Jihadi Dreams Are Made of This: Culture and Ideology in the Reels of Islamic State’s Propaganda Machine

Abstract

Dreams command great respect in Islam and as research has shown they have also been instrumental in jihadi contexts. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the better understanding of jihadi culture by providing a comprehensive description of the top-down use of dreams’ accounts by the Islamic State. Using data from Islamic State’s Anglophone publications and from a large collection of secondary sources I peel gradually the dream-related cultural and ideological content with the objective to describe and assess jihadi dreams’ dynamics for legitimacy and affect-driven decision-making. Along these lines, the repertoire of Islamic State’s dream operations appears to be quite rich, making the adoption of doctrinal information an easier task and providing instigators for the justification of (violent) actions and conversion, the defamation of the opponents and inspirational guidance.