Podcasts about what isis really wants

Watch the video version of this conversation (for patrons): https://www.patreon.com/posts/2Fhas-isis-been-24033979  In this episode, we speak to Graeme Wood, author of the award-winning book, The Way of The Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State. Graeme is a contributing editor to The Atlantic and wrote one of the magazine's most widely read and brilliant pieces of all time, What ISIS Really Wants. How did ISIS begin and what drives it? Is ISIS really Islamic? And will ISIS ever be “defeated”? We also talk about Graeme’s take on white supremacist Richard Spencer, his former high school classmate. Check it out.

DescriptionProduct DescriptionThe author of the explosive Atlantic cover story “What ISIS Really Wants” has written the definitive, electrifying account of the strategy, psychology, and theology driving the Islamic State. Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Graeme Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group. We meet an Egyptian tailor who once made bespoke suits for Paul Newman and now wants to live, finally, under Shariah; a Japanese convert who believes that the eradication of borders—one of the Islamic State's proudest achievements—is a religious imperative; and a charming, garrulous Australian preacher who translates the group's sermons and threats into English and is accused of recruiting for the organization. We also learn about a prodigy of Islamic rhetoric, now stripped of the citizenship of the nation of his birth and determined to see it drenched in blood. Wood speaks with non–Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam. The Islamic State is bent on murder and apocalypse, but its followers find meaning and fellowship in its utopian dream. Its first caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, has declared that he is the sole legitimate authority for Muslims worldwide. The theology, law, and emotional appeal of the Islamic State are key to understanding it—and predicting what its followers will do next. Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families. Many seek death—and they will be the terror threat of the next decade, as they strike back against the countries fighting their caliphate. Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower informed our understanding of Al Qaida, Graeme Wood's The Way of the Strangers will shape how we see a new generation of terrorists. Praise for The Way of the Strangers “Readers are taken on a global journey to meet the frothing fans of ISIS. . . . Wood wants to know these people, to get in their skin, to understand how they see the world. Unlike most journalists writing about Islam today, there is no partisan axe to grind here, no hidden agenda to subtly advance.” —New Republic “The best way to defeat the Islamic State is to understand it. And to do that, the best place to start is [ The Way of the Strangers]. . . . A series of gripping, fascinating portraits. . . . Wood has the talented journalist's skill for interview and observation. He's an astute psychologist and a good writer to boot. . . . It's a great read. But more importantly, Wood's book reveals truths about ISIS that are hiding in plain sight—but that our leaders make themselves willfully ignorant of. They ought to read his book, too.” —The Week “[Graeme Wood] shows, convincingly, that the stifling and abhorrent practices of the Islamic State are rooted in Islam itself—not mainstream Islam, but in scriptures and practices that have persisted for centuries. . . . The Islamic State, such as it is, is a dangerous place, and Wood's book amounts to a tour around its far edges.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review ReviewPraise for The Way of the Strangers “Readers are taken on a global journey to meet the frothing fans of ISIS. . . . [Graeme] Wood wants to know these people, to get in their skin, to understand how they see the world. Unlike most journalists writing about Islam today, there is no partisan axe to grind here, no hidden agenda to subtly advance. . . . To these troubled men, Islam is not an opiate of the masses; it is a euphoric, reality-bending, and ultimately self-annihilating psychedelic.” —New Republic “[Graeme Wood] shows, convincingly, that the stifling and abhorrent practices of the Islamic State are rooted in Islam itself—not mainstream Islam, but in scriptures and practices that have persisted for centuries. . . . The Islamic State, such as it is, is a dangerous place, and Wood's book amounts to a tour around its far edges.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review “Worthy of Joseph Conrad . . . In a field where there has admittedly been little competition, [Wood's] book ranks as the funniest yet written on Islamic State. As in many a British sitcom, the comedy mostly emerges from the disequilibrium between the scale of his characters' pretensions and ambitions and the banality of their day-to-day lives. . . . Gripping, sobering and revelatory.” —New Statesman (UK) “The best way to defeat the Islamic State is to understand it. And to do that, the best place to start is [ The Way of the Strangers]. . . . A series of gripping, fascinating portraits. . . . Wood has the talented journalist's skill for interview and observation. He's an astute psychologist and a good writer to boot. . . . It's a great read. But more importantly, Wood's book reveals truths about ISIS that are hiding in plain sight—but that our leaders make themselves willfully ignorant of. They ought to read his book, too.” —The Week “Indispensable and gripping . . . From Mosul to Melbourne, from Cairo to Tokyo, from London to Oslo, from Connecticut to California, Graeme Wood's quest to understand the Islamic State is a round-the-world journey to the end of the night. As individuals, the men he encounters are misfits, even losers. But their millenarian Islamist ideology makes them the most dangerous people on the planet.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, author of The War of the World “Over the course of its short life, the Islamic State has inspired millions, thousands of whom have rallied to its cause in search of a glorious death. But why? Are its devotees nothing more than sadists and two-bit mafiosi for whom religion is a fig leaf and who will fade away in the face of military defeat? In this essential book, Graeme Wood draws on more than a decade of reporting to demolish these and other comforting deceptions. The Islamic State's devotees are true believers indeed, and their nightmarish vision will haunt our world for decades to come, regardless of what happens on the battlefield.” —Reihan Salam, executive editor, National Review “Graeme Wood is America's foremost interpreter of ISIS as a world-historical phenomenon. In The Way of the Strangers, he has given us the definitive work to date on the origins, plans, and meaning of the world's most dangerous terrorist organization. Wood is a fearless, relentlessly curious, and magnetically interesting writer who takes us on an intellectual and theological journey to the darkest places on the planet, yet he manages to do this without despairing for our collective future. This book is a triumph of journalism.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief, The Atlantic Praise for Graeme Wood's “What ISIS Really Wants” “An intelligent and detailed account of the ideology that animates the Islamic State.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN, author of The Post-American World “One of the most important essays this year.” —David Brooks, The New York Times, author of The Road to Character “Fascinating, terrifying, occasionally blackly humorous.” —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature “Mr. Wood's piece is bracing because it is fearless. . . . It is going to change the debate.” —Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, author of What I Saw at the Revolution “A rare, genuine must-read . . . I felt challenged, even provoked, through it all.” —Shadi Hamid, the Brookings Institution, author of Islamic ExceptionalismAbout the AuthorGraeme Wood is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has written for The New Republic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other publications. He was the 2014–2015 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he teaches in the political science department at Yale University.

The author of the explosive Atlantic cover story “What ISIS Really Wants” has written the definitive, electrifying account of the strategy, psychology, and theology driving the Islamic State. Tens of thousands of men and women have left comfortable, privileged lives to join the Islamic State and kill for it. To them, its violence is beautiful and holy, and the caliphate a fulfillment of prophecy and the only place on earth where they can live and die as Muslims. The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State’s true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Graeme Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group. We meet an Egyptian tailor who once made bespoke suits for Paul Newman and now wants to live, finally, under Shariah; a Japanese convert who believes that the eradication of borders—one of the Islamic State’s proudest achievements—is a religious imperative; and a charming, garrulous Australian preacher who translates the group’s sermons and threats into English and is accused of recruiting for the organization. We also learn about a prodigy of Islamic rhetoric, now stripped of the citizenship of the nation of his birth and determined to see it drenched in blood. Wood speaks with non–Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group’s idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam. The Islamic State is bent on murder and apocalypse, but its followers find meaning and fellowship in its utopian dream. Its first caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, has declared that he is the sole legitimate authority for Muslims worldwide. The theology, law, and emotional appeal of the Islamic State are key to understanding it—and predicting what its followers will do next.

A 2015 article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood - "What ISIS Really Wants" – and the controversy it has given rise to, has brought once again to the fore questions about the kind of role scholars of religion can legitimately and usefully play in ‘defining’ religion in the public square. Wood, citing heavily the work of the Princeton Scholar of religion Bernard Haykel, is of the view that ISIS is Islamic, rooted in the textual tradition its supporters employ to authenticate their actions. In a response to this article, also in The Atlantic, Caner K. Dagli, associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, is sharply critical of Wood, writing, "On what grounds do non-Muslim journalists and academics tell Muslims that their judgment that ISIS does not take a full and fair view of the Quran and Sunnah (the example and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad) amounts to a 'cotton-candy' view of Islam, while these non-Muslims retain the right to judge how 'serious' ISIS is in its understanding of core Islamic texts?" However, it is not just non-Muslim academics and journalists and their critics who are engaging in the formation of representations of what is and is not Islamic through different media channels (responses and counter responses to What ISIS Really Wants are being played out across new social media, Twitter, blogs etc). ISIS/ISIL itself makes use of social networking to also engage in a process of making a claim on what counts as Islam and Islamic. This is a very public strategy that has involved the production and the global dissemination of videos of beheadings as well as the use of Twitter and Facebook to apparently lure young Muslim women, including those from North America and Europe, to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS and engage in ‘radical’ ‘jihadist’ activities. This in turn has received no small amount of media interest and some emergent academic commentary from those wishing to document and better understanding the way that young women might be ‘radicalized’ in this way via new media. This panel brings together experts from both academia and journalism that have engaged with: 1) The recent controversies over the way in which ISIS/ISIL is represented in the public square by academics and journalists; and 2) How ISIS supporters represent ISIS via different forms of new social media, including the rising concern over the radicalization of young women. The panel session was recorded at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta, GA, November 21-24. Panelists: Kecia Ali, Boston University Caner Dagli, College of the Holy Cross Sohaira Siddiqi, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Ayesha S. Chaudhry, University of British Columbia, presiding

Show NotesChris and Stephen “review” Rich Mullins’ 1993 album A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band because it’s beautiful, thoughtful, and still relevant today. The music is still passionate, raw, and wild; the lyrics are still pensive, powerful, and awe-struck. We look at how Mullins wrote the album as a letter to Christians about how to be alive in the hope of Christ and reality of America. Also, there’s hammered dulcimer. Thanks to our listener Austin Taylor for encouraging us to review more albums. Before You Go “What ISIS Really Wants” by Graeme Wood. “The Phony Islam of ISIS” by Caner K. Dagli. A response to “What Isis Really Wants.” “‘What ISIS Really Wants’: The Response” by Graeme Wood. A collection of responses to responses to the original article. What If Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?—Prepare to laugh. Music “78 Eatonwood Green” from A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band by Rich Mullins. Fair use. “The Color Green” from A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band by Rich Mullins. Fair use. “Creed” from A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band by Rich Mullins. Fair use. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. You can probably hum this by now. Links Andrew Peterson The Jesus Album “Elijah” An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis Previously on the show: 1.05: Ars Moriendi—The first album we reviewed here on WS. Follow/Subscribe Twitter: @winningslowly @chriskrycho @scarradini App.net @winningslowly @chriskrycho Subscribe RSS iTunes

7 AM - 1 - What ISIS Really Wants (courtesy of The Atlantic). 2 - More on ISIS. 3 - Marshall's News. 4 - 5 Bad American Habits I Kicked In Finland (featuring special guest Marshall Phillips).

What ISIS Really Wants (courtesy of The Atlantic). 2 - More on ISIS. 3 - Marshall's News. 4 - 5 Bad American Habits I Kicked In Finland (featuring special guest Marshall Phillips).