“She [Isis] invented a form of shorthand which she taught to the Egyptians and provided them a way to abridge their excessively involved script.”
Source: The Book of the City of Ladies
“I propose that we change its abbreviation from ISIL or ISIS into a new name that contains the initial letters of each country or lobby that contributed to its existence.”
“If Beirut was the supermarket of the left in the 1970s, where Marxists, communists, Egyptians, Iraqis, and all the Palestinian factions debated and theorized, published and drank in bars arguing over ideas and the fought in the streets, Peshawar was the supermarket of the Islamists in the 1980s without drinking: there the discussions were about Islamic law, fatwas, the war of the believers, the unity of the Muslim nation, and the humanitarian needs of Afghan refugees.”
Source: Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
“FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, ROEI DAT ONKRUID VAN HET KALIFAAT NU EINDELIJK EENS UIT, STUUR JE TROEPEN, INCLUSIEF JE VREEMDELINGENLEGIOEN NAAR AR-RAQQAH EN DOE WAT VREDESDUIF OBAMA NALAAT TE DOEN, KUIS ER DE AUGIASSTALLEN OP DIE DE AMERIKANEN ER NALIETEN. EN DOE HET NIET MET VLIEGMACHIENTJES MAAR MET GRONDTROEPEN, VERDOMME!”
Source: ISIS & Het Kalifaat
“I continue to marvel at this. We got incredibly angry when the city of Palmyra, Syria, was destroyed by IS because the city was reminiscent of pre-Muslim times, shall we say. And I see this as an extension of that. It is nonsense to think that you can erase a past that you don't like.”
“In the room, the clocks tick, unseen.
It has been a day of shadows and redirection,
revelation and lies. Diane gets the vague
sense that Kotey — with his confi dence and
his silence — might think himself to be the
smartest person in the room. He is intelligent
yes, but it’s an intelligence that needs to wear
a disguise. And besides, the smartest person
in the room is the one who knows she, or
he, is never the smartest at all: herein lies the
contradiction. She wonders now if he has just
said exactly the things she wanted to hear? She
knows herself to be naïve at times: she admits
this to herself. Yes, it is true, she has often been
far too open to people in the past. She has been
stung. Government offi cials who have deceived
her. Pretenders from the FBI. Misdirection
from the State Department and White House.
Politicians. Negotiators. Informers. Conmen.
And, perhaps now, Kotey. But she also knows
that the naivety is necessary to cultivate
something deeper. She wants to remain open
to the world. Compassion, Lord. And mercy.
And patience.
There will be one more session tomorrow.
Perhaps they will achieve something more
than this intimate stand-off . But then again,
perhaps nothing.
She pulls back her chair and thanks him. It is
dangerous, she knows, to thank him, her son’s
murderer. But she must do it anyway. Perhaps
it’s only politeness. Perhaps it’s something
more.
“In another life,” she says, “you and Jim might
have been friends.”
“...the fanatics who slaughter the innocent and defenseless, pillaging villages, enslaving women and children, believe themselves to be holy. With every sorrow and suffering they rain on other humans, they expect to earn favor in the eyes of God, move closer to completing the bridge from this world to their exclusive paradise. How can anyone assume they will please the Creator by hurting His Creation?”
Source: There Are Rivers in the Sky
“What led me to Syria in 2013 to rescue my only son from the grips of ISIS? It was genetics and geography and a Moroccan girl and a small crack that opened in my son's mind after a breakup.”
Source: Rescued from ISIS: The Gripping True Story of How a Father Saved His Son
“You'll never truly understand, Marriages, Divorces, Anxieties, Childbirth, Death of a loved one, Parenting.
Until something like this occurs to you, Life is not governed by theories and assumptions. You think you are smarter than others until life humbles you.”
“He'd broken up with a girl, and he wanted to remake himself. It could have been something else he fell into — professional kickboxing, Zen Buddhism, meditation — but it just happened that the Moroccan girl placed a certain word in his head. And it sprouted like a seed.”
Source: Rescued from ISIS: The Gripping True Story of How a Father Saved His Son