The Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) is an independent think tank dedicated to being a resource for government officials, business executives, journalists, civil servants, students and the public at large wishing to better understand international issues. It monitors geopolitical areas as well as major trends in international affairs.

Paolo Magri (2015), the Executive Vice-President and Director of ISPI, claims that the Islamic State “has successfully used as leverage the cultural concepts of religious Islamic tradition, so that it has become operational in the everyday life of its supporters, in future new recruits, and naturally, among its enemies” (6). He also asserts that this violent organization is waging both physical and psychological war - made of texts, images, and iconographies - on a global scale (Magri 2015, 6-7). According to Magri (2015), this book examines critically the narrative that the Islamic State portrays and deconstructs the organization’s messages, communication means and strategies, and its target audience. Magri (2015) claims that nothing in the Islamic State’s communication is left to chance and everything is carefully thought-out (8).

Notes from essays:
The Caliphate between History and Myth essay by Paolo Branca.
Branca (2015) claims that in the Muslim world the belonging to the ummah – rooted in religion – is a pan-Islamic ideal represented as an alternative to nationalism, even though the latter had brought end to the colonial occupation, it was seen as a legitimization to the territorial entities created by Western colonial powers, “splitting up what remained of the Ottoman empire according to national interests” (16-17). In his essay, Branca (2015) refers to the IS spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami in an open letter made public at the start of the month of Ramadan in 2014 in which he announced the change of the acronym ISIS into the simple IS, the only form of state that is admissible for the believers who have not been led astray by “democracy, secularism, or nationalism”, and who are therefore invited to recognize it as their own and to side with it (19).

“On 19 September 2014 more than one-hundred-and-twenty Muslim scholars issued an ‘open letter’ addressed to the self- styled caliph, generally known by a name that in fact does not appear anywhere, You Don’t Understand Islam. This text aims to reject the arguments of al-Baghdadi’s ‘inauguration speech’ by resorting to Koran verses and prophetic quotes” (Paolo Branca 2015, 22-23)

According to Plebani and Maggiolini (2015), the Islamic State proposes itself to be the ideal representation of an islamic state, and this leaves no room for compromise (29) and for the right of others to exist “in a shared social or political space, except in submission and deprivation” (27). Plebani and Maggiolini (2015) claim that this principle inspires the IS narrative of representing the enemy as humiliated and defeated (27-28).

Moreover, Plebani and Maggiolini (2015) assert that according to the Islamic Sate, the “good” Muslim living peacefully with kuffar is exposed to the most dangerous of risks of abandoning or forsaking the jihad, a major offence in the group’s eyes (35). Plebani and Maggiolini (2015) interpret the Islamic State’s view of the relationship between the believer and the non-believer as an indication of the need for Muslims to inevitably resolve this threat, first by acknowledging the risk and then by deliberately taking distance from non-believer by migrating (hijra – migration/separation) to the territories under the Islamic State’s control (35).

Plebani and Maggiolini (2015) state that the violence shown according to Hollywood standards and also inspired by video games shows that the Islamic State aims to persuade younger population for recruitment purposes; in this way, the authors assert that the Islamic State’s communication goes viral and is transmitted through a language that is easily understood by the average Western viewer, thus maximizing the psychological effect on its target (45-46).

The Islamic State: Not That Surprising, If You Know Where To Look essay by Monica Maggioni

According to Monica Maggioni (2015), the path from radicalization to recruitment, fighting and martyrdom was secret and in silence - she claims that the faces of mujaheddin were only seen after their death, when they had already turned into shahid, martyrs (53) - whereas, today, fighters hold discussions on the Internet, post videos of themselves leaving for jihad, and talk about their everyday life (53). Maggioni states that these new fighters find “a stage where they can be protagonists already in this life, before martyrdom: they already have a global audience to play for and they enjoy an unexpected popularity” (53). This “stage” is the Internet and the social media used as tools to disseminate the contemporary jihadist epic (Maggioni 2015, 55).

Through the description of the Jordanian pilot’s beheading film, Maggioni (2015) shows how the Islamic State has a remarkable quality of media output:
“The beginning is that of classic American action movies (the “Bourne” series comes to mind). the graphic and sound effects are those of a war video game. The quality of editing and image selection is truly remarkable. A 3D reconstruction of the jet flying towards Syria is shown, then flames in a village appear, then pieces of the plane and the title “Healing the believers’ chests (…)” (76).
“The extensive and careful use of graphic solutions causes us to be detached from reality and leads us to codes that we typically associate with cinema. The pilot is being skillfully depicted as the foe, someone who has allegedly perpetrated heinous crimes so despicable that the cruel fate awaiting him can only be regarded as an act of justice” (77).

“The way in which the various parts of the narration are entwined (interrogation, walk, cage) indicates that they were filmed at different moments, according to a carefully set script. Nothing is improvised: the men in uniforms, the light in the various points of the action, the symbols” (78).
Maggioni (2015) claims that the different IS videos are all coherent and consistent in terms of filming and editing methods, and all output is released on social networks in a systematic way; she states this to infer that there could be “a single director, or a small group of people, who are extremely sophisticated and familiar with editing, writing and spectacularization techniques” i.e. techniques are a combination of cinematography and video game production (78).
Through the observation of the IS’s communication choices, Maggioni claims that the caliphate’s communication methods are not random, but pursue various goals with precision and awareness.
She asserts that its first goal is to be perceived as a fully-functional state (Maggioni 2015, 80). The second goal, she claims is the proselytization within its own territory and at a global level while focusing on the message and epic tale of fighting against unjust, aggressive and corrupt West (Maggioni 2015, 80). Maggioni (2015) goes on to reveal a third level of communication goal which is aimed at other jihadist groups: with the claim that the Quran’s correct interpretation is that of the Islamic State setting up itself as a successful example of a state built on sharia law, in which rules and behaviours are based on the literary interpretation of the Quran (80).