RED SQUARE — ICC 218 overflowed with students on Tuesday night, gathered to attend the first Islamic State in the Levant-U interest meeting of the semester and share refreshments provided by the fledgling club. ISIL-U, a new network of college-level ISIL chapters, had ordered pizza for 60 attendees – which ended up being a vast underestimate.
While most students struggled to recall ISIS’ mission statement, they agreed the next meeting could definitely use more ranch dipping sauce.
“People were crowding towards the pizza, and it was sometimes hard for our calls for jihad to be heard over empty boxes being thrown on the ground in a craze,” said Georgetown’s ISIL campus representative Ben Haverman (SFS ’15).
Attendees seemed deeply invested in ISIL-U, to the extent that those who arrived late to the meeting were visibly and audibly upset.
“God fucking dammit, I can’t believe I was ten minutes late to this,” exclaimed Ryan Feldstein (NHS ’17) as he peered through the glass panel of the door to ICC 218 at the meeting’s hubub. “I organized my whole day around being here. A phone call with my mom screwed everything up. Do you think there’s any pepperoni left?”
Feldstein was reportedly able to acquire a slice of pepperoni after slipping in the back of the meeting and stumbling through a rhythmic group chant of “لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا الله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ الله.”
“Score!” he said after emerging from the classroom several minutes later, pizza sauce on the corner of his mouth. “Totally worth it.”
“I’ve assured multiple people that the ISIL-U meeting next week is same time, same room, same refreshment situation. People are desperate for more info like that,” laughed Haverman. “It’s safe to say that Georgetown students are really on fire about restoring the caliphate and the former glory of Islam.”
Such enthusiasm comes as a surprise to the wider Georgetown community, wherein strong support for an Islamic state is not readily apparent.
“Dude, ISIL rocks, it really does,” said Chuck Jones (COL ’18), scarfing down two garlicy pizza crusts and clutching a stack of posters depicting the group’s black flag. “Plus, all I have to do is hang these weird pictures up all over the place and I get to put ‘ISIL-U Marketing Director’ on my resume.”
Jones added, “Oh, and like, the group’s focus on international development – or whatever it is, is it international development? Whatever, it’s kinda cool I guess. You can bet I’ll be back. That dude said he’d order Hawaiian pizza next week.”
The meeting was a particularly big moment for Carly Gutierrez (SFS ’17), who reportedly declared the shahada and swore an oath of allegiance to ISIL on the spot in order to claim the last veggie slice.
“Yeah, totally unexpected. But I just did what I felt moved to do at the moment,” said Gutierrez. “I mean, it wasn’t just Ledo’s or Domino’s. It was Manny & Olga’s. What a great day.”