How IS teaches hate: insights from an ex-al-Qaeda jihadist

(The Christian Science Monitor) The rise of the self-described Islamic State has been so quick and its behavior so brutal that in the world’s collective consciousness the Sunni jihadist group has come to overshadow even al-Qaeda.

For Aiden Dean, a young former Bahraini (and now British) citizen who runs a consulting company in Dubai, the rise of IS is simply the latest iteration of a process of radicalization that breeds ever greater extremism.

The emergence of a powerful and virulent IS ideology “was an inevitable conclusion,” he said. “When you take people and put them in training camps to become fighters and jihadists and you pump into their mind the idea that they are going to fight against apostate regimes, it is a natural evolution that they will end up with higher levels of hate and anger against their own societies and against the world in general.”