Tag Archives: murder

ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

Mother Jones

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ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic state that’s attempting to establish a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria, publishes a glossy English-language propaganda magazine called Dabiq, complete with slick graphics and high-quality photos. Dabiq is one of the group’s recruitment tools, coupled with its strong social media presence. The magazine, whose name references the location of Islam’s mythical Armageddon (a town in northern Syria), bills itself as an “informative” source for the activities of ISIS fighters, while preaching on holy topics and issuing decrees. Its producers claim that Allah approves the message: ISIS has “not a mustard seed of doubt regarding this.”

In any case, the fourth issue of Dabiq just came out, and it justifies all sorts of terrible things ISIS and its fighters may do in the name of Allah. Here are 10 of the worst examples, with quotations:

1. Sack other people’s cities

“We will come to your homeland by Allah’s permission.”

“We will conquer your Rome.”

“We will not rest from our jihÄ&#129;d until we are under the olive trees of Rome, after we destroy the filthy house called the White House.”

2. Condemn other people’s beliefs

“We will…break your crosses.”

“And those who have disbelieved—unto Hell they will be gathered.” (Although, to be fair, some Christians believe the same thing.)

“You are the best people for people. You bring them with chains around their necks, until they enter Islam.”

3. Enslave people, in some cases to save ISIS’s men from temptation

“We will…enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us…”

“Our children and grandchildren…will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

“The desertion of slavery had led to an increase in fÄ&#129;hishah adultery, fornication, because the shar’Ä« alternative to marriage is not available, so a man who cannot afford marriage to a free woman finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.”

4. Threaten and kill people

“You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.”

“You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us, and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.”

“You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawÄ&#129;ghÄ«t unbelievers. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

5. Turn women and children into sex slaves and concubines—those you don’t kill

Yazidi “women could be enslaved unlike female apostates who the majority of the fuqahÄ&#129;’ jurists say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the SharÄ«’ah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums taxes.”

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffÄ&#129;r unbelievers and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the SharÄ«’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’Ä&#129;n and the narrations of the Prophet.”

6. Plunder

“His provision becomes what Allah has given him of spoils from the property of His enemy,” because “wealth” was only sent to earth to create prayer and “people with obedience to Allah are more deserving of wealth.”

“Send them very much, for it will end up as war booty in our hands by Allah’s permission. You will spend it, then it will be a source of regret for you, then you will be defeated. Look at your armored vehicles, machinery, weaponry, and equipment. It is in our hands.”

Allah “legalized war booty” for Muhammad and his ummah nation. “War booty is more lawful than other income for a number of reasons.”

7. Murder civilians

Americans—”die in your rage.”

“Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

“We did not come as farmers, rather we came to kill the farmers and eat their crops.”

8. Ethnically cleanse

“It has become necessary for a trial to come, expel the filth, and purify the ranks.”

9. Use suicide as a weapon

Muslims “are a people who through the ages have not known defeat. The outcome of their battles is concluded before they begin. Being killed—according to their account—is a victory. This is where the secret lies. You fight a people who can never be defeated.”

10. Purport to help people even as you commit horrible atrocities

Dabiq

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

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Immigration Reform Is Dead Because of Bizarro Obama

Mother Jones

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John Boehner says he really, truly wants to pass an immigration reform bill, but he can only do it if President Obama gives him more help. Steve Benen isn’t buying it:

To a very real extent, Obama has already done what he’s supposed to do: he’s helped create an environment conducive to success. The president and his team have cultivated public demand for immigration reform and helped assemble a broad coalition – business leaders, labor, immigrant advocates, the faith community — to work towards a common goal.

But that’s apparently not what Boehner is talking about. Rather, according to the Speaker, immigration reform can’t pass because House Republicans don’t trust the president to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

What’s Obama supposed to do about this? “I told the president I’ll leave that to him,” Boehner told the Enquirer.

I think that translates as “nothing is going to happen.” Boehner’s excuse, however, isn’t that tea party Republicans are obsessed about amnesty and fences and reconquista and all that. His excuse is that Obama has been so brazenly lawless that Republicans simply can’t trust him to enforce whatever law they pass. This is all part of the surreal “Obama the tyrant” schtick that’s swamped the Republican Party lately. Every executive order, every new agency interpretation of a rule, every Justice Department or IRS memo—they’re all evidence that Obama is turning America into a New World gulag. Never mind that these are all routine things that every president engages in. Never mind that they just as routinely get resolved in court and Obama will win some and lose some. Never mind any of that. Obama is an Alinskyite despot who is slowly but steadily sweeping away the last vestiges of democracy in this once great nation.

Barack Obama! A president whose biggest problem is probably just the opposite: he’s never managed to get comfortable throwing his weight around to get what he wants. He’s too dedicated to rational discourse and the grand bargain. He hires guys who want to nudge, not mandate. He wants to persuade, not coerce. That’s our modern-day Robespierre.

Strange times, no?

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Immigration Reform Is Dead Because of Bizarro Obama

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I watched Othello for the first time.1 By chance, I had never seen or read it before. But that Shakespeare. He sure had us humans figured out, didn’t he? Here is Emilia, responding to Desdemona’s plea that she had never given Othello cause to doubt her fidelity:

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Why do I mention this? Because of Aaron Carroll’s tidy little summary of some Brendan Nyhan research on how to persuade people that the MMR vaccine is safe:

When they gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future. When they showed images of sick children to parents it increased their belief that vaccines caused autism. When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects.

Basically, it was all depressing. Nothing was effective.

So that’s that. They believe not for cause, but believe just to believe. ‘Tis a monster begot on itself, born on itself. Of course, it’s possible that Nyhan simply didn’t find the right intervention. Or that an intervention from a researcher has no effect, but the same intervention from a family doctor might. Still, Carroll is right: it’s all kind of discouraging. It’s nothing new, but still discouraging.

1It was the 1965 movie version with Laurence Olivier in blackface. Kind of disconcerting. But Frank Finlay was great as Iago.

UPDATE: More here from Dan Kahan, including a reminder that (a) vaccination rates in the US actually haven’t declined over the past decade and (b) freaking out about a nonexistent problem is genuinely unhelpful. Also this:

The NR et al. study is superbly well done and very important. But the lesson it teaches is not that it is “futile” to try to communicate with concerned parents. It’s that it is a bad idea to flood public discourse in a blunderbuss fashion with communications that state or imply that there is a “growing crisis of confidence” in vaccines that is “eroding” immunization rates.

It’s a good idea instead to use valid empirical means to formulate targeted and effective vaccine-safety communication strategies.

Much more at the link.

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Please Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, Vaccine Edition

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The Best Oscar of Last Night Was the Screenplay Award for "Her"

Mother Jones

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Today presents a blogging problem: The news cycle is devoted almost entirely to events in Ukraine—as it should be—and I’ve already probably said more about this than I should. I don’t have any special expertise in the area, and I really hate the phenomenon of instant expertise that takes hold of pundits everywhere whenever something like this happens. I’m keenly aware of all the big underlying issues—Russia’s long cultural ties to Ukraine; the eastward spread of NATO and the EU; anti-Russian sentiment in Kiev; the weakness of Russia’s military; Putin’s one-note thuggishness; Ukraine’s endemic corruption and its internal fights over who gets to profit from the Russian gas trade; etc. etc.—and also keenly aware that a bare knowledge of all this stuff doesn’t really make me worth reading on the subject. For what it’s worth, I’ve already made a prediction that Putin will stop at Crimea because (a) the Russian army doesn’t have the strength to do much more, and (b) Putin isn’t willing to pay the price both in military and diplomatic terms for a broader intervention in eastern Ukraine. But I could be wildly wrong. Who knows?

So then, what should I write about today? I’m not sure, though I imagine that I’ll end up writing more about Ukraine despite everything I just said.

In the meantime, how about a nice Oscars thread? No? Oh come on. I’ll toss out a provocation to get everyone started: the best award of the night was the Best Original Screenplay win for Her. Not because it was my favorite movie of the year or anything, but because it was the first screenplay in ages that genuinely surprised me. Not in the sense of a last-minute twist that comes out of nowhere—that’s common enough—but in the sense of a narrative that shifted directions smoothly and naturally into something much more interesting than I thought it would be. The art of Hollywood screenwriting has deteriorated so badly that this doesn’t happen very often anymore. I won’t say more in case you haven’t seen the movie and still plan to, but feel free to discuss in comments.

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The Best Oscar of Last Night Was the Screenplay Award for "Her"

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