Tweeting with the Enemy

A few weekends ago, while sipping coffee at a Starbucks in downtown Washington, I struck up a conversation with an Islamic State sympathizer. I'd just finished a Bar Method class and was texting with a friend in Boston when I noticed an alert that I'd been mentioned on Twitter—it was a terse note from Ibn Abi Sufian, whom I'd added to a list created for people who Tweet about Islamic extremists. The setting was jarring—me in yoga pants, communicating with a person who was closely aligned with a group that beheads journalists and aid workers. Sufian and I weren't about to be friends: In the tweet, he called me "a fool" and accused me of spreading "lies."

When he wasn't tweeting at me, he posted messages about the benefits of "shooting down all haters," ranted about "Zionist crusaders," and shared photos of bloodied children, and videos mocking the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.