If we cover a court case involving a murderer, we would still seek out the side of that murderer, even as we realize that what people say is going to be self-serving.
Rukmini Maria Callimachi[People who have left the ISIS] say that there comes a moment when the inconsistencies and apparent hypocrisies of their sheikh lets them down, and they begin rereading scripture and find ways that vouch for a nonliteralist reading of the Koran.
Rukmini Maria CallimachiThe systemic failure in the media in covering ISIS is that the majority of reporters are doing it in a semaphore fashion.
Rukmini Maria CallimachiI'm really curious as to the actual structure of the Emni [the intelligence unit that handles foreign attacks]. And Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the head of it. There are so few pictures of him. We don't even really know what he looks like. For somebody with this outsized influence projecting murder abroad, you'd think that we would know a lot more by now. And then the role of the hostages.
Rukmini Maria CallimachiWe know that Muhammad waged war against the Qurayshi tribe, his own tribe, and it's from that conflict that much of the concept of jihad and verses that ISIS now uses to justify beheadings come from. A young man just told me that he went back and read this carefully [and saw] the prophet and his people were fighting the Quraysh because they were not allowing the prophet and his people to practice their religion.
Rukmini Maria Callimachi