zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — just a curiosity ]
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The hadith quoted in the upper panel is from p. 11 of the new issue of Dabiq, the magazine of the Islamic State.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi captions the hadith in the lower panel:

“When a son of Adam dies, his deeds are cut off except for three things: ongoing charity, knowledge from which one can obtain benefit, or the supplication of a righteous son for him.” [hadith on the authority of Abu Huraira]

His post attributes it, along with many other examples, to Jabhat al-Nusra.

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Sources:

Islamic State, Dabiq issue 9, p 11

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, Archive of Jabhat al-Nusra Billboards and Murals

[ by Charles Cameron — is there an OODA loop specific to the respective tempi of adaptation? ]
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Here, I suspect — as an admitted novice — is the crux of the news from Ramadi:

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Sources:

Pat Lang, Sic Semper Tyrannis

Martin Dempsey, Small Wars Journal

[ by Charles Cameron — guide books for the perplexed ]
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In his latest audiotape, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi offers two paths to those willing to follow him:

So there is no excuse for any Muslim who is capable of performing hijrah to the Islamic State, or capable of carrying a weapon where he is, for Allah (the Blessed and Exalted) has commanded him with hijrah and jih?d, and has made fighting obligatory upon him.

And we call upon every Muslim in every place to perform hijrah to the Islamic State or fight in his land wherever that may be.

Conveniently, there are two guidboos available in the Black Flags series, each of which deals with one of those paths:

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My own recommendations would be somewhat different:

do no harm

on the whole avoid anyplace mentioned in Robert Young Pelton‘s The World’s Most Dangerous Places, and

find joy in the fleeting moment

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[ by Charles Cameron — infernal and celestial geometries ]
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It is well known that the Platonic “ideal” circle is not to be found in the “real” world of people and things, since it would be composed of an infinte number of non-dimensional points. Human and inhumane circles, however, are another matter.

The upper circle shows spectators who gathered around the mangled body of an alleged homosexual, thrown from the roof of a seven-storey building by members of the Islamic State, and stoned the still breathing victim to death.

The lower circle is intended as a counter-weight to the atrocity shown above it. It is the Zen master Hakuin’s enso or zen brush-and-ink circle, perfect in its imperfection, its human spontaneity, and certainly not in the Platonic “ideal” sense.

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The Topological Musings blog quotes Plato from The Republic, deftly avoiding any mention of circles…

And do you not also know that they (mathematicians) further make use of the visible forms and talk about them, though they are not thinking of them but of those things of which they are a likeness, pursuing their inquiry for the sake of the square as such and the diagonal as such, and not for the sake of the image of it which they draw?… The very things which they mold and draw, … they treat in their turn as only images, but what they really seek is to get sight of those realities which can be seen only by the mind.

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Three circles: the utterly inhumane, the perfectly imperfect, and the impossible.

For a “transgressive” study of the issue of homosexuality and the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno, see John Boswell‘s Dante and the Sodomites, in Dante Studies, No. 112 (1994), pp. 63-76. What exactly “transgressive” means, I have yet to understand. I do however, personally, abhor people throwing other people off high buildings and / or stoning them to death.

[ by Charles Cameron — an astute PR move, i think — but still a slaughter of captives ]
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It’s usually the men in balack (IS) who execute the men in orange (Copts) — upper panel, below — but this time there has been a reversal of the color code, with the men in orange (Jaysh a-Islam) executing the men in black (IS) — lower panel.

I think the Jaysh’s choice of orange jumpsuits on this occasion was likely in deliberate and ironic commentary on the IS images, as indeed the IS choice was a deliberate choice echoing the jumpsuits of Guantanamo.

Note, though, that those executed in the upper panel were Christians, while the Jaysh is a Muslim outfit giving IS a taste of its own medicine. The Coptic Christians, by contrast, have been remarkably forgiving, treating the e=xecution of their own as a cause for gratitude at the faithfuoness of their martyrs.