7 Things I Learned Reading Every Issue Of ISIS’s Magazine

Sun Tzu, generally considered a reliable source on Good War Ideas, said something along the lines of, “You’ve got to know your enemy in order to beat him, because some dudes hate being kicked in the junk and others seem to enjoy it.” The difficulty we’ve had defeating ISIS suggests that, maybe, we don’t really understand who and what the fuck they are. Everything we hear is filtered through politicians and pundits, each with their own agenda (“You know what ISIS is afraid of? Me, Donald Goddamned Trump!”). Fortunately, it turns out that finding out what ISIS wants is like finding out what a vegan eats: They’ll tell you. Which is to say that ISIS has a magazine.

No, really. It’s an actual glossy, full-color magazine called Dabiq, complete with feature articles and photo spreads. So, in the interest of understanding just what makes these violent lunatics tick, I read through 700-plus pages of this oddly well-put-together propaganda and learned …

7) The Islamic State’s Official Publication Is Pretty Slick

Maybe it’s not surprising that the Islamic State has a regular periodical: Every crazy group of violent assholes in the world has some sort of leaflet or zine they publish. But Dabiq, the ISIS equivalent of Time mixed with People and a Chick tract, is something very different.

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Image from an ISIS magazine