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From this article on vice.com:
The self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) has severely restricted use of the internet in its de-facto capital of Raqqa, requiring that all residents — including those in the militant group's ranks — access the web from observed internet cafes, according to international monitoring organizations.
An IS leaflet photographed and circulated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), advises that "all owners of shops with satellite internet must comply with the following: Removing Wi-Fi boosters in internet cafés as well as private wireless adaptors, even for soldiers of the Islamic State."
...
Activists worry that internet restriction is intended to clamp down on citizen journalists, human rights workers, and potential IS defectors.
Even under IS rule, activists have managed to sneak out videos, images, and accounts of daily life. In September, a woman with a camera hidden in her niqab walked through the city narrating her experience. The smuggled footage was aired on French TV.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:52PM
This post may contain bullshit.
Unfortunately I can't remember where I read the following description of IS (vice.com?? about a year ago), but it sounded interesting..
Basically, that article said, in the lawless areas between Syria and Iraq, lots of violent groups of fanatics competed for power. IS was different, not because they are more religious or more rich, but because they're more "despotic":
trained to obtain and wield power. They built an enormous spying apparatus (see? you don't have to do it all hight-tech like NSA), so that they knew exactly which members of the existing local power elite to murder / torture / blackmail / threaten, that's how they coerced cooperation and money from the region. And they are apparently very skilled in making people afraid and obedient. The foreign donations and weapons obviously helps a lot in capturing and subduing more territory, but the basics is that they're just a group of people that are very good at *keeping* their surroundings terrorized and under control.
So, that's what you get when you have a war and lose the "rule of law": survival of the fittest oppressors.
( And EU countries that have to take in more and more Syrian refugees (is there any text on the web that explains how asylum seeking logically follows from the Human Right "right to live"?). )
A while ago I asked on some internet forum (can't recall where, maybe it was even here) why no religious leaders issued a fatwa against them. The response was that there *was* in fact such an attempt by islamic religious scholars,
http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com/ [lettertobaghdadi.com] (warning: probably lots of Adobe Flash crap)
Now I'm stepping out on a limb, but to me it seems the problem is that the more afraid and oppressed people are, the more right-wing authoritarian followers they become, so such movements gain more and more power until they fracture from within (cf. Monty Python scene from "Life of Brian": splitters! )
As to which idiots fund these idiots, my conspiracy theory is that I once read that the royals from the House of Saud actually represent a more liberal and tolerant version of islam than the more fanatical Wahabbi scholars in Saudi Arabia. Can you imagine it? Sunnis who believe that Saudi Arabia is too liberal and tolerant might be more attracted to supporting the "real" islamists from IS.
I can't understand Arabic, but on the many (many!!) preaching TV channels on the Hot Bird satellite, there must be different creeds of islam represented. There is one headdress I see more often nowadays. What does it mean, when a TV preacher wears an arab headdress with a small upwards dimple in the middle? Those seem to preach with barely contained enthusiasm (I mean, like: "OK, I'm on TV. I *must* stay calm and reasonable. Trying harder... 10 more minutes calm and reasonable."). Maybe I'm just being racist now, sorry.