The Sunni fundamentalist jihadi group that calls itself Islamic State (also known as Isis) is a force for pure evil in the world. It murders indiscriminately as an expression of disturbed religiosity and dreams of drawing the West into cataclysmic end-time battles.
Inspired by Salafi-jihadi ideology and millenarian fantasies, it enslaves and sexually violates women and children. It beheads, tortures and humiliates those it considers apostates or enemies. Its operatives throw homosexuals from the top of tall buildings. Isis has committed genocide against the Yazidi minority group in Iraq; Kurdish peshmerga fighters have discovered pits in which the bodies of Yazidi women considered too old to be taken as sex slaves were dumped. Isis is no “medieval” revivalist cult: it is a peculiarly modern phenomenon and is adept at using new technologies and social media.
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