The Saudi royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the country and gives legitimacy to the regime.
.. One has to live in the Muslim world to understand the immense transformative influence of religious television channels on society by accessing its weak links: households, women, rural areas.
.. It is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below, while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and denounce a crime against humanity.
.. Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense editorial industry remains intact?
.. Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books.
The utopia of Isis: inside Islamic State’s propaganda war
Looking at Dabiq, she found that images promoting the idea of an “idealistic caliphate” far outnumbered photographs of killings and torture. Overall, she estimates that only 5 per cent of imagery produced and distributed by Isis is violent.
.. But part of the modernity of Isis is its high level of media literacy. Terror is only part of the movement’s communications strategy: it knows it must offer hope, too. Fahmy points to images showing serenity and repentance – “suggesting that any individual will always be embraced by the organisation and forgiven for past affiliations upon joining the ‘caliphate’” – alongside others promoting the idea of victimisation by the West, such as graphic photographs of children killed by drone strikes.
How to Beat ISIS: Destroy the Group’s Economy
“Another basic requirement that I have been fighting to advance for 30 years is to come to an international consensus on the definition of terrorism.
“In my definition, it is the targeting of civilians to achieve political goals. That’s it. Instead, all sorts of politics gets mixed in. This one’s a freedom fighter, and so on. Even if a group has a legitimate cause, it should be agreed that using that tool of targeting civilians is not legitimate.
How to Fight ISIS
One major problem is that Arab countries are divided on who the main enemy is, making it impossible to focus resources on defeating ISIS. Saudi Arabia is more concerned with Iran and toppling President Bashar al-Assad of Syria; Turkey wants to oust Mr. Assad and put down separatist Kurds; Iraq’s central government is primarily interested in preserving its Shiite-majority rule.
.. Only if America, Russia and other governments agree on a political settlement to end the Syrian war will there be a realistic opening for the warring parties to shift from fighting Mr. Assad to fighting the Islamic State.
.. Banning all refugees, as some in America and Europe are demanding, would be an ineffective and tragic capitulation to fear.