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[ by Charles Cameron — it’s not only HM Government (FCO) that can wield a nifty DoubleQuote ]
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Consider this:

ISIS commander mocked in Syria… for looking like a doner kebab http://t.co/5pXaALQkFG pic.twitter.com/kQpXB2qpCv

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 17, 2015

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DoubleQuote use n+3:

with satirical intent

[ by Charles Cameron — is this the foolishness of men, or of God? ]
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Icon by Coptic artist Tony Rezk. The martyrs’ faces are the faces of Christ.

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In a CNN piece titled Coptic Christian bishop: I forgive ISIS, Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, had this to say:

Q: Not long after the video released, you tweeted about the killings, using the hashtag #FatherForgive. Did you mean that you forgive ISIS?

A: Yes. It may seem unbelievable to some of your readers, but as a Christian and a Christian minister I have a responsibility to myself and to others to guide them down this path of forgiveness. We don’t forgive the act because the act is heinous. But we do forgive the killers from the depths of our hearts. Otherwise, we would become consumed by anger and hatred. It becomes a spiral of violence that has no place in this world.

Striking though that is, you might think it’s easier for a Church official to say such things in a pastoral context than it is for someone more closely involved.

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As described in a Christian Today article, a Young Iraqi girl says she hopes God will forgive ISIS — the article links to a shorter version of this video:

She’s a child, though, and children are inocent in a way that may not survive so easily into adulthood…

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But then there’s a second Christian Today article, titled Brother of slain Coptic Christians thanks ISIS for including their words of faith in murder video. Here we have close family members of those who died, expressing the same grief, the same forgivess, the same assurance, in a second video:

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In yet a third article discussing both videos, Videos showing Christians forgiving Islamic State spread through Middle East, we read:

Beshir Kamel, from the home village of 13 of the 21 Egyptians whom the Coptic Orthodox Church has now recognised as martyrs, prayed that God would “open the eyes” of their killers to be “saved”. Myriam, from Qaraqosh in Iraq, said “God loves everybody” including IS members, but “he wouldn’t let IS kill us”. Sitting in a half-built shopping mall which had become her family’s temporary home, she ended her interview by singing a song of joy about being made complete in Jesus to a tune her mother had written.

Samir said: “These clips provide a counter-shock to the horrifying videos of killings that people receive on mainstream media and to their effect on viewers. Myriam’s and Beshir’s calls are a form of resistance through forgiveness. Forgiveness is the core of the Christian message and the core of the message of SAT-7 at a time when mainstream media avoids reporting on Christians.”

This is distinctly not tit-for-tat, even at close quarters.

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I would like to close with this truly remarkable sermon, given by that same Bishop Angelaos, which sets the forgiveness we have seen above, in the context of theology, humility and witness:

[ by Charles Cameron — more exectly, flag / stone — but a DoubleLogo either way ]
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#BreakingNews #Tikrit is liberated from anti-Western islamist extremists … by Anti-Western islamist extremists. pic.twitter.com/08NmZ5DDoo

— Conflict Reporter (@Conflict_Report) March 10, 2015

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I like this because of the twinning of logos in the image, a sort of DoubleQuote in the Wild, and also because of the parallelism of opposites it proposes in the wording of its text portion — Shia militia vs Sunni IS.

Grurray asked me whether it was the Hezbollah flag, and I made my guess but asked Phillip Smyth, who covers Shia militias in Iraq on Aaron Zelin‘s Jihadology.net at Hizballah Cavalcade. He replied:

@hipbonegamer @Grurray @Conflict_Report that's saraya tali'a khurasani AKA saraya khurasani. Note: logo is directly based on IRGC's.

— Phillip Smyth (@PhillipSmyth) March 10, 2015

@hipbonegamer @Grurray @Conflict_Report http://t.co/tBSmEnfSPi wrote this on em back in 2013. Needs an update,but you can see logo's genesis

— Phillip Smyth (@PhillipSmyth) March 10, 2015

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For further details on Shiite militias, see Phillip’s…

ICYMI, my monograph for @WashInstitute: "The Shiite Jihad in Syria and Its Regional Effects": http://t.co/VtIz2u2Gz9 pic.twitter.com/0toOdR8Vhw

— Phillip Smyth (@PhillipSmyth) March 9, 2015

[ by Charles Cameron — when being up to the minute is no longer enough – Berger, Boko and IS ]
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JM Berger, as I’ve noted many time before and am far from alone in noting, is one of our very best analysts, and someone with a remarkable finger on the pulse of terror. They say the world is speeding up around us — a dubious position philosophically, perhaps, but one that many of us can’t help thinking is somehow correct, even if the phrasing could use some refinement.

Even JM, it seems, can’t blink without one thing becoming another. A few minutes ago, he tweeted:

So, I walked away from the computer for an hour. Anything interesting happening? 🙂

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) March 7, 2015

— followed, I believe it was 26 seconds later, by this:

Boko Haram has officially joined ISIS

— J.M. Berger (@intelwire) March 7, 2015

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Also worth noting, while we’re on the topic of our most astute analysts:

The prophet @azelin did it again – Last month he identified the preliminary signals of #BokoHaram–#ISIS connection http://t.co/DBvxyu3Ah7

— Nadav Pollak (@NadavPollak) March 7, 2015

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JM Berger and Aaron Zelin — if it was Friday, I’d say, as I have before, #FF Follow Them!

But it’s Saturday, alas, and I’m too late.

[ by Charles Cameron — wondering how close we are to deep recognition of the millenarian nature of IS ]
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I sense a “change of direction” coming in discussions of terrorism — and IS / Daesh specifically — in the wake of Dempsey‘s declaration “This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision”, Graeme Wood‘s Atlantic article, What ISIS Really Wants, and Jessica Stern and JM Berger‘s forthcoming book, ISIS: The State of Terror — and once the Stern / Berger book is out in a week or so, I’ll be posting about that change as I see it, and as it affects my writing here on Zenpundit.

In the meantime…

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The Atlantic Council posted (above) the video of their recent discussion of last month’s war game in which “Eed Team” representing IS / Daesh took on “Blue Team” representing the US. I wasn’t at either that event or the war game itself — the second in their series — but while I was waiting for the feed to be permanently uploaded, I found time to read an account of the first game in the series in October 2014, and ran across this paragraph:

Despite its profound interest in waging holy war against Blue and the enormous symbolism of such a campaign, Red members agreed that it would be prudent to delay the launching of spectacular terrorist attacks against the US homeland. Attacking the United States on its own soil now would bring considerable symbolic and material advantages, but it would also come at the high risk of unleashing the fury of the most powerful military on earth. Washington’s most likely response, Red assumed, would be to escalate militarily and deploy US ground troops to completely root out Red. And once Blue goes “all in,” according to Red, it would most likely be the beginning of the end for Red (that does not mean, however, that Red would not put up a fight and incur heavy losses on Blue before its elimination).

Who were these Red members, and what was their level of understanding of IS / Daesh’s end times thinking, as manifested in the various issues of Dabiq magazine — and recently, since that first war game, noted by Wood in his Atlantic article?

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The thing is, Dabiq makes it very clear that IS, by reason of its eschatology, both desires US involvement and envisions that its own caliphal troops will be severely reduced in numbers before God grants them the final victory. This is in accord with one of IS / Daesh’s favorite hadiths, quoted more than once in Dabiq:

The Last Hour would not come until the Romans would land at al-A’maq or in Dabiq. An army consisting of the best (soldiers) of the people of the earth at that time will come from Medina (to counteract them). When they will arrange themselves in ranks, the Romans would say: Do not stand between us and those (Muslims) who took prisoners from amongst us. Let us fight with them; and the Muslims would say: Nay, by Allah, we would never get aside from you and from our brethren that you may fight them. They will then fight and a third (part) of the army would run away, whom Allah will never forgive. A third (part of the army). which would be constituted of excellent martyrs in Allah’s eye, would be killed ani the third who would never be put to trial would win and they would be conquerors of Constantinople.

Did anyone on the Red Team quote that hadith in either game?

I ask, because I’m wondering — in terms of that “change of direction” I mentioned above — whether discussion of the apocalyptic driver has reached “critical mass” yet.