failings of governance and development in the Arab world:

"ISIS is repressive, regressive and nihilistic. Beyond sound and fury and a cult of death, it has nothing positive to offer Arabs and Muslims. But in the eyes of many people, the dysfunctional Arab regimes are hardly an oasis of freedom, delivering neither democracy or prosperity" - and these trends go together, he concludes.

His argument is all at once persuasive, deeply depressing, yet hopeful. For all the years of sclerosis in the Middle East, political systems can be rejuvenated. The revolutions of the Arab Spring marked an attempt to do just that, and while hope has been hijacked by extremists, the opportunity to try again and again can never be taken away.

Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent at The Age.