What ISIS Really Wants (The Atlantic)

[onager]

Very interesting article by Graeme Wood, and one of the best I've read explaining the core beliefs of ISIS:

Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse...

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Rebuttal and counter-rebuttal at Raw Story. American Muslim leader denounced the article as "wrong." But as Wood points out, he didn't say specifically WHAT Wood got wrong:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/americas-most-prominent-muslim-says-the-atlantic-is-doing-pr-for-isis/