Dimashqee his history featured in the foreign policy journal

Initially, what led me to consider whether ISIL met the criteria for a cult months before Kerry and Abbott’s proclamations was their loaded language. Lifton wittily expresses this as, “The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed…it is part of an expression of unity and exclusiveness.”[17] Twitter user “ghazishami”, who claimed to not be part of ISIL and yet for all appearances is a recruiter, often used the term “green birds” on his Ask FM page. It seems to be an Islamist reference to martyrdom. Other common keywords of ISIL are, among others, takfir, kuffar, khawarij, khilafah, tawhid, rafidah, Islamic State, ummah, hijrah, and my favorite, ghanimah (war booty). Not only that, but the one-finger gesture so common in ISIL photographs accompanied by the cry of “Takbir!” and anashid leads to a mind-numbing which is exactly what Lifton describes. A recent New York Times article confirmed this, “’When you fight over there, it’s like being in a trance,’ said Can, who asked to be referred to only by his middle name for fear of reprisal. ‘Everyone shouts, ‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,’ he said.”[18] In addition, the members address each other as akhi, or brother, and this implies that they are all brothers, no longer part of their birth families. This characteristic of ISIL is perhaps its most concerning indication of a mindless obedience to an ideology.






https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/10/28/concerning-features-of-an-apocalyptic-cult-in-the-islamic-state-of-iraq-and-the-levant-isil/