ISIS / IS / ISIL / The Islamic State

Has this been resolved yet?

lol

Thousands of years of pointless conflict. Humans are stupid.

Ha, Cockburn.

Fuck. Turns out I know journo John C, apparently captured 2 years ago, media blackout until now, currently forced into making IS videos. Thoughts with his family. No words sufficient...

...except to say that John knows his Shakespeare. Implied message in there? Clever.

I agree that the media are right to stop disseminating these images, but I think they should have made this decision sooner.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/alan-henning-beheading-the-media-finally-stops-playing-the-terrorists-tune-9774984.html

http://pamelageller.com/2014/10/non-muslim-female-fighter-kills-herself-to-avoid-being-islamic-state-hostage.html/

The comments.

Just.

The comments.

http://vimeo.com/65517530

Hah! I've had that song in my head for weeks now...

Its a great song, eh.
The media reached peak ISIS a few weeks ago and I basically stopped watching the news. Ignorance is bliss.

This really isn't worth bothering with. The reports of Ozalp's suicide took social media by storm in Turkey but couldn't be independently verified by the outlets reporting it, which means it may not be true, especially as conflicting reports say she never left Jezaa, which begs the question why they bothered reporting the claims in the first place...

Geller is the "...founder, editor and publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA)".

She co-founded the 'Freedom Defense Initiative' and 'Stop Islamization of America': organisations labelled hate groups by UK government officials, who barred Geller's entry to the UK last year.

She has been given awards from such luminaries as the Creative Zionist Coalition who gave her the Queen Esther Award for Jewish Heroism and the Annie Taylor Award for Courage in 2010 from the far right David Horowitz Freedom Center. So is she a far right Zionist? Quite possibly. Can you trust anything she writes about anything to do with this whole subject? I'd argue not given her clearly vested interests.

Despite the name, Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. There is nothing in Islam that says do what they do, in fact it condemns it. The generally accepted definition of Islamist is someone who adheres to political Islam - i.e. they believe Islam should guide social, political and personal action. This is completely different to IS and it's completely unsurprising that Geller is busy conflating the two things.

The comments on the article are therefore somewhat unsurprising.

There was a good piece on IS and beheadings on the World Tonight on Radio 4 last night, talking about how this has become their trademark, possibly because it was something even al-Qaeda wouldn't condone: an al-Qaeda commander was once reprimanded by email by their leadership (it was intercepted) for filming a beheading and sharing it.

IS can't top 22 beheadings in a month though. Guess who beheaded 22 people last month?

Saudi Arabia, our coalition partner in the fight against IS.

So when are we bombing the Saudis..?

The French used to be pretty good at it too.

So did we: Walter Raleigh, William Wallace, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scotland, Cromwell...

The list is pretty much never ending but those are some of the more high profile ones.

Let's travel back in time and bomb ourselves!

I've just been reading a discussion board flashback page on this day in 2001, when the US (and UK) embarked on their invasion of Afghanistan.

The hyperbole, the rhetoric, the sheer certainty of what was written is eye opening. As were the cautious warnings.

Thank heavens it all turned out so well across the region.

Despite the name, Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam.

I wish people would stop pushing this point, it's not entirely true and therefore makes us look silly aswell as becoming ammunition for Fox news type 'debate'.

A large part of the appeal of IS is living independent of secular government and under strict sharia law. Other appealing aspects include not being shot, the easy life, getting high and getting to shoot things.

Other appealing aspects

If you're a fella, that is.

And heterosexual.

...or a teenage girl from Bristol.

Infinite respect to the defenders of Kobane

No.

Sounds pretty close to what Josef Mengele would believe in.

Can't we have a group in the Western Hemisphere that for every beheading ISIS carry out we multiply it but 100 here, or for anyone found fighting for ISIS from a family in the UK the authorities turn up, confiscate their possessions and remove them from the UK?

I think we should call this movement "The Angel of Death"

@diable, I think this is the forum you were looking for.

http://www.englishdefenceleague.net/

Ha.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29986353

Is he brown-bread? Let's bloody well hope so.

Indeed, but Al Qaeda seems to function perfectly well without Bin Laden, and IS/etc. are reported to have a very efficient military structure. Whether or not his successors are as 'good' a leader as him remains to be seen.