As time passed and Dabiq continued to appear—there have been 11 issues so far—the magazine defended ISIS's use of extreme violence, including the execution of non-compliant Muslims, foreign journalists, and aid workers; the destruction of antiquities; and the enslavement of the Yazidis, a religious minority. "It's not only a recruitment effort," Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent analyst studying international jihad, tells us. "They're basically publishing news and making it known they really want to reach a grand audience."

"Inspire serves more as a how-to guide for individual attacks than an articulation of an overall religious, military, and political vision," wrote Harleen Gambhir, an analyst at the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War. With Dabiq, on the other hand, ISIS seized on the potential of a long-form media outlet—attempting to express the caliphate's story as a fully fleshed narrative. Its content offers insight into ISIS's philosophy that could not be communicated by a viral video, no matter the production quality.

"In the magazine format, people can get a better understanding as to the totality of the arguments, as to why the Islamic State is good or bad," Jeff Weyers, an intelligence analyst at iBrabo, a firm that studies the jihadi use of social media, tells Hopes&Fears. "If you're going to have an argument about the viability of the Islamic State, you can't do that in 140 characters on Twitter."

Still, Twitter is excellent for spreading the content. Once an issue is finished, Weyers explains, its creators upload the PDF to the deep web—the part of the internet that can't be indexed by search engines. Then, they post the link to various social media platforms. Once it goes live, it can be downloaded, re-uploaded, archived and shared by "fanboys," as al-Tamimi calls them.

The usual suspects are 17- to 26-year-old men, Weyers says. And they're already on board with radical Islam, according to al-Tamimi. Rather than converting anyone, magazines like Dabiq and Inspire become part of supporters' media diet, reinforcing their existing attitudes, al-Tamimi explains. Just like partisans watching cable news, those who invest the time immersing themselves in the long, often tedious reports emerge fired up by the affirmation of their beliefs.

Dabiq is calculated to turn that energy towards a specific goal: hijra, or emigration. "Many readers are probably asking about their obligations towards the Khilafah right now," the "Dabiq team" wrote in a foreword to issue two last summer. "The first priority is to perform hijrah from wherever you are to the Islamic State." The message suits ISIS's strategic goals. In order to be a functioning state, they require a populace to submit to their government: soldiers to fight in their wars, doctors to treat their sick and wounded, and judicial scholars to justify their hard-line interpretation of Shariah law. Yet ISIS's military-style conquests and iron-fisted rule have caused Syrians and Iraqis (especially religious minorities) to flee in massive numbers, exacerbating the flow of refugees out of the region. "There are homes here for you and your families," a foreword assures potential new members—homes left vacant by those who have fled or been killed Dabiq, then, directs its message to an audience much larger than Inspire's, in order to repopulate the land vacated by the mass exodus. To that end, each issue mingles battlefield updates with generous portrayals of domestic life in ISIS-controlled territories.

Readers are told that hijra is not just an option, but an obligation now that a caliphate has been established. Those who emigrate will be forgiven; while those who choose otherwise will be considered hypocrites come the End of Days. The pitch: "You can be a major contributor towards the liberation of [Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem]. Would you not like to reach Judgment Day with these grand deeds in your scales?" For those on the fence, the magazine reminds them that they will die either way. 

The doomsday narrative is great motivation for ISIS supporters: the group claims to be the caliphate that will lead the Muslim world to the apocalypse. Even the name Dabiq reinforces this association, referencing a prophecy that the caliphate will defeat the forces of "Rome" (according to Gambhir, this means the West) in the rural community northeast of Aleppo. From there, according to legend, the caliphate will press forward to conquer present-day Istanbul before the "redeemer" of Islam appears on earth (ISIS titled its Turkish-language magazine Konstantiniyye, after its historic name, Constantinople).

Dabiq, the city, remains firmly in the hands of ISIS for now, according to al-Tamimi. Van Ostaeyen, who runs a blog archiving materials related to international jihadism, says visitors download Dabiq, the magazine, several times more often than they do other English-language jihadi journals. "These magazines are trying to use the same publication methods, the same audience," he tells us, "but it works better for the Islamic State."

A timeline of ISIS (cont'd)

AUGUST 19, 2014: in a video posted on YouTube, American journalist James Foley, missing in Syria since 2012, is beheaded by ISIS militants, triggering a spate of publicized killings of Western captives that would come to define ISIS's propaganda machine. By September, American journalist Steven Soltoff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning have joined the list of victims.

September 23, 2014: The US carries out airstrikes against ISIS.

November 14, 2014: The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria concludes that ISIS has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

January 20, 2015: ISIS demands $200 million from Japan in exchange for the lives of two Japanese hostages, journalists Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa. They are both decapitated by the end of the month.

February 11, 2015: President Barack Obama asks Congress to formally authorize use of military force against ISIS.

February 26, 2015: Jihadi John, the disguised man with a British accent who appears in ISIS videos as the executioner of Western hostages, is been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Londoner. On the same day, ISIS releases a video of its fighters destroying antiquities at the Mosul Museum.

March 4, 2015: ISIS releases images of a man being thrown off a building in Raqqa, Syria. This is one in at least half a dozen cases in which ISIS has killed a man for allegedly being homosexual.

March 7-12, 2015: In an audio message purportedly from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, the Nigeria-based radical Islamic group pledges allegiance to ISIS. Later, in an audio message, a speaker identified as an ISIS spokesman, claims the caliphate has expanded to western Africa and that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has accepted Boko Haram's the pledge of allegiance.

June 19, 2015: The State Department issues its annual terrorism report, declaring that ISIS is becoming a greater threat than al Qaeda. The frequency and savagery of ISIS attacks are alarming, according to the report.

June 26, 2015: A gunman kills at least 38 people at a beachfront Tunisian hotel, and a bomb kills at least 27 people at a mosque in Kuwait. ISIS claims responsibility for the attacks.

July 17, 2015: As Iraqi civilians celebrate Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the fast for Ramadan, ISIS detonates an ice truck in a crowded marketplace, killing at least 120 people and wounding at least 160 more.

July 2015: According to IHS Jane's, the territory controlled by ISIS saw a 9.4% reduction in the first six months of 2015, and is now roughly 32,000 square miles.

August 2015: ISIS destroys antiquities in the historic city of Palmyra in the Syria, including the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshami. UNESCO, the UN's cultural organization, calls the destruction of the temple a "war crime."

Abridged from CNN

As time passed and Dabiq continued to appear—there have been 11 issues so far—the magazine defended ISIS's use of extreme violence, including the execution of non-compliant Muslims, foreign journalists, and aid workers; the destruction of antiquities; and the enslavement of the Yazidis, a religious minority. "It's not only a recruitment effort," Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent analyst studying international jihad, tells us. "They're basically publishing news and making it known they really want to reach a grand audience."

"Inspire serves more as a how-to guide for individual attacks than an articulation of an overall religious, military, and political vision," wrote Harleen Gambhir, an analyst at the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War. With Dabiq, on the other hand, ISIS seized on the potential of a long-form media outlet—attempting to express the caliphate's story as a fully fleshed narrative. Its content offers insight into ISIS's philosophy that could not be communicated by a viral video, no matter the production quality.

"In the magazine format, people can get a better understanding as to the totality of the arguments, as to why the Islamic State is good or bad," Jeff Weyers, an intelligence analyst at iBrabo, a firm that studies the jihadi use of social media, tells Hopes&Fears. "If you're going to have an argument about the viability of the Islamic State, you can't do that in 140 characters on Twitter."

Still, Twitter is excellent for spreading the content. Once an issue is finished, Weyers explains, its creators upload the PDF to the deep web—the part of the internet that can't be indexed by search engines. Then, they post the link to various social media platforms. Once it goes live, it can be downloaded, re-uploaded, archived and shared by "fanboys," as al-Tamimi calls them.

The usual suspects are 17- to 26-year-old men, Weyers says. And they're already on board with radical Islam, according to al-Tamimi. Rather than converting anyone, magazines like Dabiq and Inspire become part of supporters' media diet, reinforcing their existing attitudes, al-Tamimi explains. Just like partisans watching cable news, those who invest the time immersing themselves in the long, often tedious reports emerge fired up by the affirmation of their beliefs.

Dabiq is calculated to turn that energy towards a specific goal: hijra, or emigration. "Many readers are probably asking about their obligations towards the Khilafah right now," the "Dabiq team" wrote in a foreword to issue two last summer. "The first priority is to perform hijrah from wherever you are to the Islamic State." The message suits ISIS's strategic goals. In order to be a functioning state, they require a populace to submit to their government: soldiers to fight in their wars, doctors to treat their sick and wounded, and judicial scholars to justify their hard-line interpretation of Shariah law. Yet ISIS's military-style conquests and iron-fisted rule have caused Syrians and Iraqis (especially religious minorities) to flee in massive numbers, exacerbating the flow of refugees out of the region. "There are homes here for you and your families," a foreword assures potential new members—homes left vacant by those who have fled or been killed Dabiq, then, directs its message to an audience much larger than Inspire's, in order to repopulate the land vacated by the mass exodus. To that end, each issue mingles battlefield updates with generous portrayals of domestic life in ISIS-controlled territories.

Readers are told that hijra is not just an option, but an obligation now that a caliphate has been established. Those who emigrate will be forgiven; while those who choose otherwise will be considered hypocrites come the End of Days. The pitch: "You can be a major contributor towards the liberation of [Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem]. Would you not like to reach Judgment Day with these grand deeds in your scales?" For those on the fence, the magazine reminds them that they will die either way. 

The doomsday narrative is great motivation for ISIS supporters: the group claims to be the caliphate that will lead the Muslim world to the apocalypse. Even the name Dabiq reinforces this association, referencing a prophecy that the caliphate will defeat the forces of "Rome" (according to Gambhir, this means the West) in the rural community northeast of Aleppo. From there, according to legend, the caliphate will press forward to conquer present-day Istanbul before the "redeemer" of Islam appears on earth (ISIS titled its Turkish-language magazine Konstantiniyye, after its historic name, Constantinople).

Dabiq, the city, remains firmly in the hands of ISIS for now, according to al-Tamimi. Van Ostaeyen, who runs a blog archiving materials related to international jihadism, says visitors download Dabiq, the magazine, several times more often than they do other English-language jihadi journals. "These magazines are trying to use the same publication methods, the same audience," he tells us, "but it works better for the Islamic State."

A timeline of ISIS (cont'd)

AUGUST 19, 2014: in a video posted on YouTube, American journalist James Foley, missing in Syria since 2012, is beheaded by ISIS militants, triggering a spate of publicized killings of Western captives that would come to define ISIS's propaganda machine. By September, American journalist Steven Soltoff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning have joined the list of victims.

September 23, 2014: The US carries out airstrikes against ISIS.

November 14, 2014: The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria concludes that ISIS has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

January 20, 2015: ISIS demands $200 million from Japan in exchange for the lives of two Japanese hostages, journalists Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa. They are both decapitated by the end of the month.

February 11, 2015: President Barack Obama asks Congress to formally authorize use of military force against ISIS.

February 26, 2015: Jihadi John, the disguised man with a British accent who appears in ISIS videos as the executioner of Western hostages, is been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Londoner. On the same day, ISIS releases a video of its fighters destroying antiquities at the Mosul Museum.

March 4, 2015: ISIS releases images of a man being thrown off a building in Raqqa, Syria. This is one in at least half a dozen cases in which ISIS has killed a man for allegedly being homosexual.

March 7-12, 2015: In an audio message purportedly from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, the Nigeria-based radical Islamic group pledges allegiance to ISIS. Later, in an audio message, a speaker identified as an ISIS spokesman, claims the caliphate has expanded to western Africa and that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has accepted Boko Haram's the pledge of allegiance.

June 19, 2015: The State Department issues its annual terrorism report, declaring that ISIS is becoming a greater threat than al Qaeda. The frequency and savagery of ISIS attacks are alarming, according to the report.

June 26, 2015: A gunman kills at least 38 people at a beachfront Tunisian hotel, and a bomb kills at least 27 people at a mosque in Kuwait. ISIS claims responsibility for the attacks.

July 17, 2015: As Iraqi civilians celebrate Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the fast for Ramadan, ISIS detonates an ice truck in a crowded marketplace, killing at least 120 people and wounding at least 160 more.

July 2015: According to IHS Jane's, the territory controlled by ISIS saw a 9.4% reduction in the first six months of 2015, and is now roughly 32,000 square miles.

August 2015: ISIS destroys antiquities in the historic city of Palmyra in the Syria, including the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshami. UNESCO, the UN's cultural organization, calls the destruction of the temple a "war crime."

Abridged from CNN