absolute best thing to read about ISIS right now

from Alireza Doostdar, who teaches Islamic Studies and Anthropology of Religion at University of Chicago Divinity School. from the div school's Martin Marty Center. here.

a couple samples:

The emphasis on ISIS’ Salafi worldview has tended to obscure the many grievances that may motivate fighters to join an increasingly efficient militant group that promises to vanquish their oppressors. Do they need to “convert” to ISIS’ worldview to fight with or for them? Do they need to aspire to a caliphate, as does ISIS leadership, in order to join forces with them? These questions are never asked, and “beliefs” are made simply to fill the explanatory void...

ISIS’ brutality did not emerge in a vacuum; rather, it is part of a whole ecology of cruelty spread out over more than a decade.

Perhaps a decapitation is more cruel than blowing a body to bits with a high-caliber machine gun, incinerating it with a remote-controlled drone, or burning and lacerating it with a barrel bomb. But even if we limit ourselves to close-up, low-technology brutality, ISIS beheadings are hardly out of place.

The earliest video-taped decapitation of an American citizen in Iraq was conducted by ISIS’ predecessors in 2004 in response, they claimed, to the photographed and video-recorded torture, rape, and murder of detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison [12]. In 2011, it emerged that some American soldiers in Afghanistan had been hunting civilians for sport and collecting their fingers and teeth as souvenirs [13]. In the sectarian bloodshed that engulfed Iraq after the U.S. invasion, beheadings by Sunni insurgents turned into a morbid form of reciprocity with Shi‘a militiamen who bore holes into their victims using power drills [14].

Rihana Arabic Tat Reprise: "Numb"

"Numb" is a fantastic song. Let's just get that out there at the outset.



The video is great too. It's also an occasion to for Rihanna to show off all her tattoos as well as lots of flesh.

At 1:43 you can spot her tat which reads (though you can't in fact read it) in Arabic (roughly translated) "Freedom in Christ/the Messiah." Viewers might not have noticed because they were looking at something else. Or maybe at her new Isis tattoo. (For a better view of the Egyptian goddess Isis tat and the Arabic one, go here.) Another view of the Isis tat is: here.

I've blogged about these Arabic tats before. And about Rihanna's pro-imperialist vid, "Hard," too.

I just thought you Rihanna heads should know about this latest sighting. Don't forget to listen to the song. (I want to know who is rapping early on. Before Eminem kicks in.)