The eight issues of the ISIS Magazine, Dabiq, that we read were certainly interesting. Many of the articles largely went over my head, because I do not have much knowledge about the religious terms and references that were used, but I found the articles about hostages and the sections about politicians speaking out against ISIS—titled: In the Words of Our Enemies—to be very interesting. The part with the words of the “enemy” felt almost ego-stroking, in my opinion, as if using the words of politicians speaking about the threat of ISIS to validate their own strength. I was particularly fascinated by the letter published in the magazine, reportedly from the hostage Steven Sotoloff to his mother before he was executed by ISIS (although I would not be surprised if ISIS altered or flat-out wrote the letter themselves). One part especially, in which Sotoloff writes about reminding his captors that he was a journalist and the captors respond that, like how US airstrikes do not differentiate between the armed and the unarmed, ISIS does not either, struck me. I have long been critical of Obama’s drone strikes, so I admittedly did feel somewhat swayed by ISIS’s argument—although ISIS, of course, should have let Sotoloff go.
I found the dichotomy between very violent, graphic images and picture of ISIS doing beneficial work—including building bridges, treating children with cancer, cleaning streets, establishing elderly care homes, etc.—to be quite interesting. I presume the “humanitarian” type pictures are a persuasion / propaganda tactic, but it did make me wonder about whether ISIS actually has those programs, or whether it is a total façade. I also wondered about the intended audience of Dabiq. It seems that it may have been an international, primarily Western, Muslim audience, particularly considering that the magazine was translated into several European languages. I do wonder about whether the magazine was read at all in areas occupied by ISIS, or if the magazine was purely a propaganda service used to persuade people across the world to join their cause.