The whiff of exorcism and devilry made ISIS a popular intellectual fetish in American journalistic circles, one that overlooked the contributions of American policies and wars to the group’s origins in favor of tracing just how much Quranic scripture infused the militants’ aims and depravity. Much less attention went to the cold calculation the West had made: that the Assad government was preferable to whatever more religious, militant order that would surely rise in its place. The ISIS chroniclers remained obsessed with religion, vividly portraying every atrocity the group committed as some
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