There Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See

Yesterday, the Independent - a hotbed of jihad denial - published an article about a journalist who infiltrated and secretly filmed an ISIS cell planning a terrorist attack in France.

The journalist - who uses a pseudonym to protect his identity - contacted the group on Facebook and spent six months with them while they plotted an attack on a nightclub.

His account of what he experienced contains some important details, reproduced below (emphasis mine):

The man, who is using the pseudonym Said Ramzi to protect his identity, said he “easily” contacted the group who called themselves the Soldiers of Allah on Facebook. 

... 

“We must hit a military base,” Ossama says during the meeting at a park in Châteauroux. “When they are eating, they are all lined up...ta-ta-ta-ta-ta...or journalists.  

“BFM, iTélé [French broadcasters], they are at war against Islam. 

“Like they did to Charlie [Hebdo]. You must strike them at the heart. Take them by surprise. They aren't well protected. The French must die by the thousands.” 

He urges Mr Ramzi to join him on the “path to paradise” in a suicide attack, adding: “Our women are waiting for us there, with angels as servants. You will have a palace, a winged horse of gold and rubies.”

Having apparently spent these six months with his eyes closed, this insightful journalist proclaims as his conclusion:

"One of the main lessons was that I never saw any Islam in this affair. No will to improve the world. Only lost, frustrated, suicidal, easily manipulated youths."

Indeed, of all the content in the article, the Independent decided to make that bolded passage their headline for the article.

For those interested, that last part from the jihadi about the luxurious delights of Paradise is a truncated, adapted view of the afterlife as presented in the Qur'an, which says that the inhabitants of Paradise will be adorned “with bracelets of gold and pearls” (22:23) and “dressed in fine silk and in rich brocade” (44:53). They will recline on “green cushions and rich carpets of beauty” (55:76), sit on “thrones encrusted with gold and precious stones” (56:15), and share in “dishes and goblets of gold”, on which will be “all that the souls could desire, all that their eyes could delight in”, including an “abundance of fruit” (43:71, 73), such as “dates and pomegranates” (55:68). For the carnivorous, there will be “the flesh of fowls, any that they may desire” (56:21).
   
The "women" granted to Muslim men who reached Paradise are mentioned multiple times in the Qur'an, too: “voluptuous women of equal age” (78:31), “those of modest gaze, with lovely eyes” (37:48), “fair women with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes” (44:54), “like unto rubies and coral” (55:58), to whom men will be “joined” (52:20). These women will be “maidens, chaste, restraining their glances, whom no man or Jinn [spirit being] before them has touched” (55:56). Allah “made them virgins” (56:36), and according to Islamic tradition, they will remain virgins forever.

So the ideas this ISIS jihadist had about the reward he would receive for "slaying and being slain for Allah's cause" (Qur'an 9:111) came from the Qur'an. But apparently, the Qur'an is not Islam anymore.

No one can say modern journalism lacks informational value.