A 19-ton Truck In The Gardens Of The Afterlife

You’ve pored over the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, and Der Spiegel online, now dip into the monthly ISIS publication on the dark web.

- Andrey Kolmogorov

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU stir Cosmopolitan, GQ, You, Joy Magazine and Popular Mechanics into a boiling vat of blood? Rumiyah, the monthly magazine put out by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The publication title is aspirational: it’s named after Rome, a city on the target bucket list of many ISIS supporters. As new editions of Rumiyah appear, they’re dredged up from the deep web and posted by the Clarion Project, a non-profit organisation focused on revealing the activities of radical Islamists.

Like its predecessor publication Dabiq, Rumiyah isn’t just an appalling read that leaves you feeling sullied and scared. It’s also enlightening.

You get straight-talk from the mujahideen, or at least from their marketing people. The central message is unequivocal – as one article sassily puts it, “The Kafir’s blood is Halal for you, so shed it”. There is plenty of practical advice. Blades are the classic weapon, given their place in holy scripture (“When you encounter those who disbelieve, then strike their necks until when you have massacred them”).

The second issue of Rumiyah, from October 2016, suggests getting a knife with a guard “to prevent one’s hand from sliding forward on to the blade when plunging it into a victim”. Then find a target, such as “a drunken kafir on a quiet road returning home from a night out… or someone by himself in an alley close to a night club or another place of debauchery, or even someone out for a walk in a quiet neighbourhood”. On meeting the target, “A swift slice across the face should quickly subdue them, as very few people will continue to fight once the smell, feel, and sight of blood becomes apparent”.

The author suggests striking the victim’s head with a baseball bat, then slitting his throat.