On
October 11, 2014, according to Islamic State-affiliated Twitter
accounts a woman going by the name Ahlam al-Nasr was married in the
courthouse of Raqqa, Syria, to Abu Usama al-Gharib, a Vienna-born
jihadi close to the movement’s leadership. ISIS social media rarely
make marriage announcements, but al-Nasr and al-Gharib are a jihadi
power couple. Al-Gharib is a veteran propagandist, initially for Al
Qaeda and now for ISIS.
His
bride is a burgeoning literary celebrity, better known as “the
Poetess of the Islamic State.” Her first book of verse, “The
Blaze of Truth,” was published online last summer and quickly
circulated among militant networks. Sung recitations of her work,
performed a cappella, in accordance with ISIS’s prohibition on
instrumental music, are easy to find on YouTube. “The Blaze of
Truth” consists of a hundred and seven poems in Arabic—elegies to
mujahideen, laments for prisoners, victory odes, and short poems that
were originally tweets. Almost all the poems are written in
monorhyme—one rhyme for what is sometimes many dozens of lines of
verse—and classical Arabic metres.
By
Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel
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