Two new hipbonegamer appearances: Lapido & WotR
[ by Charles Cameron — two recent posts elsewhere, and two forthcoming posts here on ZP ]
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About LapidoMedia, including a great short Simon Schama clip
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My second post for LapidoMedia went up a couple of days ago, along with my first appearance on War on the Rocks.
The LapidoMedia piece summarizes much that I have written here about the Islamic State / Daesh and its apocalyptic view as expressed in Dabiq magazine. From Lapido’s statement of purpose:
Many news stories do not make sense – whether to journalists or policy makers who feed off what they report – without understanding religion. Lapido Media is an internationally networked, British-based philanthro-media charity, founded in 2005, that seeks to increase understanding among journalists and opinion formers of the way religion shapes world affairs.
It’s called religious literacy. We run media briefings, publish research and essays and work with journalists around the world. Our stringers practise on our website the kind of religiously literate journalism we wish to see, going deeper to the sources of social motivations, and providing a resource for other journalists. And we work with civil society groups on campaigns and media strategy to improve the flow and quality of stories with a religion dimension.
My Lapido piece, ANALYSIS: ISIS’ magazine Dabiq & what it tells us, begins:
THE TITLE, and much of the content, of the Islamic State’s magazine, Dabiq, emphasises the ‘end times’ nature of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s so-called caliphate.
The beheadings, crucifixions and most recently the burning of 45 people in Al-Baghdadi, grab the West’s attention, and are intended to trigger a military over-reaction, proving to those who are willing to believe it that the West is in a ‘war with Islam’.
But the Islamic State’s English-language magazine Dabiq has a different audience and a distinctly different message.
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I was also delighted to make a small appearance at War on the Rocks, thanks to both August Cole and Ryan Evans. WotR is working closely with the Brent Scowcroft Center’s Art of Future Warfare project, and it was my piece for that project’s first Challenge that landed me on WotR’s pages.
My story was excerpted on WotR with a link to the whole thing, and since I really like the opening, I’ll repost it here:
Flashing across my sub-eyes and a few dozen others today, those tiny edge of vision thunderclouds that when my saccade leaps to them indicate increasing war chance – lit by a single bolt of miniscule lightning. As my transport turns itself into its parkplace, too far from the Ed’s for me to throat her a quick morning buzz, I flipvision up and “Temple” appears in yellow and red across the sub-world, and an accompanying jolt from the adrenals gets me out of the comfort of my now stationary pod, through visual check-in and up to my console where I can dig into deets..
Not my usual Zenpundit style, but great fun to write!
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I want to note in passing that I am working on a few major posts, though they may take a while.
I intend to comment in detail on Graeme Wood‘s major piece, What ISIS Really Wants in The Atlantic. It gets one huge piece of the puzzle right, and for that reason I’m delighted to see some of the things Tim Furnish and I have been pounding away at for years getting visibility. Various scholars have weighed in, and one very interesting comment has come from JM Berger — I’d definitely like to weigh my response to his view, too. So that’s one forthcoming piece. Another, which would have been teh major piece for me this month all on its own if Wood’s article hadn’t appeared, will cover “countering violent extremism” — the topic, the White House event, the many interesting comments from Humera Khan, Clint Watts and others.
Also worth mentioning — in response to a suggestion from T Greer, I have a piece in the works listing the best books to read on Islamic apocalyptic, both for its content and context. But first, my responses to both Graeme Woods and the current interest in CVE — with a few quick posts along the way, while those twon are in preparation.
