Center for Strategic Communication

[ by Charles Cameron — a DoubleQuote in two YouTube videos ]
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Today I’ll offer two YouTube videos that beg to be considered together — or at least, I think they do. Why? because they each suggest an “essential ingedient” in life, and that ingredient is very different in the two cases.

First, the bad news:

That’s quite a “call to arms” — and one possible response to it is a similar call made by Joel Richardson on his Joel’s Trumpet blog:

Dear fellow Christians, I would like you all to click here to watch the latest ISIS recruitment video, and tell me what modern Christian movement or expression matches the zeal and commitment of this Satanic movement? Its going to take something far greater than what we are doing right now. Its going to take a prayer and missions movement unlike anything we have seen to date. Its going to take a return to the early Church theology of the cross and martyrdom. Its going to take a genuine Global Jesus Revolution.

That same Joel Richardson, however, also brings some good news:

I explained to my host that unless a supernatural man bursts forth from the sky in glory, there is absolutely nothing that the world needs to worry about with regard to Christian end-time beliefs. Christians are called to passively await their defender. They are not attempting to usher in His return.

So at least from Joel’s perspective, violence is not within the ambit of his Global Jesus Revolution. Others may not concur.

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Okay, now for the good news:

I suppose I not only enjoy the heck out of this video — I also wonder about it.

How similar, and how different, is the enthusiasm of the largely-Muslim Malinke tribespeople here from that of the ISIS recruits depicted in the video above? Both are of Muslim origin, one from the Sudi Marabout traditions of West Africa, and the other from brutal Zarqawist Salafi-jihadism…

Are they both joyful, or is one filled with fear and anger? And does the different in Islamic tradition explain the difference — between destruction and dance?

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