"Kendall’s startling discovery is that jihadis take advantage of poetry’s qualities by crafting poems to lure recruits to their cause. 'The language of poetry emulates the language in which the Qur’an was revealed,' Kendall writes. 'Jihadist publications make liberal use of poetry from the classical heritage, which they largely fail to attribute, but which listeners might find faintly familiar from oral tradition. The beauty of the language, solemn intonation, pattern and rhythms found in more classical poems, could not fail to impress.' "
"Poetry, the Qur’an insists repeatedly, is dangerous because its techniques are seductively easy to employ for selfish and destructive purposes. Insofar as the Qur’an employs those techniques (and Muslims believe that the Qur’an is incomparable as a revelation in poetic form), it does so in trust that humankind will comprehend the difference between the right and wrong use of one of God’s most precious gifts, poetry itself.
"Poetry, the Qur’an insists repeatedly, is dangerous because its techniques are seductively easy to employ for selfish and destructive purposes. Insofar as the Qur’an employs those techniques (and Muslims believe that the Qur’an is incomparable as a revelation in poetic form), it does so in trust that humankind will comprehend the difference between the right and wrong use of one of God’s most precious gifts, poetry itself.
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