Essential Reading on the rapid rise of ISIS and how it will influence global organised crime. Da'esh / ISIS / ISIL / Islamic State is the biggest threat to the world since the Ice Age. That sound dramatic but in terms of its ability to destabilise the world, politically and economically, even world wars have had limited impact. Da'esh has no geographical boundaries. It has no political opposition. It uses technology to function, recruit and communicate in ways that none of history's great armies could conceive of. Da'esh has an appeal to certain types of individual who, in simpler times might have joined a street gang or run away with the circus. It convinces vulnerable people that there is glory, charisma and heroism in joining it. And yet, much of its growth and the reasons for success are to be found in the way that the world functions. Da'esh is able to identify characteristics within societies and exploit them. To use the current, voguish, term, Da'esh is able to identify exploits and hack the world. Researched and written by Nigel Morris-Cotterill, a 20+ year veteran of developing strategies to combat financial crime, this special issue of World Money Laundering Report identifies and explains the opportunities that Da'esh (and other groups) are able to use to their advantage. Releasing the title, Morris-Cotterill said "Da'esh is like water in cracks in rocks in winter: as it hardens, it makes even the tiniest cracks turn into major structural weaknesses. This is not a problem caused by Islam: Da'esh / ISIS is a criminal gang which has developed techniques that exploit tiny weaknesses and hacks into them to destroy society. "Da'esh uses similar techniques to destroy Islam. It drives wedges between Islam's fifty shades of green which represent the sects and factions of Islam, promoting intolerance at every turn. "There are other books appearing relating to Da'esh / ISIS. They are, mostly, focussing on the so-called "Islamist" fundamentalism and on the extreme violence of Da'esh. This is not the thesis or the premise of my book which seeks to de-align this criminal gang from Islam in the minds of the world's population. Nor does my book support Da'esh's own propaganda that its behaviour represents the views of Muslims as a whole, a failing in much of the partisan work which is being published at present." The book also includes a reprint of Morris-Cotterill's 2004 paper "In Hot Pursuit of Terrorist Funds" written in the aftermath of a series of high profile bombings across South East Asia and presented to the high-level delegates to a judicial and law practitioners conference. *This work is a World Money Laundering Report Special Issue and forms part of Volume 14 (2015). It is included, in electronic format and without additional charge, in WMLR Site Licence subscriptions.