The New York Times: “ISIS and the Lonely Young American”

James Foley, a journalist she had never heard of, had been beheaded by ISIS, a group she knew nothing about. The searing image of the young man kneeling as the knife was lifted to his throat stayed with her.

Riveted by the killing, and struck by a horrified curiosity, she logged on to Twitter to see if she could learn more.

I was looking for people who agreed with what they were doing, so that I could understand why they were doing it, she said. It was actually really easy to find them.

She found herself shocked again, this time by the fact that people who openly identified as belonging to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, took the time to politely answer her questions.

Rukmini Callimachi

Taking advantage of the weak and lonely, the sign of a horrible organization.

On the other hand, what kind of person sees people beheading journalists and befriends them because they are polite on Twitter?

Alex imagined her role with the Islamic State as a mother, she said — a goal that felt painfully elusive in rural Washington, where her last relationship ended traumatically years earlier.
Credit Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

Maybe Alex should have researched whet happens to women of the wrong religion under ISIS:

QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

Rukmini Callimachi