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For more than a decade, French journalist Nicolas Hnin has reported from the front lines of conflict in the Middle East, much of his time spent in Iraq and Syria. He witnessed the events leading to the rise of Islamic State, and in June 2013, he was himself captured by ISIS and spent ten months in captivity with James Foley and others who were beheaded soon after Hnin was released. Those barbarities, and the first strikes against Islamic State, prompted Hnin to present in Jihad Academy what he knows IS to be, in contrast to the misperceptions he sees perpetuated on an ongoing basis.Hnin sees Islamic State as a political entity, having arisen out of a sense of injustice and lack of hope, and as the natural result of the Western inability to support Syrian democracy activists.