"...So, in the interest of seeing the fuller picture, let's take a look at the timeline on which ISIS and Hoda Muthana converged.
Hoda's interest in ISIS began in November 2013, a year before she left Alabama for Syria, according to an interview she gave online to BuzzFeed in April 2015, from what was then her new home in Raqqa, Syria, via a messaging app called Kik.
During the year in which she was preparing to travel to Syria, ISIS was on the rise, and its character was plain to see.
It was so grotesque, so sadistic, so sickening, so bloodthirsty that it was all over the headlines and the internet -- which is how she was communicating with ISIS.
During the year in which she was preparing to travel to Syria, ISIS was on the rise, and its character was plain to see. It was so grotesque, so sadistic, so sickening, so bloodthirsty that it was all over the headlines and the internet -- which is how she was communicating with ISIS.
A full roster of ISIS atrocities would take volumes.
...Notes on Hoda are in italics. Information sourced to court documents filed under her father's lawsuit is marked with an asterisk.
...Notes on Hoda are in italics. Information sourced to court documents filed under her father's lawsuit is marked with an asterisk.
2014
For most of this year, Hoda was still in Alabama, using pseudonyms to communicate with and about ISIS on social media.
If she was aware of ISIS atrocities before she left the U.S. -- and it's hard to believe she knew nothing about them -- they did not deter her from going to Syria to join ISIS.- February — From Alabama, Hoda Muthana renews the U.S. passport initially issued for her at her father's behest in 2005.*
- May — ISIS displays crucified bodies in Raqqa, Syria. Here's CNN coverage from the time, with a warning about the graphic photos.
- June — ISIS declares its "caliphate" with Raqqa as its capital.
- August — ISIS releases video of captured American journalist James Foley, on his knees in an orange jumpsuit, and beheads him on camera.
- ISIS launches a genocidal attack on the Yazidis in Iraq, besieging tens of thousands of men, woman, and children who have fled to the upper reaches of Mount Sinjar, denying them access to food and water in temperatures rising above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The horrors go on and on, sickening to read about (see this 2016 UN report, "They came to destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis,"based on interviews with survivors). Hundreds of Yazidis die on Mount Sinjar before the siege is broken. ISIS captures thousands of Yazidis, separates families, kills the men and older boys who refuse to convert to Islam, and enslaves the women and girls, starving and raping them, setting up a slave market in Raqqa where Yazidi girls as young as five are sold at auction.
- September — ISIS releases video of the beheading of American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff
- ISIS releases video of the beheading of British aid worker, David Haines.
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