NBC Report: Child Soldiers Recruited By ISIS Learn About 'Religion'

February 23rd, 2015 6:39 PM

It never fails to amuse when news is intentionally vague.

On her MSNBC show this past Friday, Rachel Maddow showed excerpts from an NBC interview with a 16-year-old boy who had joined ISIS, become disillusioned, and managed to escape.

NBC News producer Jamie Novogrod reported that ISIS is claiming to have recruited many children -- "lion cubs of the caliphate" they call them. It's what Novogrod asserted that ISIS teaches its warrior wannabes that came across curiously circumspect --

MADDOW: Also today, NBC just put together some remarkable reporting. They found a 16-year-old boy who had joined ISIS in Syria as a 15-year-old. He became one of ISIS's child soldiers. He was wounded fighting alongside ISIS and everything. He ultimately though became disillusioned and he quit ISIS. NBC's Jamie Novogrod found this kid in hiding in Turkey and just did this remarkable interview with him. Watch this --

NOVOGROD: Sixteen-year-old Khaled says he is lost and on the run. We found him in this Turkish city near the border with Syria. He agreed to an interview on the condition that we not show his face. (Khaled, through translator) "I'm not afraid here, but I'm afraid of ISIS.'

Khaled was once part of ISIS. He didn't like it, so he escaped. ISIS calls its child soldiers 'lion cubs of the caliphate.' It celebrates them in propaganda videos like this one. Children are trained to use a rifle, given classes in religion, and taught to love ISIS and hate its enemies.

You mean, like, comparative religion ...

Suffice it to say that ISIS isn't teaching its "cubs" any such thing. And don't be surprised if that the highly acclaimed media wing at ISIS demands that NBC run a correction -- or else -- since one is safe in assuming that their Islamist curriculum consists of a single volume which must be read repeatedly, or else.

More accurately, ISIS is teaching its future cannon fodder about one religion, namely, the religion that must be mentioned sparingly if at all by NBC, MSNBC and the White House. (Yes, they are often indistinguishable in their pronouncements.)

Not only did Novogrod conspicuously avoid mentioning that these children are learning about (insert sotto voce whisper here) Islam, he decided against trotting out the now-obligatory description of ISIS representing a "perverted" version of the purported religion of peace.