ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what rhetoric devices are adopted in the propaganda 'flagship' Dabiq to inspire like-minded individuals in Western nations to conduct terrorist deeds in their home society, or to convince and recruit foreign fighters to join the Islamic State (IS) ranks in the jihadist battlefields of Syria and Iraq. In one of the first publications scrutinizing the content of the first issue, Van Ostaeyen discusses how Dabiq was drenched with religious narratives and theological references to legitimize the re-establishment of the Caliphate. A meaningful framework to analyze to what extent IS justifies and legitimizes its use of violence, and to what degree this can trickle down in its supporters' perception of terrorism, is Bandura's theory of selective moral disengagement. The literature on radicalization and terrorist recruitment acknowledges that mediated communication, such as propaganda, functions to some extent as a facilitator for inspiring extremist ideation and terrori.
